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Tapping Into Real Maple Syrup

  • A very unscientific blind taste test found most people prefer grocery store syrup rather than real maple syrup. (Photo by Lester Graham)

In some parts of the country, it’s time to tap maple trees to make
syrup. Lester Graham went out to see how it’s done and conducted a
little taste test to see whether real maple syrup stands up to the name
brands you find at the grocery store:

Transcript

In some parts of the country, it’s time to tap maple trees to make
syrup. Lester Graham went out to see how it’s done and conducted a
little taste test to see whether real maple syrup stands up to the name
brands you find at the grocery store:


This story started out to be just a little walk in the woods to see
what all the fuss was about. Tapping sap from maples seems like a
quaint old-fashioned idea. After all, doesn’t syrup come from the
grocery store?


Well, anyway, Tom Jameson straightened me out about that. Early in the morning
he led the way through the woods until he found one of the maples he
wanted to tap. First, he drilled a small hole, then drove the tap – or
spline – into the tree:


“We are using an old bit and brace to drill a hole about a half in diameter and an inch and a half to two inches deep. Okay, now I need to just clean that whole little bit. I’ll be ready to drive in the tap, using a hammer to tap it into place. And, already the sap is beginning to run out.”


And that’s it. Sap started dripping right away into a covered bucket
hanging from the tap, or spline.


(Sound of dripping)


It takes a long time to get enough sap, and you need a lot of sap:


“Well, especially with these red maples, you’d need at least 40 gallons
to make one gallon of syrup.”


“So, if you’re doing it commercially, absolutely you want to stick to
sugar maples or hard maples. For the backyard guy that wants to try it,
any maple will work.”


You just have to boil it down sap from soft maples like the red maple
for a lot longer because there’s more water in the sap. And boiling down 40
gallons down to get one gallon of syrup takes a long time, like a good part of a
day or longer.


Jameson says for a lot of people, this is a family event. Empty the
buckets of sap into a big pan over an open fire and keep it boiling. And
a lot of the time you sit around listening to a favorite uncle tell
stories between nips of a flask that keeps getting passed around.


Jameson says it’s a good time, and worth the time spent because real
maple syrup is so good. Well, at least some people think it’s really
good. Jameson admits it’s not what some folks expect:


“Young people that have been raised on the grocery product sometimes
they don’t even like the real thing because it just tastes different to
them. It doesn’t have the extra butter in it or whatever it is. It’s
an acquired taste.”


With that in mind, we decided to do a little taste test. I got some
waffles, some real maple syrup, then three name brand grocery store
syrups… and just to throw everyone a curve, some dark corn syrup.
Then, we got five volunteers at the Environment Report headquaters.
Now, I’ll let you in on a little secret, the real maple syrup was
sample number three.


(Taster 1:)”Three is disgusting. I wouldn’t feed it to anyone. Awww,
gawd!”


(Taster 2:) “Three and four both have sort of a smoky flavor to them
which makes me think maybe it was boiled over a wood fire.”


(Taster 3:) “I think one, I think one is definitely store-bought, but
it’s really good. If two is the maple syrup, I’m really disappointed
because it’s awful. I hate it.”


(Taster 4:) “I chose three as the real one.”


(Taster 1:) “Three? If three is the real one, oh, my goodness.”


(Taster 4:) “I know. But, we’re so used to the imitation. And that’s
maybe why we don’t like it, because it is so real in flavor.”


(Taster 1:) “I’m hoping that two is the real one.”


Number two… was the corn syrup. Four of the five volunteers did guess
that number three was the real maple syrup, but none of them liked it
much.


Tom Jameson says a lot of people wouldn’t have anything but real maple
syrup. And a lot of people really enjoy going out to see
demonstrations of tapping trees for the sap and to watch the sap boil
and boil for hours and hours:


“Well, I think it’s a tie back to the good old days. And when people
can kind of make a connection to back to the way things used to be,
there’s something comforting about that.”


So, every year a lot of folks head out into the woods, hauling buckets
and drills and splines, and take advantage of what they think is one of
nature’s sweetest gifts.


For the Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Outdoor Lab Forecasts Global Warming Effects

  • Mark Kubiske checks the valve that controls the flow of greenhouse gases to a stand of sugar maples, birch and aspen. (Photo by Jennifer Simonson)

Scientists from around the world are studying how higher levels of carbon dioxide will affect forests 100 years from now. They’re doing that by pumping higher levels of CO2 and ozone into stands of trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson visited the experimental forests and has this story:

Transcript

Scientists from around the world are studying how higher levels of carbon dioxide will affect forests 100 years from now. They’re doing that by pumping higher levels of CO2 and ozone into stands of trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson visited the experimental forests and has this story:


(sound of “quiet area”)


The north woods of the Great Lakes states are stands of millions of acres of pine, maple, birch, and aspen forests. It’s a perfect place to try to figure out how trees will react to the higher levels of ozone and carbon dioxide scientists expect in the future.


(sound of beeping fence gate)


The first thing you notice at Aspen Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment Project – Aspen FACE for short – is two huge tanks inside the fenced in enclosure. Each one is bigger than an 18-wheel tanker truck. They’re full of carbon dioxide… CO2. So much CO2 is used in this experiment, the tanks are filled twice a day.


(sound of filling tanks)


If you looked at the site from an airplane, you’d see 12 circular tree stands surrounded by 30 foot high pipes. Those pipes pour CO2 or ozone gases or both into the air surrounding birch, sugar maple, and aspen trees. The scientists know that greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere have been increasing. They believe two centuries of industrial pollution has contributed to the problem. And they expect the CO2 and ozone levels to double by the end of this century. They’re raising the level of greenhouse gasses in different mixes to see what the predicted levels will do to forests.


This open air project is different than previous experiments. David Karnosky is with Michigan Tech. He’s the Project Manager for Aspen FACE. He says before these kinds of projects, they just tested trees inside places like greenhouses.


“We needed to get out of those chambers. We needed to have a more realistic, real world sort of situation where we had multiple trees. We wanted real intact forest communities. We didn’t want to have just a small number of trees inside of a chamber.”


The United States Department of Energy launched this experiment in Wisconsin’s northwoods seven years ago. Karnosky says they’re learning how the trees react to the higher CO2 levels, and that could shape the future of the world’s timber industry.


“Who will be the winners? Who will be the losers? Will aspen or birch or sugar maple? In northern Wisconsin here we’ve got probably 40 million acres of those species mixes. What’s going to happen under elevated CO2 in the next 100 years? Will these forests remain as they are?”


(sound of driving on gravel)


Driving to one of the experimental circles, we pull up to a ring of trees. Mark Kubiske is one of the two full-time on-site researchers.


“Now this particular ring is an elevated CO2 plot. CO2 is delivered through this copper pipe. It runs to that fan, there’s a large fan right on the end of that gray building.”


The scientists have found that trees in the CO2 circles grow 30 percent faster than trees without the gas.


“The trees are larger in diameter, they’re straight, they have lots of leaf area, they just look very healthy. That is just in tremendous contrast to the ozone ring. We’ll go up around the corner and look at one.”


Nearby another circle of trees is not doing nearly as well. The trees are skinny, twisted not as tall as the other sites. Higher ozone levels are hurting the trees.


At the sites where pipes emit both ozone and CO2, the tree growth seems normal – except for some stunted maple trees. The leaves of the aspen and birch take in much of the CO2, convert it to sugar which goes to its roots, eventually becoming a natural part of the soil. That suggests forests may help alleviate gases that cause global warming. The Project Director, David Karnosky says CO2 and ozone appear to cancel each other out. But he says it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions. Ultimately, he says governments will be able to look at this glimpse into the future and try to come up with emissions policies that help.


“The whole issue of the Kyoto protocol, our government not signing off on that. There’s been some relaxing of the feelings from what I’ve seen from the President’s report now that they’re beginning to realize that elevated CO2 is having an impact on global warming and could be impacting our plant communities.”


Karnosky says it’s possible that besides reducing emissions, governments might determine that planting more trees might be very helpful in reducing greenhouse gasses worldwide.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.

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