In oldern times Maple Mead or Beer, non-hopped, was made for local consumption the same way fermented cider was made and drank. (For our British friends, we refer to both clarified-and-preserved and freshly pressed apple juice as cider, which puts us at a loss when we talk about the fermented apple juice that you call cider, and Scrumpy is a complete mystery to us.) Some local folks make Maple-Jack, a distilled maple alcohol product, until they become famous or notorious and have tax difficulties with local BATF people.

Other treats we enjoy in New England are allowing the syrup to get more concentrated and either pouring it out on snow - this was before chopped ice, which is much cleaner, was invented; or dipping doughnuts into it and then eating them fresh and hot. We also cook eggs in the boiling sap, for a distinctive taste. Since the system can only take so much concentrated sweet, dill pickles were usually available to give the celebrants a fresh start.

As has been mentioned, you need both Hard or Sugar maples, Acer Sacharrum and both cold nights and warm days to get a good sap run. With labor scarce and expensive, many maple syrup operations have taken to running 3/8" 1 cm clear plastic tubing from tree to tree, to collect the sap. This replaces the hundreds of buckets, covers, and spiles/taps which have to be cleaned and stored, and then emptied each day in season; as well as the gathering tank on sledge runners, pulled by draft horses, which was one of the more picturesque sugaring scenes. Unfortunately sleds and draft horses have gone the way of all good things, and plastic tubing is used if the maple trees are up hill from the sugar house containing the evaporating pans.

Although sap can be obtained in the fall, it has a leafy taste similar to sap taken too late in the spring, and the syrup is unsalable. Syrup grades run from A - D. The first two are what are usually retailed as syrup, while the lower two grades are usually wholesaled to companies like Vermont Maid and Mrs. Butterworths that make Maple Flavored Syrup or other maple products. This dark strong syrup is mixed with many times its own volume of cane syrup and sold as a table syrup to the unsuspecting. Since these people are used to a coarser dark syrup they are frequently disappointed when they are given pure syrup of a better grade.

Many farms making syrup also further evaporate the syrup until it begins to solidify, adding milk or cream, and whipping the fudge-like material to make moulded cakes of "maple sugar." Since this process can be accomplished with previously made syrup, it provides additional work later on in the year after the sap run is over, and is readily sold to tourists during the summer. Syrup or honey can also be whipped into butter to make a sweet spread for toast or biscuits, and garner more tourist money.

Dave