Have you ever tasted maple syrup? It’s a sweet treat that many people love to pour on pancakes and waffles. But have you ever wondered how it’s made? Let’s find out together!
Maple syrup comes from a special kind of tree called a maple tree. These trees have leaves that look like stars and seeds that spin like little helicopters when they fall. You might have seen them in parks or forests.
To make maple syrup, we start by collecting something called sap from the maple tree. Sap is a watery liquid that flows inside the tree. Here’s how we collect it:
Now, we need to turn the sap into syrup. How do we do that? By boiling it! When we boil the sap, the water turns into steam and goes away, leaving the sweet part behind. The more we boil, the sweeter and thicker the syrup becomes.
As the sap boils, it changes color too. It starts clear but turns golden brown because of the heat. That’s why maple syrup looks so yummy and golden!
Most maple syrup comes from places with lots of maple trees, like eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Canada even has a maple leaf on its flag!
Long ago, Native American peoples discovered how to make maple syrup. They might have learned by watching a bird called a sapsucker, which drinks sap from trees.
Maple syrup isn’t the only kind of syrup. There are other syrups made from different plants, like corn syrup from corn, cane syrup from sugarcane, and agave syrup from the agave plant.
Now you know how maple syrup is made! Isn’t it amazing how something so sweet comes from a tree? Keep asking questions and exploring the world around you. There’s always something new to learn!
Maple Tree Observation: Take a walk in a nearby park or forest with an adult and try to find a maple tree. Look for the star-shaped leaves and the seeds that spin like helicopters. Draw a picture of the tree and its leaves. Can you spot any other trees that look different? How do they compare to the maple tree?
Sap to Syrup Experiment: With the help of an adult, try a simple experiment to understand how boiling works. Take a small amount of water and add a teaspoon of sugar. Heat it on the stove until the water starts to evaporate. Watch how the liquid reduces and becomes thicker. Remember to be careful around the stove and ask for help!
Sweet Math Challenge: If it takes 40 buckets of sap to make one bucket of syrup, how many buckets of sap would you need to make two buckets of syrup? What about three buckets? Try drawing a picture to help you solve the problem. Can you think of other things that need a lot of one thing to make a little of something else?
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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(Phone ringing) – Hi, it’s Doug! Maple syrup. I grew up with it, but a few years ago, I traveled to Europe and was surprised to find that many people there have never tried it before. Some of the people I met who had tried it thought it tasted unpleasant. What do you think of maple syrup? Well, someone named Wren is curious about syrup and has a question for us. Let’s give her a call now. (Phone ringing) – Hi Doug. – Hi Wren! – I have a question for you. How is syrup made? – Ooh, that’s a great question. There are many interesting reasons why you might ask this. Maybe you were having breakfast and realized you have no idea where syrup comes from. I mean, milk comes from cows, honey comes from bees, but syrup? Or maybe you know something about syrup but not much. Like, maybe you’ve heard it has something to do with trees, but how do they get it out of trees? Are there syrup trees? Could you stick a straw in a tree and start sipping syrup?
Well, syrup does come from trees, and if we’re talking about the kind of syrup that’s popular in North America, we’re talking about maple syrup, which comes from a specific family of trees, the maple tree family. You might know these. Maple trees have those little helicopter seeds and leaves that are shaped like this. So, how do we get maple syrup out of a maple tree? Unfortunately, you can’t just stick a straw in a maple tree and start sipping syrup, although that would be amazing!
Believe it or not, the way we get syrup out of a maple tree isn’t that different from this. First, you create a small hole in the side of the maple tree, going into the bark but not too deep, as that could harm the tree. Then, you insert a hollow tube, and a liquid will slowly start to flow out. You want to collect that liquid in a bucket.
Wait, so that’s it? That’s how we get syrup? Well, not quite yet, because the stuff you collected in that bucket, if you were to look at it and taste it, you’d find it’s mostly water at this point, with just a hint of sweetness. This slightly sweet liquid is called sap.
That brings us to the next important step in making syrup: boiling the sap. Now, why do you think we need to do that? Before I say anything more, it might be fun for you to pause the video and take a guess.
Okay, you ready? You might have had different ideas. For example, sometimes we boil things to kill germs, and boiling sap would definitely do that, but that’s not the main reason. When you boil something that contains water, some of that water rises as vapor or steam. But guess what? The sugar in the sap doesn’t boil away; it stays inside the container. So, as you boil sap, you’re getting rid of some of the water while leaving the sugar inside. The more water you boil away, the sweeter it becomes.
As you boil sap, its color changes because the heat causes some of the sugar to turn brown, which is why maple syrup has that golden-brown color, even though sap itself looks clear. To make syrup, you don’t want to boil away all the water; you leave some behind so it’s still a liquid. By the time you’ve boiled it down to being golden brown and sticky, that’s when you know it’s ready. It’s become syrup.
In total, to make one gallon of maple syrup, it takes 40 gallons of sap. That’s how much water you have to boil away. What if you kept boiling the sap until all the water is gone? Then, you’d find a solid material left behind, which is the sugar called maple sugar. Some people do boil away all the water to make maple sugar candies.
While some maple syrup comes from the northeastern United States, most comes from eastern Canada, a place filled with maple trees. They even put a maple leaf on their flag and named one of their hockey teams the Maple Leafs.
While making this video, I started to wonder how anyone ever discovered maple syrup in the first place. Who figured out that inside maple trees is a clear liquid that can be boiled and turned into something sweet? I found out that the process of making maple syrup comes from some Native American peoples, whose tradition goes back hundreds of years, maybe longer.
No one knows for sure how it started or who figured it out, but one possibility is that someone was inspired by watching a bird called a sapsucker. Unlike most woodpeckers that eat bugs, sapsuckers peck on trees to drink the sap, the sugary water found underneath the bark.
It’s possible to make other kinds of syrup, not just maple syrup. For example, corn syrup is made from the sugar water found in corn, cane syrup from sugarcane, agave syrup from the agave plant, and even syrup from violets, made from the sugary water found in violet flowers.
So, in summary, maple syrup is made by collecting the sap from maple trees and then boiling it. That’s all for this week’s question. Thanks, Wren, for asking it!
Now, for the next episode, I picked out three Halloween-themed questions that I’m thinking about answering next. When this video is done playing, you’ll get to vote on one. You can choose from: why do people carve pumpkins? Do bats and birds have different skeletons? Or, what would happen if you didn’t have a skull? So submit your vote when the video’s over. I want to hear from all of you watching. There are mysteries all around us. Stay curious, and see you next week!
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This version removes any informal language or potentially inappropriate phrases while maintaining the core content and educational value.
