Maple Syrup

Maple syrup is a popular treat on many planets. It is made by boiling gallons of sap taken from maple trees, which grow abundantly on many planets. Syrup can be used as a sweetener in many recipes and as a topping for other meals.

Here, have some syrup. It's fresh from Laval.

— friends having breakfast together

Manufacturing process

When temperatures on the planet dip below freezing at night but rise above during the day, maple farmers set out to tap their trees. Tapping is the process in which syrup producers drill holes in maple trees and connect tubes to them. As the tree sap moves through the tree, it runs into the tubes and then into buckets, which are collected and replaced almost every day.

Sap collection buckets are made of metal or plastic by Lilliana Casper

Once a significant amount of sap has been collected, it is poured into special pans and boiled down into syrup. This process takes hours to complete, especially at the end when the syrup is strained three or four times to remove any particles that fell in during boiling. Once the boiling and straining is complete, the syrup is poured into sanitized jars, sealed, and stored away before use or sale. Boiling is often done many times during the process. Even with multiple boiling days, it often takes about 15 hours each time.
Forty gallons of sap boils down to approximately one gallon of syrup.

Significance

Maple sap must be extracted from the trees in a delicate process and takes hours of work to boil into syrup, making it more expensive commercially than regular sugar. However, smaller producers who tap and boil for themselves feel that the effort is justified. Once they pay for the equipment, they lose no additional money on work and must simply put in their time.

Item type

Consumable, Food / Drink

Rarity

Common

Appearance

Before it is boiled, maple sap looks exactly like water, sometimes a little cloudier. As it boils, it slowly gets darker. Fully boiled syrup is usually golden brown in color and almost fully transparent. The exact color can vary between batches depending on what time during the tapping season it was collected, often appearing darker at the end of the season and lighter at the start.

Maple tap by Lilliana Casper