Tradeoff

Usually, the first syrup that gets made each year is "fancy" - the lightest most delicate flavoured syrup (if you like the flavour of karo syrup say some). Then, as the season goes on, the syrup gets darker, from "medium" to "dark" and then finally to "B grade". As the syrup gets darker, the maple flavor gets stronger. Usually "fancy" also fetches a higher price than "B", although its not necessarily better, in my opinion. A few years ago I had some people at the farmers market come back and tell me that our syrup was the best they ever had (the highlight of my farming career thus far). I suspect this was because they had never had B grade syrup before and they really liked the taste.

The color and taste change based on a few things. One is the amount of bacteria in the sap - the more bacteria, the darker it is. Another is the amount of time you have to boil to get to syrup. If your sugar content (in the sap) is 1%, you're gonna be boiling a lot longer on your back yard rig than if you have sap at 2.5% and a reverse osmosis gizmo that automatically sucks 15% of the water out of your sap and a giant efficient evaporator. There are some other factors also that I'm not totally clear on but you can read about them in the "North American Maple Producer's Manual."

But we never make fancy. Peter's parents also don't recall anyone back before us ever making fancy. I'm totally sure why this is. I wonder if it has something to do with the soil? Peter's dad has an interesting idea that the thing that makes us never make fancy syrup is the same thing that makes us have a 75% heifer calf rate (something particularly good). It's a tradeoff.