Maple tree saps are flowing in eastern Canada and it is not necessarily a good thing.
The ongoing warmer weather so far this year has caught many producers off guard, to say the least.
The sap started flowing a couple of weeks early, and one farmer says that this could lead to smaller volumes of processed syrup along with a less-than-perfect product.
“We were looking at the early forecasts and seeing the warm weather, but didn’t expect that it would be as prolonged as it was, so we didn’t start tapping early. Sap ran and we were not operating; we missed some early-season sap. Early-season sap generally has a lower sugar content. So, if you’re running below 2 percent in sugar, that means you need a lot more of it, by volume, to make a liter of syrup, and the more you process it, generally, the longer it’s being boiled, the darker the syrup,” according to Jamie Fortune of Fortune Farms.
They say when syrup is processed too early, the end product tends to have a slightly stronger taste and darker color than what consumers are used to.
