Maple Syrup? Availability? Price?
We have an annual task that takes us past our favourite producer south of Tara in Bruce County, Ontario - roughly across Lake Huron from Michigan's thumb. I mention this to give some context of climate as our seasons roughly correspond.
As I suspected, this mild winter has cut into production. Severely. Mr. Howard informed me that production had been ended for some time and that he had realized half of normal production.
We bought two imperial quarts of #2 Amber (Grade B U.S.?) at $18 each. That was the last of his quarts for the year. We were reduced to buying a pint of the same for my sister at $12. Little remained, the rest had shipped to market.
We normally buy more about mid summer but I doubt any stock will remain even of the other grades.
How does this compare elsewhere?
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minnesota here. an absolute crap syruping year. my mom cooked this past week. a neighboring farmer had such a low sap yield he didn't even bother to cook, he just froze the sap and gave it to them to cook, so my mom had a little bit more than she thought she would, but still it was apparently quite pathetic, i'm afraid.
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re: soupkitten
MplsM ary
Mar 24, 2012 03:37 PM
http://andersonsmaplesyrup.com/index.php?pg=ms&page=springsap
From Anderson's Sugaring Season 2012:
"March 20th
Mother nature has finally got the best of us, as our trees are starting to bud here, effectively ending our 2012 season. It looks like we'll end up with about a 1/4 of a crop, and while there are exceptions, this seems to be consistent with most producers throughout the state. We were hoping for another blast of cold weather, and while that may still come at some point, we've had too many warm days now to get any more good sap.For additional information, check out the article below that ran in the March 19th issue of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin maple producers endure worst year in memory. "
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re: sandylc
Not so simple as that. The grading is done by colour, not flavour. So depending on the producer, the year, the method of production, the flavour will vary a great deal. Many people prefer "amber" or "medium" grade syrup because it can have a stronger maple flavour. But sometimes it can also taste a bit off if the sap was held too long before evaporating or if it was late season (buddy) sap. The syrups that consistently win awards are usually "light" - and this is because light syrup has a very pure, but delicate, maple flavour and light colour. The whole thing is personal preference and even though you may like the darker syrup from one producer in one year, you may prefer a lighter syrup another time. For cooking purposes, the delicacy of light syrup is generally lost so that's where a darker syrup is almost always a better choice.
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Maple syrup season was extremely short this year. A young friend who produces syrup said he got less than half of what he would get in a normal year. It started suddenly and ended just as suddenly. As far as I can see, he hasn't increased his prices to reflect the shortage, however. I paid about $23 for a litre - I bought 6 litres in anticipation of not being able to get any local syrup later in the year.
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