Two taps in one stain zone. Why?

Being the skeptical sort, we’re taking 30 or 40 trees and double-tapping them so that we can see if indeed the valved sap adapters do continue to throw sap later into the season.

To set up this experiment, we’re tapping both spiles one right above the other. This won’t necessarily tell us how much sap each one produces, but it should tell us the period during which one sap is more active than another. If the current research bears out, the older taps will stop a week or so before the adapter-equipped ones. We placed the taps atop one another so as to minimize the staining done with the two holes. The sapwood stains in a largely vertical pattern (a couple feet above and below the hole), so this configuration of tapping should minimize additional damage to the tree. It also eliminates aspect as a factor affecting the timing of the tapholes drying.

Stay tuned, and we’ll have a decent anecdotal indication of effectiveness. Incidentally this should be biased toward the new valved sap adapters because our older taps are generally a couple years old, so they should be harboring the microorganisms that cause taphole drying.

[Average prices for maple syrup in various towns across the U.S.]

The upshot: retail prices for maple syrup are higher than we anticipated. The average location of more than 30 chosen randomly across the U.S. sold maple syrup for about $96.50 per gallon. Of course, this was sold in smaller units, making the out-of-pocket cost seem more reasonable. The average unit size for the cheapest maple syrup offered in the store was 18.8 ounces, which of course means that the average unit sold was smaller than that. We saw locally that – in the face of short supply – many retailers sold smaller units at higher prices, and this may have happened across the country as well. We will be able to see that in future years as we repeat this research to get year-to-year data. Several locations reported that they were out of half gallons and gallons of maple syrup that they once sold.

Probably the most notable unanticipated fact we found – aside from the high price of real maple syrup – was the high price of fake maple syrup. The average price for fake maple syrup was $26.13 per gallon, sold almost always in a 12-ounce container. The range of fake maple syrup prices was even greater than that of the real maple syrup. The cheapest fake maple syrup (I shudder to think of it) cost $5.19 per gallon. The most expensive: $35.73. When maple syrup packers complain to maple syrup producers about how the market cannot sustain prices above $4 per pound, remind them of that last number. Perhaps suggest that they go into the corn syrup business. I’m sure there’s a heck of a profit margin in that.

[Merced, CA - home of the very urgent syrup eaters]

Real maple syrup ranged from $74.96 in Willmar, Minnesota to the ludicrously high price of $131.94 in Merced, California. I should note that in each of these randomly chosen towns I called at least three different grocery stores and got at least two data points for each town. Interestingly, prices tended to keep to a much more narrow range within a town versus between stores in different towns. This suggests that there are significant regional effects on price, such as distance from producers, cultural use of maple syrup and local cost of living. I’ve put together some charts to explore those.

[Willmar, MN - looks like each home has its own maple tree]

Out of 30+ stores, six reported that they either didn’t sell real maple syrup or that they were out of it. I was pleasantly surprised to see that only two clerks showed some confusion about there being a difference between real maple syrup and fake maple syrup. The nation’s epicenter for not selling real maple syrup is Petersburg, Virginia. Three stores of five queried didn’t sell it. The one chain that did sell maple syrup (Ukrops) charged only $79.96 per gallon. Ukrops is a relatively high-end local chain that is well known for its prepared foods. That Ukrops charges about 15 percent below the national average for retail maple syrup prices and its competitors don’t sell maple syrup at all suggests that there might just be something wrong with the people who come from the greater Richmond area. Just saying.

Very unexpectedly, the cost of living differences between the towns seemed to have no discernable effect on maple syrup price. In other words, rich towns didn’t seem to charge on average higher prices than those seen in poorer towns. It appears as though the setting of maple syrup prices is based on very tough to predict market factors, such as the number of distributors and middle men in the distribution chain, and that market demand forces don’t seem to exert much of a controlling influence on this. The towns selected ranged in cost of living adjustment factors of 85 percent to 106 percent, averaging at 95 percent. This lower than 100 average is due to the fact that no major coastal cities were included in the data set.

When looking at the distribution of prices, as in the chart below, it seems as though there is a relatively thin floor in pricing extending between $75 per gallon and $90 per gallon of maple syrup. This suggests that the cheaper prices sold “retail” directly by maple syrup producers are the anomalies in the market. This is very likely the explanation as to why government data is not reflective of reality for the general consumer. In maple syrup-producing regions, which account for a very small percent of the U.S. population, people may be able to purchase syrup for $48 a gallon, as they can here at a local maple syrup farm in Thetford. But that same maple syrup producer can sell the same gallon for quite a bit higher elsewhere.

[Data set of 25 prices per gallon of maple syrup]

The distance from the major maple syrup producing state – Vermont – and the town in question does appear to have an influence on price. The further away from Vermont , not surprisingly, the higher the price of maple syrup, with some exceptions. The bar chart of the prices in the different towns (top chart) is organized by distance from Thetford, VT. The trend to higher maple syrup prices the further away you get is pretty obvious. This may be explained almost entirely by shipping costs. Most methods of moving maple syrup from one coast to the other cost about $20 per gallon.

It should be noted that all of these calls were made in February 2009, just prior to the new production season. This is the time of the lowest inventories of maple syrup and the time least likely to confuse the influences of two different maple syrup seasons in the market.

As with all data-oriented research studies, some of the most interesting stuff came out of the “verbatims,” or things said on the phone by the folks answering the questions. These aren’t necessarily representative, but it’s interesting to see these ideas floating out there, affecting in a very real way the maple syrup purchase decisions of people calling up a store to ask about a product:

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“All the grades taste the same, but the colors are different”

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“This actually isn’t that expensive for this product”

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“The Maple Grove brand must be better than this other one, because the other one is the store’s brand.”

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“There’s a generic brand, but you probably don’t want that.”

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“I can’t stand the fake stuff.”

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“We use honey or karo”

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“There used to be a lot more sizes”

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“Oh my god”

Here is a picture of a maple syrup bottle consumed slowly over a year, leaving a residue of maple sugar crystals…

Interestingly, we’ve been polling people over the 2008 to see whether they prefer thicker, “normal” or thinner maple syrup. The vast majority of people said they preferred the standard thickness. One or two said thinner, and perhaps a quarter said thicker. This surprised me, as I assumed everyone would prefer thicker maple syrup over the norm.

When asked both if they knew their preferences well and whether they liked lighter or darker maple syrup, the folks who indicated they knew their preferences mostly said darker maple syrup, perhaps by a 2-1 ratio. The people who indicated that they weren’t confident in their preferences were more apt – but not by much – to say lighter maple syrup. This is consistent with studies done by maple research centers, although I have not seen them couch their questions with the information about how confident the respondents are in their various answers.

A before and after shot of the bottles of overstrength maple syrup.

The maple syrup bottles above are a recent gift to some in-laws, next to the bottle just recently finished off from last year’s gift. Some customers see the maple sugar crystals growing in glass containers and assume that it must be some sort of organic growth. I find that they express this concern particularly when maple sugar just starts to come out of solution, as the early crystals look an awful lot like a fuzz on the inside bottle surface, and sometimes floating just under the maple syrup’s surface.

I am not sure about this, but I suspect that overstrength maple syrup is less friendly to growths because of its lower than normal water ratio. Typically, growths in maple syrup happen only in the thin layer of water at the top of the bottle, often resulting from condensation.

Some highlights:

- A good deal of what we know (which is still pretty incomplete) about how and why sap flows

- Optimal tapping studies, including depth and placement

- Paraformaldehyde pros and (mostly) cons

- Basics of sap collection, including piping and vacuum mechanics

- Sugarbush management

- Forestry elements, such as optimal stocking

- Some very extensive bibliography information on lots of additional research

- A look at learnings about maple tree genetics and reproduction (still pretty rudimentary)

- Costs and economics of sugaring, including analysis of buckets versus lines

- Wood versus oil and gas

- Use of preheaters

- Employing baffles under flue pans

- Alternative evaporator designs, like vapor compression and tubular evaporator pans

- Marketing maple syrup

- Maple syrup grading history and differences between jurisdictions

- Consumer attitudes (perhaps a little dated) on maple syrup

- Review of older container options

How about the squirrels? Kept the ones from New England off the lines, but it’s just a matter of time before the Texan ones arrive.