Island Wild for Fri. Feb. 19, 2010
Collecting maple sap is a simple process.
As Canada celebrated Olympic gold last Sunday, Vancouver Island’s biggest maple garnered its own awards at Duncan’s Bigleaf Maple Syrup Festival. Sweet liquid gold literally flowed from the podium, as local producers offered samples and vied for prizes.
Hosted each February, “maplefest” showcases food items produced by ‘The Sapsuckers’ – an island-based group of maple tappers. A taste-test of local syrups revealed yummy elixirs ranging in colour from black to light amber, with a flavour reminiscent of butterscotch.
Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum) is the largest and most common maple in the Pacific Northwest. Tapping begins once the leaves are off the tree in November and continues until buds are about to open in early March, but flows are normally sweetest in January and February.
Sap is boiled down to produce some of Canada’s most unique maple syrup. Over the past few years, local syrup production has become a burgeoning industry, with more ‘tappers’ involved every season in Vancouver Island’s newest cottage industry.
There’s good reason for this sweet success. Pure Canadian maple syrup has more calcium than milk by volume and more potassium than bananas by weight. It contains amino acids, vitamins and many trace minerals and – best of all – has fewer calories than sugar, honey or molasses.
Maple sap is 98 percent water and must be evaporated to reduce it to syrup. Large batches are boiled down outdoors, using wood or propane heat, to allow steam to dissipate.
Gary Backlund, co-author of the Bigleaf Sugaring guidebook, says West Coast maple sap contains less sugar than maples in eastern provinces, but the end result is a more concentrated flavour from the extra sap.
Trunk size and tree age are no guarantee of sap quantity. Limbs as thin as 10 to 45 cm have successfully been tapped, while overgrown, gnarly old trees are poor producers.
Tapping for sap simply involves drilling a hole, plugging in a tap (spile) and collecting. Sap (a.k.a. maple water) can be used raw in place of water for cooking and beverages – hot maple-mint tea is divine.
Long considered a garbage tree of little commercial value, Bigleaf Maple is now treasured for non-timber forest food production.
The future seems secure for distinctly-flavoured western maple syrup, and for value-added items like maple-cranberry-apple jam, honey maple mustard, maple vinaigrette, caramelized maple popcorn and even maple wine.
Bigleaf Sugaring guidebook (blmaple@shaw.ca), or (250) 245-4939. Find West Coast maple syrup production info online at: members.shaw.ca/blmaple or at: bcforestmuseum.com. Also: woodlot.bc.ca/agroforestry.
CONGRATULATIONS: Campbell River placed second in B.C. for most species seen, at 71, in last weekend’s Great Backyard Bird Count. Victoria topped the province with 101 species. E-mail Christine at: wildernesswest@shaw.ca.
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