Here's a sticky surprise. To make just 1 gallon of maple syrup, people boil down about 40 gallons of maple sap. That's 40 gallons in, and only 1 gallon out!
So what is sap? It's the liquid that comes out of a maple tree when people "tap" it. They collect it in late winter and early spring. And here's the funny part: maple sap looks like water! It's mostly water, with a little sugar, some amino acids, and tiny traces of vitamins and minerals. Sap is only about 2 to 3 percent sugar. That's not very much sugar at all.
So why does it take so much sap? To turn sap into syrup, you have to get rid of the water. Syrup makers boil the sap so the water steams away. In fact, approximately 98 percent of the water has to go! That's why it's such a long process. They keep boiling until the syrup is about 66 percent sugar. That's a lot sweeter than the watery sap they started with.
The tree famous for this is the sugar maple. Its sap gets boiled down to make maple syrup, and maple sugar too.
