What makes maple syrup crystallized

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Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter. Updated August 18, Featured Video. What is maple cream? The magic of sucrose crystallization The crystallization science of sucrose is quite special and is the basis for making maple cream.

There are a few things you need to know for understanding maple cream: At higher temperatures, more sucrose can dissolve in water. That is, you can dissolve more sugar in your hot tea, than in a cold cup of tea. The higher the concentration of sugar in your sugar syrup, the higher its boiling point. Regular water boils at C F , sugar syrups have boiling points up to C F! When you bring maple syrup to the boil red arrow pointing upwards in the graph below and measure the temperature, it will be slightly above C.

To make maple cream you then continue to boil the syrup red arrow pointing right. By doing so you evaporate water and increase the concentration of sucrose. You have to boil it to C F. If you then cool the mixture down red arrow pointing downwards you end up with some sucrose molecules crystallizing and some remaining in solution aka maple cream consistency!

The higher the temperature you boil to, the higher the concentration of crystals. Getting to the right temperature is thus important to get the right amount of crystals.

Rough sketch of a sucrose state diagram based on Schmidt, The red arrows represents what happens when making a maple cream. The y-axis is the temperature of the mixture. Underneath the orange boiling point and left of the blue solubility line the sucrose dissolves fully in water.

Right of the blue solubility and left of the grey glass lines, there is too much sucrose in the water and part of it will crystallize. As a result, the exact location of the curves will change, but the basic science behind it remains the same. Super smooth maple cream! Ingredients Maple syrup you will get about the same amount of cream as the amount of maple syrup you start of with, you only evaporate a little moisture.

Instructions Bring the maple syrup to the boil in a pot and continue to boil on a medium heat. Continue to boil until the syrup has reached C F. Pour the thick syrup into the pot you'll be using to stir in for the next few steps.

Make sure it can handle the heat! If you're using a stand mixer, use your metal bowl. Cool the syrup down in the fridge faster cooling will prevent any preliminary crystallization until just above room temperature the exact temperature is not as important here.

So you need a lot of sap to make maple syrup. But sap will spoil it gets cloudy and off-tasting if it is left too long in storage. It is possible to boil down sap into partial batches of syrup. Before you get to pancakes, your syrup will be filtered three times. Each step is quick and only takes a few minutes.

After a period of warm weather, cloudy sap may appear in buckets or gathering equipment. This is caused by bacterial growth and can have a negative affect on syrup color and taste. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Psychology What causes crystals in maple syrup? Ben Davis March 30, What causes crystals in maple syrup? Is it normal for maple syrup to crystallize? How do you dissolve maple syrup crystals? Can you get botulism from maple syrup?

Can you get sick from bad maple syrup? Can you get sick from unrefrigerated maple syrup? Do you really need to refrigerate maple syrup?