I just stumbled across a post trumpeting the benefits of a Brand New Thing: Maple Water. It’s claimed to be rich in vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. And, pointedly, it’s a potential alternative high-performance rehydration beverage…
Food Dive reports, the first Maple Water rehydration beverages appeared on the market a decade ago. And one of the most popular of them, DRINKmaple, is still around. But until a recent resurgence of interest, these intriguing-sounding quaffs resided largely outside the mainstream’s consciousness…
What’s all the fuss about?
“Maple water, which contains minerals and electrolytes yet only a few grams of sugar, has a slightly sweet taste,” Food Dive‘s Alexandra Frost reports.
“The market has been growing since 2021, and is expected to grow [further] from $335 million in 2021 to $3.1 billion by 2030.” That’s a compound annual growth rate of 31.6 percent during the forecast period, according to Strait Research.
Given that sales forecast, Maple Water is on course to become the Next Big Thing in the sports drinks sphere.
What it is
As you may have guessed, ‘Maple Water’ is just a fancy (potentially trademarkable?) name for maple tree sap. That’s the sap that flows from tapped sugar maple trees, and is boiled down to make maple syrup.
What many folks don’t know (unless they were reared in a maple-producing area, as I was) is that it takes a lot of sap and a lot of boiling to make maple syrup.
Water vs. syrup
A single gallon / 3.78 litres) of even the lowest grade of syrup starts as 40 gallons / 150 litres or more of sap. And it must be boiled down over tens of hours – more than a day in some cases – before be-ing declared syrup. The thicker and darker it is, the higher the grade. And the higher the price.
But maple water is just un-boiled maple sap. At around 2 percent sugar, it’s only slightly sweet. And almost completely clear. But all it’s natural goodness remains intact. Unlike maple syrup, which loses some of it’s nutritional oompf through the cooking.
Many advantages
There are many natural advantages to maple water, compared to conventional rehydration beverages.
First, it comes ready-made from the tree. No expensive ingredients to buy, measure and blend. All-natural flavouring. And its clear, ‘blush-of-amber’, natural colour is a marketer’s dream. Just filter it, pasteurize it and bottle it.
Second, there’s no Maple Water Mafia. That’s the term non-members have coined (here in Canada, at least) for the Quebec-based cartel/cooperative that controls maple syrup sales, restricting retail sup-plies to keep prices up. But that’s another story.
Third, It’s obviously low-cal, low-sugar, zero salt, and zero fat, while high in good stuff. An ideal nutri-tion profile. And, the experts claim, an ideal blend for high-performance rehydration.
Marketing implications
One factor that haunts the maple syrup industry here in Canada is what non-members call the Maple Syrup Mafia. That’s the Quebec-based cartel/cooperative that controls maple syrup sales, restricting retail supplies to keep prices up. But that’s another story.
There’s no maple Water Mob yet. But if the industry grows as vigorously as Strait Research predicts… One might pop up soon. So much for flying under the radar…
Sustainable agriculture
The Maple tapping process is entirely sustainable. Tapping the tree doesn’t hurt it. Nor does extrac-tion of the via one or taps per tree deprive the plant of the nutrition it needs to survive and thrive.
“Each tree can support between one and three taps, depending on its trunk diameter,” South Ridge maple explains. “The average maple tree will produce 35 to 50 litres (9.2 to 13.2 US gal) of sap per season, up to 12 litres (3.2 US gal) per day. This is roughly equal to seven percent of its total sap.”
Few food production processes – short of milking cows – can make such a claim. And I can attest, from years working on and visiting my Dad’s family’s ancestral farm – where they’ve been sugaring off’ as the practice is called, for generations – that the process doesn’t stunt back the trees or short-en their lives. The sugar bush on the farm where my paternal grandfather was born was planted by his grandfather.
My take
If maple water is truly ‘the next big thing’ in rehydration products, I hope lots of small producers take advantage of the natural bounty they have on their farms already – the maple trees.
They could make a significant extra income from maple water with low start-up and operating costs. And maybe even help themselves buffer the financial impact of their inevitable changeover to a plant-based economy.
Maple water sounds like a win-win deal all-round, to me…
~ Maggie J.