Maple syrup: you drown pancakes in it, hoard it like gold, and maybe even buy it in tiny leaf-shaped bottles. But do you really understand this sticky miracle from trees? Here’s your definitive guide to maple syrup grades, colour differences, and why you’ll never trust a "Grade B" bottle again.
The number one question I get about maple syrup is about the colour. I imagine it's the same for the honey producing people out there.
If you’re wondering why some maple syrup is light and some is dark, it’s actually pretty simple.
Table of Contents
What Makes Maple Syrup Light or Dark?
The syrup’s colour has nothing to do with how long it’s cooked, what kind of maple tree it came from, or how good it is for you. The darkness comes from when the sap is collected.
- Early-season sap → Light syrup
- Late-season sap → Dark syrup
As the season progresses and temperatures rise, bacteria in the sap increase. This bacteria converts sucrose into fructose and glucose, which caramelize more easily during boiling, resulting in a darker syrup.
It's sciencey, complicated stuff, but the gist is: early sap = light syrup, later sap = dark syrup.
Orrrrr it's magic.
Maple Syrup Grades: Canada & US United
Until 2014, maple syrup grading was a total mess. Canada had one set of names, the U.S. had another, and each grade seemed to have at least two different labels. It was the IKEA instruction manual of food labels.
In 2014, North America adopted one unified system with four grades, based on colour and taste.
Here’s the breakdown:
| Grade | Taste | Light Transmission |
|---|---|---|
| Golden | Delicate | 75%+ light passes through |
| Amber | Rich | 50–75% light passes through |
| Dark | Robust | 25–50% light passes through |
| Very Dark | Very Strong | Less than 25% light passes |
In general, lighter syrup = lighter flavour, darker syrup = stronger flavour.
If you like a light maple taste stick with Golden. Want something with more punch? Go Darker. Want to feel like you’re drinking liquid bark? Try Very Dark. (I haven’t even seen Very Dark in real life, but I assume it tastes like a lumberjack's tears.)
What Happened to Grade B?
Don’t worry about Grade B maple syrup. It doesn't exist anymore.
Grade B was once used for dark, late-season syrup, but in 2014 it was thrown out the sugar shack window during the grading overhaul. Now, everything is just Grade A (with colour and taste descriptors), and your confusion has been politely eliminated.
Would you like to save this stuff?
We'll email you this post, so you can refer to it later.
This makes sense because Grade B infers a less than delightful product. MAPLE SYRUP IS ALWAYS DELIGHTFUL.
Want to Make Your Own Maple Syrup?
🍁 Try it in your own backyard. If you’ve got one big maple tree and a questionable sense of how to spend your weekends, you're ready.
Here’s my easy-to-follow guide to making maple syrup in your own backyard.
Makin' Maple Syrup
It's a lot of work. A LOT of work. Anyone who has a maple tree can do it but most people just do it once for fun.
What All That Work Boils Down To
To recap one of my own typical maple syrup harvests:
- I tap 4 trees with 6 taps total.
- I collect sap from 6 buckets 1–2 times a day.
- I boil gallons and gallons of sap every few days for 4 weeks straight.
- The latest boiling session went until 2:15 a.m.
- Burned 1 pan of sap. It’s still in the backyard, decaying like my will to clean it up. Seriously. I threw it behind a bush years ago.
What I Got:
18 bottles of pure maple syrup from one season of tapping a few trees.
Two were spoken for—thanks to the neighbours who let me tap their trees. That leaft 16 bottles.
Let’s break it down further:
- 2 bottles for emergencies (a.k.a. unexpected gifts, dramatic rescues, etc.)
- 1 for each month = 12 bottles
- But wait—Maple Cream and Maple Bourbon BBQ sauce need at least 4 bottles
- Possible dropped bottle? Let’s be cautious and subtract 1
I’m down to 9 bottles, which is less than one per month. That’s making my eye twitch, which makes me anxious, which makes me drink maple syrup.
Crap. 8 bottles.
And honestly, 8 is a terrible number. Imagine having 8 dollars. Or 8 fingers. 8 is useless.
The point is no matter how much maple syrup you have it's never going to be enough and it will always disappear. Whether it's golden, amber or the dark stain of lumberjack tears.
Nathalie
Hello Karen,
I tought I would share this information (in case you don't already know).
In the past years, in Quebec, a different and more precise chart was developped to describe the differents flavors of maple syrup. Here is a link with the information: https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/science/story-agricultural-science/scientific-achievements-agriculture/maple-syrup-flavour-research
Kristin S.
How many years do you think maple syrup lasts unopened? Since some people in my household developed diabetes, I'm the only one that uses it. I still have an unopened container from 2018. Hmm.
Scott Mallonee
A question for Karen and experts: what relationship is there between "when the sap flows", vs. early/late sap collection determining colour and flavour? From what I've read, sap flows heavily in a narrow period when nights are sub-freezing and days are a little warmer. Something about this time period makes the sap flow most heavily. That would me about mid-March to Mid-April where I live in VA, earlier in VT or Canada. Is this true, there is a narrow window "when the sap flows"? I seem to remember hearing that "when the sap flows" expression in various colloquial uses over the years.
Yet I have also read that sap collected in warmer time, (later in the summer?) yields darker syrup due to microbal activity in the tree. Is sap collected through the summer? Is sap colected during the early spring "sap flow" period always lighter? It would seem that mid-color is dominant on store shelves, suggesting high sap flow during the time medium-dark syrup results.
Scott Mallonee
Love, love, love mepple syrup. Like others here, #1 Clear Light’s the one for me. I am an American in Canada, many of my Quebecois colleagues scoff at my preference, say #1 has no flavour. They boisterously boast the like it plenty dark and flavourful, with the twigs and bugs still in it. I stick to my guns, #1 Clair or Delcate/Golden forever!
Karen
LOL. I'm with the Quebecers but I also like dark honey! Plus you know, Canadian, eh. ~ karen!
Be
I have very dark syrup and I can attest that it is the best of the options. I also prefer Demerara sugar and Demerara rum. Darker means more flavour which adds up to more excitement for your taste buds.
WeesieOnPI
Thanks, Karen, for explaining the difference between grades. Could you, and other readers, please comment more on flavour diferences between the grades?
Almost 70 years ago, my dear brother thought he'd try cooking an egg in a big vat of maple sap-becoming-syrup our Dad had simmering over a fire in our backyard. A disastrous experiment we've never let my brother forget!
Karen
Hi Weesie! Literally the lighter the colour the lighter the taste. :) So the darker you go the more rubust and heavier the maple flavour. Some of it is so dark that you wouldn't want to eat it alone, but rather cook with it. ~ karen!
Ann
What happened to the egg and syrup?
WeesieOnPI
Thanks for asking! It was more than 70 years ago, but as I remember, my brother ate the maple-syrup-boiled egg and claimed it was delicious. But Mum and Dad decided the sulfurous smelling maple syrup was inedible. We're much more likely to combine unusual flavours now and I wonder what their decision would be today?