I took a cake baking class once where we made maple buttercream and the instructor insisted that any maple syrup other than Grade B was simply "finishing syrup" — meant to be used on pancakes and nothing else. So if you're just drizzling syrup over your oats, pancakes, waffles and crêpes, do you really need to consider the grade?
As with most things, there is a short and long answer. If you have young kids and you're making breakfast for them, the short answer is no. Will they likely taste the nuance beween grades of maple syrup on their waffles? Probably not. Perhaps you wouldn't care if they could either way (as someone sitting here without kids, I imagine there's a whole host of other things to worry about rather than what your child thinks of the flavor of the maple syrup you buy). The long answer: you can definitely taste the difference between a Grade A maple syrup and a Grade B maple syrup. For recipes where the flavor really matters (baking granola, cookies and cakes), I only use Grade B because it has a much more complex maple flavor, often with hints of caramel. Grade A maple syrup really is perfect for pancakes or cocktails: it tastes jupst maple-y enough to get by.
Of Grade A syrup, my favorite maple syrup provider, Stannard Farms, has this to say about the whole thing on their website: "Vermont maple syrup is graded by color. Grade A Fancy is the lightest maple syrup - it also typically has the lightest flavor. Grade A Medium Amber is slightly darker and has a little more flavor. Grade A Dark Amber is darker still and is great on vanilla ice cream. Grade B is very dark indeed - this is some of the best maple syrup out there, if you can get the good stuff."
So there you have it. Generally, the darker the syrup, the stronger the maple flavor. If you're just looking for a subtle smidge of maple or cooking for kids who won't know the difference, use whatever is easy to get ahold of. But if you're making a recipe such as a morning souffle, custard, muffins or quick bread where you really want the most special nuanced maple flavors to shine through, Grade B is really your best bet.
Related: Maple Syrup Grades: Sometimes B Stands for Better
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Cool! I have always wanted to get my hands on B grade maple syrup but the only place I've ever seen grade B is at the little natural food store in my new town. When my Costco jug runs out (no Costco here :-( ) I will re-stock with the good stuff!
I know this will make me sound pretentious, but I've never had graded maple syrup. My family comes from northern Michigan, and we tap our own trees and boil it down into a really dark, rich, thick syrup. As a kid, I seriously didn't know that people bought maple syrup, let alone how expensive it is! I just thought it came in great big jars from everyone's grandmothers' basement pantries. Or something like that.
First, I'm very jealous. Maple syrup, and maple sugar candy are two of the greatest things on earth.
Second, I had a maple syrup based pretentious moment once! - I worked with a girl who was bragging about her mother making fresh maple syrup whenever she made pancakes and I truly was confused and asked "wait, doesn't it take a long time to boil maple sap down into syrup?" she looked at me like I was an idiot and said "no, all you have to do is mix maple flavor with corn syrup"....you have no idea how hard it was for me not to cringe at the thought of eating "maple" syrup.
It's not just about flavor, for the record. My understanding is that Grade B syrup is more nutrient rich than Grade A. With maple syrup we're particularly talking about zinc and manganese, but it also has more calcium and potassium than either honey or sugar. It's a great sweetener and a little goes a long way the better your grade is both in taste and nutrients.
I always thought that the syrup grades were counterintuitive, and we always get looks from our friends for buying Grade B because they think that it is subpar and we are being cheap. We try to explain that it tastes more "mapley," but some people just don't believe us until they taste it.
OMG! That girl is guilty of blasphemy!!!
There's a big discussion here in Vermont over changing the naming of grades of maple syrup. We take it all quite seriously.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/standard-maple-syrup-grad_n_1948034.html
See, I would come to the reverse conclusion about when to use Grade B. We mostly use syrup for putting on pancakes, but I want the best kind for that purpose since it's one of the instances in which the flavor really matters: it's not being mixed into anything else, and it's really the only strong flavor to go with the pancakes. So I like having something richer and more complex for that purpose.
Ha! I didn't know it worked that way! I can remember seeing Grade B syrup and thinking it was awful expensive for the reject syrup...that explains it!
I grew up with "pancake and waffle syrup" and had no idea that there was such a thing as REAL maple syrup until I was in my teens. The grading system really is counter-intuitive - until reading this post, I thought that Grade A was superior and was very confused as to why Grade B cost twice as much at Hy-Vee.
I don't even bother with Grade A. Not enough flavor for us. I only buy Grade B.
For those who can't find Grade B, Trader Joe's pretty much always has it!
grade A=Amber
grade B=Brown
the grades are largely just an indication of how long the syrup was cooked.
For whatever reason, around here (NJ), grade A and grade B seem to generally be the same price. I've been grabbing B ever since I first found out it had more flavor.
I found a maple syrup sampler while shopping for Christmas presents, and taste tested with friends over New Year's. All of us liked Grade B best -- the maple flavor is much stronger. The different Grade As (three!), became sequentially lighter in flavor.
Grade B for everything is my new motto.
I love Grade B but it is hard to find. People should know that the maple tree isn't the only tree that produces a favorable sap! Try Hickory syrup (Shagbark syrup). It's delicious and a little bit spicy!
*note shagbark is made by extracting flavors from the bark and not an actual sap
Rainbow Grocery in SF sells Grabe B in bulk from a huge drum with a pump on top. It makes me happy when I need to go get a refill.
Should you pick Canadian maple syrup, it might be worth reading a couple of the pages over here since the classification of the syrups are different North of the border : http://www.siropderable.ca/Afficher.aspx?page=149&langue=en
And over here, AFAIK, Amber, Medium and Dark MS is used in cooking, whereas Extra Light/Light is used as a finishing touch, a bit like you'd use your finest, subtlest olive oil to finish a salad. :)
I think I am the only New Englander who hates maple syrup. We were pretty poor when I was growing up, and only ever had the fake stuff. As a result, I find real maple syrup cloying and super unappealing.
On the other hand, I only crave pancakes like once a year, and find an obliging greasy spoon to get my fix.
A second vote for TJ's Grade B: more maple = more better.
I'm in the other camp. I'm in Canada, and the producers I've visited and purchased from rate it based on colour. Dark (D) Amber(C), medium(B), light(A), extra light(AA) - this is a Canadian standard, and 80% of the maple syrup in the world comes from here. Now, this has nothing to do with how long it's boiled for. The difference in colour is dependant on when it is extracted from the tree - early in the season, or later on. AA comes from the first sap of the season. Dark / Amber would be the dredge that comes out at the end of the season.
Now, it seems like most people here prefer maple flavour over everything else, but there's a lot more to it. I prefer the AA grade - and it's not always easy to find. Why? Because you get to enjoy the other flavours in there - smokey, especially, with a some other hints as well, depending on where your syrup comes from. I could seriously fill a cup with it and sip at it straight... in fact I think I might just go ahead and do that. AA syrup isn't that syrupy at all. By the time you get to medium, the flavour is much less nuanced and more MAPLE! Or, what we perceive as maple (ie tastes the most like Aunt Jemima). The amber and dark stuff - that's used for baking / cooking only - it's pure maple flavour, there isn't room for anything else. I keep a litre of dark in the fridge for baking, and a bottle of extra light for putting on desserts / breakfast. Kids tend to prefer the medium variety, because I think it has a higher sugar content, but the maple flavour isn't overwhelming.
Tasting grade B maple syrup for the first time was kind of like the first time I baked cookies with real butter instead of margarine*. I felt as if my life up until that point had been a fraud. I NEVER buy regular old Grade A if I can help it!
Also, HCl, I'm so jealous of you. I guess if you brave the northern MI winters, you deserve fresh-tapped / homemade maple syrup!
*The 80s, which was when I was a kid and baked with my mom, seemed to be all about margarine. Was that just my household or was that the general trend?
My family makes maple syrup, so I grew up eating the stuff that was less sellable. Consequently, the stronger the flavor, the better in my opinion! Interestingly, my family has been making a lot more syrup that grades as fancy in the past few years, apparently because they switched from old-fashioned collection buckets on the taps to lines that feed into a centralized collection tank. The old way allowed a lot of debris and bacteria to get into the sap (it's harmless because it all gets filtered out or killed in the boiling process) while the lines keep the sap very clean. Cleaner sap = lighter colored syrup. Even the stuff that has Grade B flavor is nowhere near as dark as it was when I was a kid. So you can't necessarily judge a syrup by it's color...