Making Maple Granulated Sugar

We get a lot of interest out of the chemistry and science involved in the different processes of making syrup and maple products. When making granulated maple sugar, we think one of the coolest things is seeing the release of heat energy as the sugar crystallizes.

Crystallization is an inherently exothermic reaction.  This means that it is a reaction that releases heat. We see the opposite of this all the time in real life: any time we see a solid melt into a liquid we are familiar with it being a reaction that needs heat added.  It doesn't make as much intuitive sense that when a liquid converts to a solid that heat is released, but we do know that the heat energy that we add to solid to convert it to the liquid can't disappear- instead, that energy is stored in the liquid and must be released as the liquid goes to a solid.

In this video you can see that when the concentrated syrup mixture changes to a solid there is a release of heat: the heat is released as steam that causes the syrup to bubble and foam.  We hope you'll find it as interesting as we do!