The Breakfast Staple You'll Find For A Bargain At Aldi

Once you taste real, pure maple syrup, nothing can compare. A drizzle of this glossy, sticky, sweet syrup makes pancakes, waffles, yogurt, granola — just about any sweet breakfast food — taste a hundred times better. But if you've been buying maple-flavored pancake syrup that's missing an important ingredient, you might have sticker shock seeing what the real stuff costs.

Pure maple syrup can go for upwards of $18 a bottle — yes, you read that right. But if you know where to shop, you can find this costly breakfast ingredient for almost a third of that price. Once again, it's time to visit Aldi.

Aldi is known for its low prices on many staple foodstuffs and pure maple syrup is included in that list, making it a great grocery store to stop at for this essential breakfast item. For comparison, a 12.5-ounce bottle of Walmart's Great Value brand pure maple syrup currently goes for $7.98 while Aldi's is just $5.29 for the same size and quality.

Maple syrup's expensive price isn't quite as shocking when you consider how weather-dependent and labor-intensive the syrup-making process can get. The ideal temperature for collecting sap is when the nights are below freezing and the days are mild. With the sugar-weather window being only a few months (from late February to early May, with many variables affecting that window), farmers have to work fast in order to collect enough and keep their business running. Once the days become too warm and the maple tree starts to bud, the sap is no longer able to be used for syrup.

Pure maple syrup is made by tapping a sugar maple tree to extract its sap. At this time, the sap is 98% water and only 2% sugar so it needs to be boiled for hours in order to reduce down into the iconic amber liquid. This laborious process means that it requires almost 40 gallons of sap to create a single gallon of pure maple syrup. The time and quantity needed alone is enough to spike syrup costs. So, if you weren't already a regular Aldi shopper, knowing about this bargain deal on pure maple syrup might just make you a repeat customer.