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The
Story of Maple Syrup
 Maple
syrup is made from maple sap, collected from sugar maple
trees in very late winter and early spring. The sap is a
very dilute liquid containing from 1% to 7% sugar, varying
from tree to tree and probably averaging around 2% sugar.
It takes approximately 40 gallons of this sap to produce
1 gallon of maple syrup.
As the end of winter
approaches, the farmer breaks roads through the snow to
the sugar house, and throughout his maple woods. He then
proceeds to wash and sterilize all his sugaring equipment.
Next comes the tapping
of the sugar maples. A 7/16 inch hole is drilled into the
tree to a depth of about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inches. Into this
is driven a "spout." These spouts are rather like modified
pieces of pipe from which the bucket is hung or pipeline
is run. A cover keeps dirt and rain water out of the buckets
until collection; pipeline carries the sap directly from
the tree to the storage tank.
To make top quality
maple products the sap must be fresh and cold, which means
it must be gathered and boiled often. In some modern sugar
orchards small plastic tubing is attached directly to the
spouts. The sap then flows through the small plastic tubes
to larger pipes, and directly to the storage tank, thus
saving the labor of gathering the sap. Other sugarmakers
use large gathering tanks which are pulled by tractors or
horses through the woods. The sap, which has dripped drop-by-drop
from the spouts, is dumped from the sap bucket into the
gathering pail, which is then carried to the sled. Here
it is dumped through a strainer into the "gathering tank."
When the tank is full, it is hauled to the "sugarhouse"
and emptied into an elevated "storage tank" to await "boiling."
From the storage tank
the sap flows, to the "evaporator". Evaporators are large
pans, varying in size according to the size of the operation.
A popular size is 5 feet wide and 16 feet long. Most evaporators
have two pans; the flue pan and the syrup pan. The sap flows
first to the flue pan, which has a bottom made of flues
to provide a greater heating surface, and then to the flat
bottomed syrup pan. The pans are divided by partitions,
which creates a continual but very slow movement
of sap from the point where it enters the evaporator around
the many partitions and finally out of the evaporator as
syrup.
To evaporate the tremendous
amount of water in the sap, a large quantity of fuel must
be burned. Some producers use oil, however most sugarmakers
use wood cut from their own woodlots as fuel. Sugarmakers
like to have the wood cut and finely split a year in advance
of sugaring, as dry wood boils the sap much faster. Preparing
this wood is hard work, requiring many days of labor.
It takes a long time
for the 2% sap to be condensed by the evaporation process
to the exact density of maple syrup. If cooked too thick
the resulting syrup will crystallize. If the syrup is too
thin it will be apt to ferment. Sugarmakers use a hydrometer
to check the density. When the hydrometer settles in the
liquid syrup to a mark designating the correct density,
the syrup is drawn from the pan. It is then filtered again
to remove the nitre (or sugar sand) which has developed
in the boiling process.
From the filtering
tank the maple syrup flows into small retail containers
or into 35 and 50 gallon drums to be packed later. The syrup
is packed hot and each can must be sealed according to Vermont
law. The grade of syrup and the packer's name and address
must be marked on the can.
As you can see, making
maple syrup is a fairly long and costly process, but the
excellent tasting, high quality product which results makes
it all worthwhile.
Reprinted with
permission from Vermont Maple Sugarmakers Association www.vermontmaple.org.
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