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TOUR OUR FOREST AND SYRUP FACTORY
LET'S GO!
As you step out of the double doors of our gift store/candy kitchen, you look straight out across the valley where you view the largest of our sugar bushes. We collect sap from thousands of tap holes, on our own farm, with some trees providing two or more taps. Numbers of taps drilled each year has varied over our 30 years of syrup production from 500 to 3500 taps. A healthy tree can accept a new tap hole each year without harm. Each spring, after the harvest season ends, the holes dry up as the tissue around each hole dies. Over the course of years, the tree covers over the old hole with new wood, leaving a slight scar on the outer bark. Only the outer layers of wood on a maple are alive, with new outer wood produced each year. Older sapwood eventually becomes part of the dormant core wood or “heart” of the tree. Eventually the used wood around old tap holes becomes part of the “heart” of the tree with newer sapwood being added over it yearly.

TAPPING OUR TREES

Metal or plastic spiles are pounded into tap holes, which have been drilled in the maple trees. Tap holes are 5/16" in diameter by 1 " to 1.5" deep. They are drilled at a slightly upward slant to insure that the sap will flow down out of the hole, through the spile, into the bucket or tubing system.

SUGARING WITH PLASTIC TUBING

While buckets hanging from trees are an effective means of collecting sap, we find the tubing system of collection to be more efficient. Plastic spiles replace the wood and metal ones. Plastic tubing replaces the buckets. Our system uses approximately 15 miles of branch line tubing (5/16" diameter) and about two miles of larger mainline tubing similar to the ordinary water line leading to your house. Many branch lines will feed into a mainline, over its course down the slope to large collection or holding tanks. Tubing systems may be vented or closed. With sufficient slope, closed systems, such as we use, provide greater sap yields through the creation of natural or artificial vacuums. We add vacuum through vacuum pumps, which draw extra sap through the system thus increasing our yield per tap hole by 75%. Even with artificial vacuum we remove less than 10% of the sugar in the tree so there is little danger of taking valuable nutrients from the tree.

. . . A picture of a maple tree showing a tap and tubing

One last feature of the tubing system worth noting is the use of drop lines. These are the vertical lines that connect the spiles to the branch line. These lines allow the spiles to be moved to new holes around the tree each spring without re-plumbing the line. These lines also allow for the separation of CO2 gas and sap. All plants use carbon dioxide to live and maples are no exception. A large part of what comes from the tap hole is CO2 gas which, if not separated from the sap, can contribute to vapor locks, again inhibiting the flow of sap.

After the season, all the tubing must be washed so that the system is sterile at the beginning of the next season. This is done by forcing a disinfectant through the whole system and then rinsing. This process alone takes up to a week. Before the next season the tubing system must all be repaired where necessary and new holes drilled. The biggest problems for the system come from animals like squirrels and deer which damage the tubing in their search for food.

SAP COLLECTION

We have many storage tanks in the various bushes. The mainlines, described above, flow into these tanks. The sap in these gathering tanks is pumped out into a gathering tank aboard a truck. It is then driven to a dumping station behind the sugar house. The sap runs by gravity from the truck into more storage tanks.

A good sap run will yield 3000 or more gallons per day. In order never to lose one drop, we have a storage capacity of some 6000 gallons. Sap degrades quickly after it leaves the tree. Keeping the sap cool and bacteria free can increase its life. However, this gift of spring usually begins to spoil or ferment within 24 hours and must be processed immediately to make a high quality syrup. The sap is exposed to ultraviolet light upon entry into the sugar house to kill bacteria and slow fermentation. Screening also filters out bits of wood, etc., which might be brought along with the sap, however closed tubing systems, like ours, eliminate many of the impurities that used to make their way into buckets in the past.

OUR TRADITIONAL WOOD FIRED EVAPORATOR

The evaporator room is where the syrup is actually made. Maple sap is a colorless liquid, easily mistaken for water, except for a slightly sweet taste (2% to 3% sugar content). It takes 30 to 45 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, depending on the type of sugar bush, the year or the time of the season (early or late). In this room, we boil away enough of the water to go from 2% to 3% sugar in sap to 66% sugar in syrup.

The long, low stove with chimneys is our wood fired evaporator. It measures 5’x 12’. It evaporates about 250 gallons of water per hour. The fuel wood for the season is stored in the adjoining wood shed. It takes one full cord (4' x 4' x 8') of fully dried hardwoods to fuel the evaporator for 8 hours. If the evaporator were oil fired, it would need 75 gallons of fuel oil to replace that full cord of wood. The evaporator produces approximately 6-7 gallons of syrup per hour of operation. The wood is moved from the woodshed on a trolley rolling on an overhead track.

The evaporator is fired from the firebox at the front end, near the doors to the woodshed. The firebox is airtight with the air necessary for combustion provided by 3 fans. This system provides the right amount of air in the right places in the firebox for the most efficient combustion. The fire rushes under the length of the "cooker"(evaporator pans) to the largest smokestack at the back. A well-fired evaporator creates little smoke with a slightly "sweet smell" as combustion is quite complete. The sap moves from compartment to compartment in very large, connected “pans”, which form the top of the firebox. The evaporator pans, together, form a long channel (about 50 feet long) with fresh sap entering one end of the channel and syrup being drawn off on the other end. These pans are perfectly level so evaporating water lowers the level in the pans uniformly and opens a float valve to add fresh sap at one end. Fresh sap entering “pushes” liquid forward in the channel, gradually thickening as it moves along, and syrup taken off the other end “draws” near syrup to replace it. The process is continual with sap always coming in and syrup being "drawn off" every 15 minutes or so.

While the pans usually have only about 1 1/2" of liquid in them, the thickened sap tends to foam wildly as it approaches the syrup state and uses the full 10” height of the front, uncovered pan. The covered portion of the larger, rear pan (called a flue pan) is a third pan (called a “piggy back” pan) where the sap enters first. The steam from the bottom flue pan combined with air forced into the sap by a large fan produces the preliminary evaporation at a temperature below the boiling point of water. The sap next enters the flue pan, which has long, narrow chambers extending below the pan into the firebox to greatly increase the surface area of the pan for greater heat exchange. The fire rushes between these long, narrow flues allowing this pan to do the majority of the evaporation.

A steam hood covers the “piggy back” pan. This, combined with a wooden curtain hanging overhead, helps to contain the steam and to direct it to two opened roof doors overhead which release the water to the sky from which it came.

WHAT IS SYRUP?

Syrup by U.S. federal statute must test at 66% sugar or 11 lbs. to the gallon. This point is reached at 7.1-Fahrenheit degrees above the boiling point of water. We draw off syrup from the evaporator at this point. However, there are some complications we haven't mentioned. The boiling point of water changes with the barometric pressure. While we may be making proper density syrup in the morning, we may have to make adjustments in the afternoon should the weather change. We do that by measuring density in a sample of hot syrup with a hydrometer. This instrument floats at different heights in a sample of syrup depending on the liquid's density. We take samples, several times hourly, measure density (which in this case is a measure of sugar content) and adjust the thermometers accordingly.

FILTERING AND . . .

When the syrup is removed from the evaporators it is a muddy liquid due to the presence of different solidified minerals found naturally in maple sap. These minerals come from the soil and are taken up by the tree roots. We filter the syrup through heavy felt and paper cloths to remove these minerals, called sugar sand, and create a beautiful clear syrup: our final product. This can be done in a filter tank by gravity, as well as in a filter press under pressure. We prefer the filter press as it filters finer particles out thus producing a clearer final product. Sugar sand is a harmless, but gritty tasting substance that would settle out if the syrup were left undisturbed long enough.

PACKING

From here the syrup is either packed in 30 gallon drums for storage or reheated to 190° F and packed hot in consumer containers. Properly hot packed syrup will remain delicious for many months, even years. Within the limits of federal standards there are 3 colors and therefore 3 sub grades that are all grade A. They are all 66% sugar and all of good flavor but all markedly different in taste. They are called light, medium, and dark amber. The variety you prefer will depend on your tastes. However, the darker colors do coincide with a heavier flavor. We determine grade using a grading kit, which compares a syrup sample to colored plates of glass, as well as by taste to determine any “off” flavors. This is all done just prior to packing. We may blend several barrels produced at different times to create the flavor we are looking for.