Sugaring: The Art of Making Maple Syrup
Farm to Table Ohio Maple Syrup
In the spring when temperatures fluctuate between freezing at night and above freezing in the day, maple trees send sap from root to bud to assure there will be energy for leaves to open. We drill small holes into the tree trunks to drain a small portion of the sap the tree won’t miss. Using buckets or tubing, we gather the pure clear sap. In the sugarhouse we boil away excess water in large pots over wood, oil or gas burners called evaporators, turning sap into rich, thick golden syrup. We then filter and bottle out simple, pure all natural product.
Sap bags on maple trees
Collecting buckets of sap
Sap is pumped into the head tank in the sugar lodge
Where does maple syrup come from?
You gotta have trees! We primarily use sugar maples to tap. Red and silver maples can also be used to provide sap for boiling. Sugar maples will normally have around 2% sugar content while red and silver maples will be in the 1% range. Sugar maples are more dependable in the production of sap than red and silver.
Maple trees move sap up into its branches during the freeze and thaw cycle. A good sap run will generally require a freeze overnight and then 40 degrees during the day.
We drill a small hole in the tree and insert a spile. The spile will slowly drip sap into plastic bags.
Does drilling into the tree hurt the tree?
The tree will heal itself. We are careful to only tap large diameter trees and will occasionally skip a tree from one year to the next. We tap 110 trees each year. A large maple syrup maker will tap between 2,000 to 4,000 trees.
Photo shows a tap hole healing on one of our maple trees.
How much sap does it take to make a gallon of maple syrup?
A good rule of thumb is it takes 50 gallons to make 1 gallon of maple syrup. In 2020, we produced 29 gallons of maple syrup which requires boiling around 1450 gallons of sap.
When do you tap the maple trees?
In Southern Ohio we start the season around January 20th and it will last around 6 weeks. We are mostly done by the 1st of March just when the folks up in Canada are starting up.
How does sap turn into maple syrup?
We boil the sap down in our evaporator. The evaporator looks similar to a wood stove with large pans. We purchased our evaporator from an Amish company in northern Indiana.
There is nothing added – the sugar is in the sap and we evaporate (boil) the sap until we reach the concentration of syrup.