Maple Time-Sugaring

Our neighbor delivering sap. The sap is clear and has a very mild, sweet taste. Later in the season as the trees get closer to budding out with their leaves, the sap gets darker in color (more yellow) and becomes cloudy before the tree dries up for the season. The darker and cloudier the sap, the darker and stronger the syrup tastes, making a Grade B syrup which is desirable for cooking with. It is important to boil the sap promptly to maintain a lighter grade syrup as the sap will become cloudy from sitting in the warm sunlight.

We use wood to boil down our sap. Kelvin and Prince (with a little help from me) have gotten out about 15 cord of firewood this winter for the evaporator. We have only used around 5 cord so far-I think we'll have some left-over wood which can't be a bad thing!

The firebox gets so hot sometimes that the doors glow red. Kelvin always wears gloves to stoke the fire; one time he fired up in haste without the gloves, and got burnt-ouch!

Sap boiling away the water to produce syrup. Note the 2 pans-the back pan has "flues", little channels that the sap runs through, getting more concentrated as it gets to the front left corner where it feeds into the finishing pan to complete the water evaporation. The sap becomes syrup when it reaches about 220 degrees F and 67.4 brix of sugar.

Kelvin is testing the sugar content while Roger observes the process.

Drawing of the syrup-Kelvin continues to test the sugar content to make sure the syrup is done. If it's not concentrated enough, it will ferment in the bottles. Kelvin is fastidious about making certain the sugar content is at over a little above-he says he'd rather have thick syrup than syrup that won't keep!


Filtering the syrup through the filter press to prepare for bottling.

Cousin Bret and Kelvin checking the grade. The middle bottle is our sample. From left to right the grades are: Grade B, Grade A dark, *ours* Grade A medium, Grade A fancy. What grade do you think our syrup is? ( See answer at the bottom of this post!)


Kelvin bottling the syrup. The syrup has to be bottled hot so that the lids will seal, so the syrup is drawn off, filtered and bottled rapidly. My job is to line up the bottles, hand empty ones to Kelvin and screw the lids on. I also get the job of labeling the syrup with our farm label, the grade label, the organic certification label and the Pride of New York label.

This little field mouse seems to enjoy watching us make syrup. He sat in this spot for several minutes before scampering away. I named him Theodore, and threatened him verbally to make himself scarce! On a more serious note, this is why all our syrup containers are stored in a old refrigerator, and why all the tanks and pots have lids on them!


Answer: We graded the syrup Grade A dark. Some of you may choose Grade A Medium, and the syrup is really between the two grades, but must be labeled to the darker if it falls between two grades. (Although, in New York State there are no grading laws; we go by Vermont's labeling system, but can't get fined for mislabeling as the producers in Vermont can).