Noel Perrin - Making Maple Syrup

The Old-Fashioned Way

by Noel Perrin

The basic process of making maple syrup is extremely simple. All you do is boil maple sap down to about 1/35th of its original volume.

If you intend to sell any of what you make, there are some further steps, such as getting the syrup to precisely the right density. And filtering it through a good felt strainer. And grading it. And hot-packing it at a temperature of at least 180F. Many people do all these things with syrup for home use, as well. But they dont have to.

The equipment for making syrup can be as simple as two or three spouts, some large tin cans, and a kettle. Or it can be as complicated as a full-scale sugarhouse with evaporator, finishing rig, holding tank, and so on through twenty or thirty other pieces of equipment. At that point you have an investment of $10,000 or $20,000.

This bulletin will tell you how to make syrup on the three simplest levels. The first level is for people who intend to tap only a couple of trees, to make only a couple of quarts of syrup, and to spend no more than $20 on equipment. The second level is for people who may have a dozen trees to tap, who may make five or even ten gallons of syrup, and who will put $300$450 into equipment. (If they make ten gallons, theyll recoup the entire investment in two years. Theyll also put in a lot of time.) The third level is for people who want to be small commercial producers. If youre one of these, you will get the smallest size of true evaporator, make anywhere from 60 to 200 taps, and produce from fifteen to fifty gallons of syrup each spring. And you will have to make an initial investment of at least $1,750, unless you can buy used equipment from another small producer who is quitting.

Note: These dollar figures, and all others in the book, apply to 19881989. After that inflation will have outdated them. For some years sugaring equipment has been going up at the rate of about 8 percent a year, and the manufacturers expect this rate to continue.

At all three levels, the first equipment is to be able to recognize a sugar maple. Most people who started life in cities cannot. (Many years ago the writer of this bulletin paid a neighbors teenage son $3 to walk through his newly bought woods with him, pointing out the sugar maples while he frantically marked them with red paint.)

There are two other maples to distinguish a sugar maple from: one that youll find in yards, and one that youll find in the woods. In yards, the other common variety is an import from Europe called the Norway maple. At first glance a Norway and a sugar look very much alike. Both have the classic maple leaf, such as can be seen on the Canadian flag. Both are large, handsome trees. But the leaf of the Norway looks as if it had been put sideways through a clothes wringer; its about twice as wide as a sugar maple leaf, and much larger altogether. And the bark, if you look closely, has a fine, almost diamond-shaped pattern. Sugar maples lack this.

In the woods, the other common variety is the red maple also called soft maple and swamp maple. In the fall, its absurdly easy to tell one from a sugar maple it is among the first of all trees to turn color, and it turns bright scarlet. A sugar maple will turn pink-yellow-orange several weeks later. In the summer its still pretty easy to tell them apart, because red maples have small saw-toothed leaves, while the edges of a sugar-maple leaf move in smooth curves.

From left, Norway, red, and sugar maple leaves.

In the winter and spring, however, it can sometimes be hard to tell unless you have very good eyes, and can see the large red buds of the red maple, way up there in the top of the tree. Moral: If youre going to tap maples in a woodlot, identify them the fall before you plan to start. It wont be any disaster if you dont; red maples can also be tapped, and they make a perfectly edible syrup. But you have to boil down just about twice as much sap to get the same amount of syrup and you end up with an inferior product. Most people avoid the reds.

All right, now you know how to spot a sugar maple, at least when it has its leaves. You have some in your yard or your woods, or you have permission to use a neighbors trees. You furthermore know that early spring is when you make maple syrup. (Its possible to make some in the fall, as the sap goes down to the roots for the winter, and its possible to make a little on any warm, sunny winter day. But early spring is the only time you can make a serious quantity.) Finally, you know that your part of the country has to have sunny days and freezing nights in early spring, or your maples wont yield any sap to mention. English visitors in the 18th century didnt know this, and wasted a lot of time digging up sugar maples and taking them back to England. But the climate was wrong as it also is in, for example, all of Virginia except a few hill counties. No syrup got made. Where is the climate right? In virtually all of New England, in New York State right down to the outer suburbs of New York City, in western Pennsylvania, in a broad sweep of the Middle West, especially Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

That settled, its time to go through the three systems, starting with the cheapest.

Suppose you have just one sugar maple in your front yard, or suppose you have a whole hillside covered with them, but want to experiment before you commit yourself to buying equipment. Here is System One, for one to five taps.

First buy one to five spouts. New ones will cost you 75 to $1.00 each at almost any hardware store in sugaring country, or by mail from the manufacturers. (See addresses at the end of this bulletin.) There are four or five varieties of spouters, each favored by a group of farmers. I favor spouts that come with pre-cast hooks, like the Warner and Soule. But any of the metal spouts on the market will work just fine.

Now see if you have a " bit for a hand drill. If you dont, you may have to buy one. Those specially designed for sugaring start at around $8. But for this one year you could probably get away with a " or a " bit, especially if you use Grimm spouts.

Grimm sap spout.

The next step is to get some containers. If you were operating on a larger scale, you would get proper sap buckets, or else use tubing. As it is, plastic gallon jugs, such as cider and milk come in, will do nicely. For that matter, even coffee cans will do, though you have to empty them pretty often.

Decide how youre going to boil the sap down. The simplest way is to put it in an ordinary cookpot on the kitchen stove. There are myths, dating back a century, of all the wallpaper in a kitchen coming loose and sliding to the floor, when a pot of sap was kept boiling day after day. But if the myth were ever true, it isnt now. Exhaust fans have outdated it.

A more serious objection is that at the price of electricity and gas it is simply too expensive to make syrup on a kitchen range. Its better to do it instead on the top of a wood heating stove, and just use the range as a finishing rig. Some people especially those whose families hate mess in the house do their boiling in the yard, on an outdoor fireplace. But this works better on the larger scale System Two. Use an indoor woodstove if you possibly can.