How maple syrup is made
Tapping Begins.
In late January and early February, when the weather begins to warm, we drill a small hole in each of our 11,000 maple trees and place a sterile spout inside connecting the trees to our extensive tubing system.
FUN FACT: We have over 70 miles of tubing in our sugarbush, that is enough to stretch from our farmhouse to the border of Massachusetts!
When the weather is right.
Freezing nights and warm days, usually occurring in March, make the maple sap flow from the tree. The sap is then gathered through a modern pipeline system. It flows directly from the trees into the tubing system and straight to our sugarhouse where it is boiled down into maple syrup. A maple tree will yield about 25 gallons of sap in an average season.
FUN FACT: On a good sugaring day during peak flow, we gather around 2,000 gallons of sap per hour!
Concentrating the Sap
Raw sap from the tree averages 2% sugar. We use reverse osmosis (pumping the sap under high pressure through a very dense membrane) to remove 90% of the water and increase the sugar content to 18%.
FUN FACT: Our reverse osmosis machine was one of the first RO's imported into the United States!
Sap to Syrup !
Once the sap has gone through our reverse osmosis machines we boil the concentrated sap down from 18% sugar until sweetened to 67% sugar making it into pure Vermont maple syrup!
FUN FACT: It takes about 50 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup.
End of Season.
When the sugaring season is over in April, the spout is removed and the hole in the maple tree begins to heal. After a couple of years, the hole is completely filled with new growth of wood. Most maple trees live to be over 150 years old.
FUN FACT: Maple syrup is one of the few wild crops left on our planet!
Watch to see how Maple Syrup is made!
Video by: Jackson Whelan
