The Crew

Here is this year's Maple crew, from left to right: Wyatt, Emily, Joseph, Ruby, Joshua, Daddy, Darcey Schnoor, Amanda.

Tapping the trees

We used to tap the trees with a brace and bit, but then Grandpa got tired of the work that entailed, and started bringing a cordless drill to the woods for tree tapping.  We drill a 7/16ths inch diameter hole about 3 inches into the tree.

Then, we tap a spile into the tree to seal the hole we just drilled and channel the sap into the bucket or bag we hang on the spile.

Sometimes someone tries to catch the first drops on his tongue...

While in the woods, we usually drink the sap in place of water.  It tastes like cold fresh spring water with a hint of sweetness.

We hang the sap sack on the spile to catch the sap.  We use these covered bags to keep rain or snow water from running down the tree trunk into the sap we are collecting.

Now we have to wait for the sap to drip out of the tree into the bags.  When the sap is running well, it drips out of the spiles at a rate of 1 to 2 drops per second.  At this rate a single tap can produce 2 or more gallons of sap in 1 day.  And 30 gallons of sap boil down to 1 gallon of syrup.

The 10-acre woods we use is near Cleveland, Minnesota.  My great Grandpa Walter share-cropped on this farm in the 1920's and made maple in this very woods.  We only use the back half of the woods now, because the owner (from the same family that owned the woods in the 20's) makes maple in the front half.  We can make about 150 taps in our part of the woods.  12 inch diameter trees can tolerate 1 tap.  The biggest trees can safely tolerate 4 or even 5 taps.  We tap only hard maples, also called sugar maples.  Sugar maples yield the richest sap, but maple syrup can be made from any maple tree.

Making maple is very weather dependent.  The trees make sugar via photosynthesis in the summer.  In the winter they store that sugar in their roots in preparation for making new leaves the next spring.  The sap runs for a few days or weeks in the spring.  In southern Minnesota it usually happens in the second half of March.  When the days warm up into the 40s and the nights freeze into the 20s, the sap runs, or at least it is supposed to.  (Knowing when the sap will actually run is a mystery and chronic frustration.)  When the nights no longer freeze, or when the trees begin to bud, the season is over.

Collecting the sap

Once or twice a day we take 5 gallon buckets and walk around the woods emptying the sap from the sap sacks into the buckets.  Then we carry that sap to the pan where we boil it.

Here is a video of sap "running."

These bags will hold 4 gallons, but we usually empty them before they contain much more than a gallon.

Emily working.

My 5-year-old Ruby helping collect sap.

Wyatt carrying sap.

Darcey Schnoor carrying sap.

We drink sap in place of water while working in the woods.  It is very refreshing.

Notice how clear and colorless maple sap is.

Dumping 5 gallons of sap into the pan to boil.

Cutting and hauling wood to boil the sap

It takes a large amount of wood to boil down the sap.  At least half our work every year is cutting and hauling wood for the fire.

Boiling the sap

Here is our primitive evaporator.  It consists of a stock-watering tank with one end cut out of it, a simple galvanized steel pan about 7 feet long by 2 1/2 feet wide, and a smoke stack.  Under the pan we build a fire from dead trees we cut in the woods.

Our pan will hold about 60 gallons of sap at a time.  Sometimes we fill it once and boil that down to a small batch of about 2 gallons of syrup.  But if the sap is running fast, we may continue adding sap to the pan, eventually boiling down 100 to 150 gallons of sap into one larger batch of 3-5 gallons of syrup.  Most years we make about 20 gallons of pure maple syrup.  We have never sold our syrup.  We enjoy using it ourselves, and giving it away to family and friends.

With our set-up, we can boil off about 10 gallons of water per hour.  For you non-physicists, the boiling process removes only the water.  All the sugar in the sap stays in the pan until almost no water and all the sugar is left.  We call this Pure Maple Syrup.  No additives.  No preservatives.  Nothing but maple sap boiled down to concentrate the sugar.

Here we are using a window screen to skim the impure foam off the boiling sap.

Taking off the syrup

As the sap gets close to the syrup stage, we begin testing it using a hydrometer.

The closer the sap gets to becoming syrup, the higher the hydrometer will float in the hot sap.

When we are at syrup stage, we take the pan off the fire, dump it into a kettle, and get ready to filter it.

Filtering and canning the syrup

We filter the hot fresh Maple Syrup through a wool filter bag with multiple orlon liners.  The syrup, prior to filtering contains many mineral impurities we call "sugar sand."  

This is the first batch of the season.  Note how light and clear it looks.  

There is nothing high tech about our method, but no one makes better syrup.

The syrup will never taste quite as good as it does right now.

Canning some fresh syrup.

Grade A light amber "fancy" pure maple syrup.  This syrup has a very delicate sweet taste.  The bolder flavored darker colored syrup will come later in the season.