Maple Sugaring

When daytime temperatures rise above freezing and nighttime temperatures drop below freezing it's time to tap the maple trees, collect the sap and boil it down to make maple syrup. In Connecticut this age-old ritual begins anywhere from mid- to late February, and continues throughout March.

This year we tapped three trees, using two spyles per tree. The spyle is the industry name for the piece of hardware that fits into the tree, forming a spout for the dripping sap. In one tree we had two traditional spyles - these were gushers on the first day, but then yielded very little. They didn't fit tightly into the holes that we drilled, so a lot of sap ran down the trunk - attracting a cloud of moths.



Another tree had two fairly new spyles, which are made to be fitted with flexible tubing - I bought a few feet of latex tubing from the hardware store, and this seemed to work really well.


Max emptying the collecting container into the cooking pot.


Sebastian checking one of our makeshift buckets.


Ready to bring the sap up to the kitchen to boil.


The big black pot was half full of sap, and boiled down to less than an inch of syrup.

Short video clip below.

How do you know when the syrup is ready? It's not the color, or the time, it's the viscosity - which, in the industry is measured with a special tool, but in our kitchen is measured by watching the syrup boil. When fine bubbles rise to the top of the pan, lift the pot away from the heat to let the bubbles reduce, then return to the heat and let the bubbles rise again. Now your syrup is ready.


Pour the hot syrup into a clean jar, this batch made about 12 ounces. The ratio of sap to syrup is about 40:1 - no wonder it's so expensive at the grocery store. A lot of energy - in our kitchen, in the form of propane - goes into the boiling-down.


The season's yield as of Sunday March 7th.


Another photo of some very happy moths. A quick web search shows that these guys probably belong to family Noctuidae: Eupsilia vinulenta, the Straight-toothed Sallow, if I might venture a guess.