Our Maple
Our Sugaring Process
It All Starts in February
The days start to get longer, the sun a bit warmer, and the trees a bit happier. You might even notice sap dripping from broken branches on your hikes. It really takes a solid warming for the sap to migrate from the trees roots out into our drilled taps and once the trees have completely thawed, the fun really begins. Over the next 4-5 weeks, we then have a steady flow of collection and processing the sap to make our syrup!
Evaporation/Boiling
Once the sap has been collected from the tank at the sugarbush, its pumped into our reverse osmosis system which raises the sugar concentration by condensing the sap into a smaller volume. Once complete, the concentrated sap flows into our evaporator. This evaporation/boiling process usually takes several hours and includes feeding firewood into the evaporator in our sugar house. The sap to syrup ratio is typically 40 to 1 meaning that you would need around 40 gallons of sap to create 1 gallon of syrup. Syrup is considered ready when our calculated density candy thermometer reads 219 degrees.
The Final Product
We make four different grades of syrup:
Golden: Delicate taste- mild maple flavor perfect for pancakes (not for sale: we reserve this for candy and cream).
Amber: Rich taste- more potent maple flavor than golden. Great for pancakes and coffee.
Dark: Robust taste- Our favorite! Added maple flavor perfect for pancakes, cooking, coffee, or on top of ice cream.
Very Dark: Strong taste- this one is great for cooking, coffee, or anywhere else you would like to introduce that great strong maple flavor.
We also offer maple cream! A crowd favorite best served with pretzels for dipping.