Sap to Syrup

How We Make Maple Syrup

Every spring, we tap the maple trees in our own woods, gather the sap, and boil it down at our family sugarhouse. Here's how it goes, step by step.

This is where it all happens. Everything below is in the words and pictures of our own family. The page began as a school poster project by one of the kids.

Five Steps

From tree to bottle

Scroll along, or jump to a step. The photo keeps up with you.

Lines of tubing strung between the maples in our sugarbush

Our sugarhouse across the snowy fields in early spring

The reverse osmosis machine in our sugarhouse

Finished syrup being drawn off the evaporator into a pail

Step 01

Tapping the trees

01
Late winter
Tapping the trees
In late winter, when the weather is just right, with warming days and cold nights, we drill small holes in the trees and hammer in spouts. Each spout connects to a tube, the tubes flow into bigger tubes, and those run all the way to the sugarhouse.
Tapping doesn't hurt the tree. The small hole heals over after the season, and a healthy maple can be tapped for over 100 years.
02
Early spring
Gathering the sap
Sap begins to flow on warm days in early spring, when the temperature climbs above freezing during the day. The lines are under vacuum, so the sap flows out of the tree, through the tubes and down to the sugarhouse, where it collects in large storage tanks.
Fresh sap is about 98% water and only 2% sugar. It looks like water and is barely sweet.
03
Before the boil
Concentrating with reverse osmosis
A reverse osmosis machine pulls water out of the sap before it ever reaches the pan. That raises the sugar content and saves hours of boiling and a lot of fuel.
The machine pushes sap through a fine membrane that lets water through and holds the sugar back.
04
The long part
Boiling in the evaporator
The concentrated sap is boiled in the evaporator, a long metal pan over a hot fire. As the water boils away as steam, the liquid gets thicker, darker, and sweeter. Once it reaches just the right sugar content, it has finally become maple syrup.
It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Nearly all of it leaves the sugarhouse as steam.
05
The finish
Drawing off, filtering, bottling
Syrup is done when it boils about seven degrees above the boiling point of water. It's drawn off hot, filtered to remove the fine grit called sugar sand, and poured into bottles and jugs while still hot, which seals them. Then it's ready for pancakes, waffles, and more.
Boil it a little less and it can spoil. Boil it a little more and it starts to crystallize.

Try It

How much sap is in a bottle?

Slide to pick a bottle size

Half pintGallon

To fill a quart of syrup, we gather about 10 gallons of sap.

About 9.8 gallons of that boils away as steam. What's left is the syrup.

Sap40 parts

Syrup1 part

Sweet Surprises

Things worth knowing

Pure and Natural

Real maple syrup versus the imitation

	Real maple syrup	Imitation syrup
Made from	Sap from maple trees	Corn syrup and water
Ingredients	Just one: pure maple sap	Many, including artificial flavoring
How it's made	Boiled down from tree sap	Mixed together in a factory
Flavor and color	Natural, from the tree	Added in artificially
Nutrition	Small amounts of natural minerals and antioxidants	Mostly just sugar, with few nutrients

Know Your Maple

The four grades

As the season goes on, the syrup turns darker and its flavor grows stronger. New York sorts it into four grades, each good for something different. Every one is Grade A and 100% pure maple.

Golden

Delicate Taste

The lightest grade. Pale gold, with a mild, delicate maple flavor.

Try it on yogurt, fruit, ice cream.

Shop Golden →

Amber

Rich Taste

The classic table syrup. Amber in color, with a full, rich maple flavor.

Try it on pancakes, waffles, French toast.

Shop Amber →

Dark

Robust Taste

Deeper in color, with a robust maple flavor that holds up to heat.

Try it on baking, glazes, coffee.

Shop Dark →

Very Dark

Strong Taste

The darkest grade, with the strongest maple flavor.

Try it on cooking, marinades, baked beans.

Shop Very Dark →

Indian Sugar Camp, a watercolor by Seth Eastman from 1853

Where It Began

An old craft

Maple sugar was first made by the Native American peoples of the Northeast, including the Haudenosaunee, long before anyone else arrived. This watercolor by Seth Eastman, painted in 1853, shows a sugar camp: sap gathered from the trees and boiled down in kettles over open fires.

The tools have changed. Tubing, vacuum, reverse osmosis and a stainless evaporator do the work that buckets and kettles once did. The idea is exactly the same: take the water out, and keep what the tree gave you.

Taste the Result