Mapple Sugar Lesson

We decided to go back to our Northeast roots and go maple sugaring this morning. It was an interesting morning so we decided we would share what we learned with everyone.
It is maple sugaring month in this part of Michigan. What makes it a good month is you need cold nights (below freezing) and warmer days (above freezing). This conditions allow the sap to flow once the tree is tapped. So we went to a local park, Hudson-Mills, to see how it was done. First we learned some history of the fine art of making maple products. This practice started about a 1000 years ago when Native Americans started tapping the trees to produce maple products. We thought making it now was a task, but compared to how the Native Americans did it, our way is a piece of cake! Before all of this new-fangled technology they used a "pot" made out of a hollowed out tree. As you can guess you couldn't put this pot on a fire. So they heated rocks in the fire and put the hot rocks into the sap to get it to boil. Every day they had to continuously switch the rocks to keep the sap boiling. It took about a month to get the sap to boil down to maple syrup.

The wooden "pot" used by Native Americans

Since maple syrup is hard to store they made most of the sap into maple sugar. Anthropologist think the maple sugar was used to trade for other product. 900 year old maple sugar was found in New Mexico where there are no maple trees to be found!

It takes a lot of maple sap - about 40-50 gallons to make one gallon of maple syrup.

It takes 40-50 gallons of sap to make 1 of these bottles worth of maple syrup

After a history lesson we headed out to tap our own tree. Technology has made this process much easier. First you have to drill a hole in the tree.

The park ranger tapping the tree

You then "tap" the tree by sticking a spile (a metal pipe) into the hole. Then you hook a bucket (or plastic bag in our case) over the spile and wait for the sap to flow.

The bag after being left out for a day

We got to tast the sap and it tasted like lightly sweetened water. Sap is only 1-2% sugar. It also looks pretty much like water.

Pure maple sap on the left and maple syrup on the right

Once a day they go out and collect the bags to bring them to the stove. They dump the sap into a divided pan. The sap takes about a week to boil down to syrup. Then you have a delicious maple syrup and if you want to try the candy you have to keep boiling.

The stove with maple sap boiling away

If you want to try it for yourself you can follow these directions. If it seems too long of a process we recommend buying some local maple syrup and eating it on pancakes, oatmeal, or waffles!