Maple Syrup History

The making of maple syrup has come a long way.

The American Indians used to make maple syrup by pouring sap in a hollowed log and dropping heated rocks in to boil the sap down. Once they were able to acquire metal goods from the Europeans, they would heat the sap in kettles over a fire.

Making maple syrup today is somewhat easier, but still time consuming. Trees still have to be tapped and the sap collected. From there, it is basically a process of reduction - boiling to concentrate the sap until it reaches a temperature 7degrees above the boiling point of water. It is easier now, though, to both collect and boil the sap.

We started making our own syrup in 2002. At that time, we tapped a few trees in our yard, collected the sap from the buckets, and boiled it down on the kitchen stove. We decided we liked it, but needed more (sounds like an addiction, doesn't it?)

The following year, we bought a couple restaurant pans, purchased more sap buckets at auctions, tapped a few more trees and made a makeshift evaporator outdoors to boil the sap down to syrup. We were able to process more sap faster - the evaporation process was the key!

Our third year, we bought a used evaporator and tapped many more trees in our woods. Last year we switched from buckets to the tubing method of sap collection which allows us to centralize the sap collection. Tubes, attached to several trees transports the sap from several trees to one large tub.

This year we are up to 160 taps and there is no going back!

Check out the pictures of the syrup making process on the following page:  Maple Syrup Photo Gallery

If you would like to purchase some of our syrup, click here: Maple Syrup

It may interest you to know that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup!