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| Home-made Bigleaf Maple syrup |
When I was nine years old I ravenously read
the Laura Ingles Wilder books and was quickly enamored by the pioneer lifestyle
of the Ingles family, especially the stories about Laura’s early life in the Wisconsin
woods, and Almanzo’s life in the forests of New York. One day, after reading
about how Almanzo helped his father collect and boil maple sap to make maple sugar
and maple syrup, I decided to try and make some of my own. We had a large
wooded lot next to our house and I knew that there were several Vine Maples (Acer circinatum). The Vine maples were memorable because we used to
climb up the trees until they bent down to the ground; like giant springs, the bent Vine Maple stems amplified our jumps, and launched us 10 feet or more off the ground. Without any instructions
beyond Wilder’s anecdotes, I improvised my own sap collection system from an
empty tin can nailed to a tree. To try and induce sap flow, I cut a small “V”
in the bark above the pail. The days that followed were filled with anticipation,
and ultimately disappointment, as my tap didn’t even yield a drop.
It wasn’t until I moved to Wisconsin for
college, almost 10 years later, that I actually talked with someone who made
maple syrup. Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)
and Red Maple (Acer rubrum) are most
commonly tapped, but several other species of maple as well as birch, walnut,
and hickory can also be used. I learned that my Vine Maple experiment failed because
I improperly tapped the tree, at the wrong time of the year. Rather than cutting
a “V” in the bark, I should have drilled a small hole 1-2 inches into the sap
wood (xylem). Sap runs when the trees are leafless and the temperature swings above
freezing during the day and below freezing at night. My major professor and
best friend both had small sugar bush operations, but the timing never worked
out for me to help them out and experience the process first hand.
When I moved to Victoria for my master’s
degree, I started hearing about a festival
and network of hobbyists and businesses on Vancouver Island that were focused
on producing sap from our native Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum). Once again, a busy student schedule made it
impossible to attend their events, but Katrina ordered a wonderful book on the subject
called “Bigleaf Sugaring: Tapping the Western Maple” by two of the core members,
Gary and Katherine Backlund. Here in Washington, Dr. Terry Maresca is also promoting
Bigleaf Maple tapping; last summer, with school behind me, I made a point of
attending her workshop at the Northwest Indian College Traditional Food
Conference on Bainbridge Island.
Armed with good literature and hands-on instructions,
I wasn’t about to let this winter pass without tapping a few Bigleaf Maples, so
I ordered a dozen stainless steel taps, purchased some food grade plastic
tubing, and started hording large empty water jugs from the neighbors' recycling.
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| Bigleaf Maple taps at Dad's house |
In early December, I tapped a few stems
on a large clustered Bigleaf Maple next to Dad’s house. Using a 5/16” drill
bit, I bored 2 inch long holes at a slightly upward sloping angle into trees
about 2 feet from the ground. My taps taper to an outside diameter of 5/16, so when I gently pounded them in, they fit snugly. To each tap I connected
plastic tubing that allowed the sap to flow downwards to a "T" fitting, and then into a large receptacle at the
base of the tree.
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| 3 gallons of Bigleaf Maple sap |
Theoretically, when the temperature and barometric
pressure are adequate, sap flows up from the roots through long hollow xylem
cells, to the branches and developing buds. Like a pin prick on a finger, the xylem
cells, bisected by the drill, bleed sap until those living tissues heal, at
which point a new hole must be drilled. Throughout December, our taps yielded
only a few cups per week but during a stretch of cold nights and warm sunny
days in mid January, sap production increased dramatically peaking with about
13 gallons of sap produced from 3 trees in about 3 days. According to the
Backlunds, Bigleaf Maples in the Pacific Northwest can produce sap for 5 months
from November until February, which is much longer than the 6 week season that
is common for maples in the Northeastern woodlands.
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| Testing the specific gravity of Bigleaf Maple sap |
The time had finally come to figure out
how I was going to boil the sap down into syrup. Bigleaf Maple sap is only
about 2-4% sugar with the remaining 98-96% being water. In order to
produce syrup, the water must be evaporated off until the sugar concentration
is about 66%. Small batches can be evaporated on a stove top, but high energy
costs quickly make this method impractical.
The solution is to burn wood, which is
practically free for the taking for anyone living in the Pacific Northwest that
has a strong back and a little forest land. Traditionally, a large cast iron cauldron
is suspended over a fire and sap is added as it is collected until the season
ends and the syrup is “finished.” Open fires are notoriously inefficient and
impart (for better or worse) a smoky flavor on the sap. Today, most people that
make syrup use an evaporator that is made up of a steel firebox, and a
stainless steel evaporating tray with a maze of chambers that allows for a
continuous feed of sap in one end, and finished (or nearly finished) syrup out
the other end. New to this enterprise, my evaporator is somewhere in between. I
employed the same old rusty stove—salvaged from a sunken ship—that Katrina uses
for making salt and simmered my sap in a 5 gallon pot placed on top of the
stove.  |
| My small sugar shack |
Here in the Pacific Northwest where our
winters are pretty soggy I needed to make sure that my open pot wouldn’t fill
up with rainwater faster than I could evaporate it off, so Dad and I built the
world’s smallest sugar shack (3’x4’) out of salvaged roofing and scrap lumber. With
stove inside the sugar shack, I managed to reduce 5 gallons of sap into
syrup, but it took an entire day. Commercial units boast evaporation rates an
order of magnitude faster, so I set out to make some improvements.
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| Trying to evaporate sap on a stove |
The problem with my stove is that the
surface that is supposed to be conducting heat into my pan is ¼" steel, and the
walls, which are supposed to be insulating the heat and forcing it upwards into
my pan, are thin, rusted, and riddled with holes. A roaring fire wasn’t even
sufficient to keep the sap boiling, so my sap evaporated leisurely, like a warm
bath. To mitigate for the shortcomings of my stove, I replaced my large kettle
with a stainless steel steam table tray (like the trays used at buffets),
which has a larger surface area on the bottom, and when only filled partially
with sap, managed to produce a gentle simmer.
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| The improved evaporator |
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| A nice boil |
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| Filtering warm sap that is ready to be finished |
One of the tips that Terry shared with
me was to reduce the sap to about 50% sugar in small batches as you collect it,
and then store it in the freezer until you have several quarts. Terry likes to
finish her syrup in larger batches, because the finishing process demands
constant attention to ensure that you don’t drive off too much water and scorch
the syrup. After three days reducing 4-5 gallons each day, I was eager to taste
some syrup and decided I had enough condensed sap to finish.
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| Finishing the sap on an electric range |
There are several ways to finish syrup,
but as far as I can tell, the most important thing is that you have the ability
to take your syrup off the heat source once the sugar concentration is 66-68%. Syrup
above that concentration will crystallize into sugar, and below that, it is
prone to molding. I finished my syrup in a large saucepan on our electric
stove-top and monitored the sugar concentration with a thermometer. The boiling
temperature of finished sap at sea level is about 219° F, and after about an hour
of constant monitoring my syrup was finished. I poured it immediately into
sterilized mason jars and screwed the lids on tightly.
My 13 gallons of Bigleaf Maple sap yielded
about 1.75 quarts of syrup, which is a little better than a 30 to 1 ratio of
syrup to sap (and means that sugar concentration in my sap was a little above 3%). While this doesn’t sound like a lot, it is on par with sap from Sugar
Maples. The taste of my maple syrup is superb. Too bad it took me 24 years to figure out how to make it!
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| My first batch of Bigleaf Maple syrup |
