How We Make Maple Syrup
Step 1-Collecting Sap
Step 2 - Reverse Osmosis
As you can see here, the reverse osmosis machine looks as complicated as it sounds.
Step 3 - The Evaporator
Our evaporator in use (above), and during the off season (below)
Step 4 - Filtering
Our filter press, without filters in place.
The Hilljack Sugar Shack DOES NOT add any fillers or preservatives to our syrup. When looking for a good syrup it is important that it is pure and has nothing unnecessary added to it.
Maple syrup grading kit
maple grading kit in use
Maple sugar candy
Pankackes and syrup
maple syrup in glass container
maple flavored ham
Step 6 - Your Table
Ah, now the final product, maple syrup, can be enjoyed in a broad number of ways. Syrup can be used in baking, cereal, ice cream, coffee, tea, as a substitute for cane or beet sugar almost anywhere. Due to the distinct taste of the maple flavor it can even be said to be the sweetest of the sugars. And thats not all, the syrup can be turned in to granulated maple sugar, soft maple sugar candy, maple cream, maple fudge, and so much more! I love the taste of walnuts cooked in pure maple syrup-what's your favorite way to eat it?
Step 5 - Bottling
Now that we have our finished product all that is left to do is bottle it! but first we grade the syrup to determine quality there is a picture to the right of this being done. the quality of the syrup grade A, dark, medium, and light, ext. is really determined by the time of the season light syrup is made primarily in the early season when sugar content is high in the tree. it gets darker as the season progresses because the sugar content drops and the sap has to cook longer to reach the density of syrup. the natural caramelizing process of sugar under heat makes the syrup darker if it cooks longer. thus darker syrup is made as the season goes on. This is the easiest step of the process. All you have to do is make sure the syrup is heated to at least 180 degrees Fahrenheit and then pour it into your bottle and make sure the top is sealed correctly. Unopened syrup will not go bad for years if sealed correctly, so this is important.After the syrup draws off, it still has impurities in it which we don't want to end up in our final product. This is why Step-4 is very important. From the evaporator the syrup is drained into another pan called a finishing pan. Filters are placed on top of the finishing pan so that when the syrup pours into it, the filter catches any unwanted "debri" and lets the good syrup through to the finishing pan. You can see this pan with filters on it in the picture of the evaporator in use above. Here at the Hilljack Sugar Shack filtering our syrup just by hand is not good enough. We go the extra step and use what is called a filter press to ensure our syrup is clear and pure. Usually after the syrup has been filtered into the finishing pan it is heated and then bottled or put into storage containers, but we put our syrup through an extra filtering process after the finishing pan and run it through our filter press which, again using pressure, runs the syrup through numerous filters and pushes the finished product out, giving us a great tasting, clear syrup.
This next step is the major part of making maple syrup. As you learned from step-2, sap is mostly water. When we take the water away, we are left with maple syrup. To give you an idea of how much water content sap has, it takes approximately 43 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of maple syrup. Now you see why we have given up on collecting by buckets, we would never collect enough sap to make enough syrup that way. After going through the "r.o.", our concentrate goes into the evaporator. There are many different forms of evaporators from small wood fired to the large oil fired like we use. No matter which you have they all do the same job. The evaporator heats the sap up, which as you might have guessed evaporates the excess water from the sap and leaves us with pure maple syrup. Temperature is a very important thing with maple syrup because not heating it enough could result in watery syrup, and heating it too much can burn it. Depending on the barometric pressure, the sap is usually heated to 219 degrees fahrenheit, and then is drawn off, or taken from the evaporator. Evaporating the sap correctly will lead to a batch of pure Grade-A maple syrup, the most desired product.The Reverse Osmosis step is optional in making maple syrup. Here at the Hilljack Sugar Shack we have a reverse osmosis machine that makes our jobs a lot easier by saving boiling time, which in turn saves on oil. The "r.o." machine takes the sap that we collect and, using pressure, pushes it through a membrane that acts as a filter and separates the water into a concentrate and a permeate. In the case of making maple syrup the permeate is the purified water of the sap, which is what you would keep if you were using the "r.o." to purify water. In our case we don't want excess water, we will just boil it out anyway, so we don't keep the permeate. The concentrate is the begining of maple syrup (the part of the sap we want, without most of the water in it). When using the reverse osmosis machine we lessen the amount of unneeded water so that we don't have to boil the sap for so long. however, It is an expensive step, with an "r.o." machine costing in the thousands of dollars, this is a tool that would probably only benifit a commercial operation with over 1,500 trees tapped.There are basically two ways to collect sap from a maple tree: by a bucket, or through a more intricate plastic tubing system.
Buckets
If you are a small outfit, or just want to make maple syrup for yourself, you would probably use buckets on your trees to collect sap. This is a very simple method, the same way sap was collected by Indians ages ago. All you do is tap into your tree, hook your bucket right onto the tap, and the sap will start to slowly flow. Then all you need to do is collect from the buckets each day.
Plastic Tubing
If you are a larger outfit, like us, and tap into hundreds of trees, the tubing system would be the easiest and most cost efficient way to go. Instead of going around to every tree each day and emptying buckets, a tubing system simplifies your life. Each tree is tapped with what is called a drop line (plastic tubing connected to the tap) and then goes to other trees on what is called a lateral line then connects the lateral to a main line. The main line then drains into a large collection tank (usually at least a 300 gal. tank), and is pumped out every day onto another collection tank located on the back of our truck for easy transportation back to the sugar shack.
