Anybody who knows me knows that I love sweet things, and I love baking. So this month’s story had me REALLY excited. My poor husband had to hear me go on and on about it for an entire week and I’m sure he was nearly ready to kick me out the house to live on a Maple syrup farm by the end of it, just so that he wouldn’t have to hear me talk about it any more 
For an entire year I’d been waiting to do this. What, you may ask? A sugar bush tour! Maple Syrup season is very short and we didn’t get a chance to do a tour last year, so this year it was high on our priority list.
There were some things that I already knew about the process of making maple syrup, and some other things that I was really surprised to learn. So, let’s start with the basics. Maple sap is tapped out of the trees, and is boiled/reduced to make maple syrup. It takes 40 units of maple sap to make 1 unit of syrup (so 40 liters to make one liter of syrup). We were given some sap to taste on the tour and it tasted pretty much like ever-so-slightly sweet water.
The tour also showed us how maple syrup making evolved over the years. Here are instructions on how to tap a maple tree (the old way) and a picture of the spiel/bucket combo they used to use.
What we saw on the trees as we rode through them was quite different, though. The trees are tapped the normal way but they have lines running from each spiel, onto a central line which takes all the tree sap to a central holding tank, and from there it goes into a huge boiler/evaporator where the sap is reduced to syrup.
Here’s a picture of the boiler/evaporator:
Something I found fascinating was about the different kinds of maple syrup that you get. I’ve known for a while that you get light (very light tasting), medium, amber and dark (very rich maple tasting) maple syrup and I’d just guessed that the darker one had been reduced for longer, therefore being thicker, having a darker colour and richer taste than the light syrup. BUT on the tour we learned that it’s actually the timing during the season that determines which maple syrup the sap will produce. All sap is boiled/reduced for the same amount of time at exactly the same temperature. It’s the early season sap that makes lighter syrup, and as the season goes on the syrup becomes darker. The very end of the season syrup is the dark one.
I don’t know about you, but after all this maple syrup talk I feel like pancakes! One more pic to end off with, and that’s a pic of all the different maple syrup goodies for sale at the farm.
Next up in the circle is the awesome Heather Wilson Photography be sure to check out her Story this month!
And just look at that head full of hair.
