POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME
sugaring: art. science. pure magic.
Ever wonder what it takes to make the sweet, sweet liquid that everyone loves to see on their breakfast table? Let us share! Our sugaring methods have evolved over 150 years across six generations of maple syrup makers.
from the woods
Tappin’ and Tendin’
In late winter and early spring, we start tapping our maple trees. We carefully select just the right spot that will not cause damage to the tree. A quarter inch diameter hole, one and a half inches deep is drilled into each tree. Then we set the spile, which allows the sap to exit the tree, by lightly hitting it with a small tapping hammer.
Sap’s a Runnin’
When the temperature climbs above freezing, the sap begins to rise in the tree and flows into our pipeline system. We even have a few trees that drip the sap into buckets, a more traditional method.
Maple sap, being only two percent sugar, looks just like water. It takes forty gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup. The sap is collected in a large stainless-steel tank at the base of our sugar orchard. We have over six thousand taps throughout, and on a good running day we gather about eight hundred gallons of sap per hour!
to the sugar house
Where the Magic Happens
We gather the sap with a tank truck and then transport it to our sugar house to be processed and evaporated into maple syrup.
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Once it reaches our sugar house, it is emptied out of the truck through a pipe and filtered into another stainless-steel tank.
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The sap then goes through a reverse osmosis machine, which removes about seventy percent of the water in the sap. The sap is now called concentrate.
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The concentrate is ready for the evaporator which boils the water in the sap until the sap has reached the proper density which is consistency of 66.9 percent sugar. Then, one final filter press!
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Sweet 100% pure New Hampshire maple syrup is poured into custom jugs for our customers.
