Do you want to know how farmers turn maple sap into drizzling golden syrup? If yes, discover quick ways for maple sap collection traditionally and industrially.
No one can comprehend how long Canadians have been practicing collecting sap. Indigenous natives employed traditional methods to collect maple sap.
Nowadays, sap collection on an industrial scale takes place with the help of a tubing system and vacuum pumping used to suck sap out of trees. Industrial methods allow sap processing faster than traditional, producing more light-grade color (golden or amber) syrup.
What Is Maple Sap?
Pure sap contains 98 per cent maple water and 2 percent sugar content. The sap isn't a gel-like sticky substance but a clear, watery fluid. Besides this, maple sap undergoes a natural process to turn into maple syrup, infusing beneficial plant-powered nutrients.
When Spring arrives, sugar maple trees exert pressure to pull water upward from the surface, filter through roots and gather the stored nutrients. During winter, maple trees keep nutrients that boost tree growth, provide nourishment, and rejuvenate for the spring season.
How To Collect Maple Sap Traditionally?
In the 16th century, the indigenous Canadians first began to collect maple sap with their unique and traditional method, also shared among the Europeans.
Let us unleash the traditional methods to collect maple sap:
1. Choose Healthy And Mature Maple Trees
To collect a good amount of sap, you have to identify a sugar maple, also known as Acer saccharum; farmers prefer this maple tree as it contains 2 to 3% sugar. Ideally, a sugar maple is 10 inches in diameter and over 40 years old.
Look for a hardwood tree with grey bark, 3-5 inches wide, curved edges, and multicoloured leaves. An old sugar maple's bark may seem rough and fissured.
Red, black, and silver maple also work best to collect sap.
2. Identify The Right Time To Tap The Trees
To collect quality sap, you should identify the right time to tap maple trees. You have to closely monitor the weather forecast and wait for the ideal weather conditions.
Late winter or early Spring usually thaws when the temperature is zero degrees at night and over freezing point during the day. The right time to tap is when trees start to produce sap from mid-March to the end of April. At this time, the xylem vessel exerts pressure to run the sap upward.
3. Tap The Trees
Use a tapping mallet, slices, a wooden spile, a wedge, or a chisel to create a 2 to 2.5 inches hole into the maple tree. Tap the wedge or the chisel to strike the tree slightly angled upward, allowing the tree to flow out sap.
Then insert a wooden mallet (a thin wooden peg) into the tree hole, so the sap can trickle across the shingle of slices and drip into the container.
In addition to this, drill holes at the tree's point where the tree can heal quickly and prevent tapping the sap hole twice or more; otherwise, this would damage the tree's health, and it won't produce quality sap next fall.
4. Collect Maple Sap
Tap each maple tree tap in the woods to check if sap's running or dripping down into the bucket. Weather conditions affect the slow and fast dripping of maple sap. When your buckets get filled with maple sap, collect them to form a magically delicious maple syrup.
Before processing, the longer you set maple sap aside, the more it develops a tasteful and delicious maple syrup.
Moreover, maple syrup has unlimited nutritious elements and health benefits, ready to fulfill your body's carbohydrate requirement. A Spoonful of maple sap boosts energy, improves productivity, and hydrates the body.
5. Hang A Bucket Or A Container
In early Spring, sugarmakers used to peel birch bark to form 10 inches wide shallow and 20 inches long storage containers to collect sap.
After tapping, hang galvanized buckets, hold on, and let the tree pour maple sap out of them. Keep checking if the fluid is trickling down into the bucket through the spile and the containers to replace with other clean storage containers when filled.
Tap multiple trees and hang various buckets to gather enough sap.
6. Boil The Sap
Now it's time to boil the clear sap.
Take large metal containers, place them over an open fire, let the sap evaporate water, and concentrate the sugar content. Making a thicker sugary sap takes 24 hours or even two days. This boiling process converts the maple sap into syrup. The more prolonged boiling takes, it drains excess water and makes maple sap sweet.
7. Filter The Sap
Maple sap might contain a small quantity of sediment. Therefore, filter the sap with a coffee filter. Let the sap cool, filter it, gather the top deposits to separate it, and press the rest into another clean container.
Continue the filtration process with a new coffee filter. In the case of large sap batches, use an orlon or wool filter and collect settled sediments from the container's bottom.
8. Pour Syrup Into The Molds Or Bottle Of Syrup
Prepare molds of basswood or birch bark cones that are closed with a knot, bonding the welds and tied by a strong thread at the bottom. The cones or molds are lined on the ground near the open fire.
Once maple sap is boiled and turns into a full sugar content, it's poured into the cones where it's cooled.
Industrial Method To Collect Maple Sap
Farmers have now stopped relying on traditional methods and instead use high-tech methods. Besides this, industrial processes are efficient and carry out large-scale maple sap collection.
1. Identify & Tap Maple Trees
In early Spring, when buds grow, water runs up to the budding leaves, and sugarmakers drill holes 4.5 to 5 cm deep, preventing tapping trees that are 8 inches in diameter.
2. Plastic Or Metal Tubing System
Once a hole is drilled, insert a spile, a thin metal or plastic tube, into the hole, pass the line, and fix it in the spot. Link the trees through the tubing network, extracting sap faster and more efficiently. Maple sap runs from each tree to a central collection point in the sugar shack. Thin tubes meet a primary threshold of lines, releasing the collected sap into containers in the sugar shack.
The traditional bucket system is a time-taking process, thereby replaced with a plastic or thin metal tubing system.
In the late 1950s, a tubing system was first introduced for sap collection. It's an efficient system that reduces time and labor costs and produces a higher maple sap yield.
Besides this, layout, design, and installation reduce friction, and fittings are connected with connectors and caps, offering high performance.
3. Sugar Shack
Two types of tubes carry maple sap to the sugar shack. One is the main tube of 1 to 1 ½ inch having a leaning slope. In the sugar shack, this tube connects to the vacuum at the basement, transporting the sap into large containers such as tanks. At the back, a vacuum pump, the big central vessel, sucks the sap from the tubes. The connected line then passes the fluid into the boiler.
Second 5/16 inch tube connected to 5 to 10 trees links to the main line. This doesn't have to angle to the sugar shack at the base of the mountain.
The sugar shack has a processing facility for boiling, reverse osmosis, evaporation, and further processing.
4. Vacuum System
The vacuum pressure system sucks sap from the maple trees through the tubes. As two tubes connected with the tubing system bring the sap to the sugar shack, one main line or wet tube carries sap while the second is the dry line through which air passes.
The sap travels up to the junction where sap and air separate. Sap passes into the lower wet tube, and the other tube sucks air. This vacuum system has tight fittings and is leak-free at the junction, which stops sap from flowing through vacuum suction tubes.
The vacuum allows to collect maple sap in greater quantities without reducing sap concentration.
5. Inspect Plumbing
Any air leak decreases vacuum suction in the tubes will result in a decrease in maple sap harvest. It is therefore necessary to inspect the tubing throughout the season. The pressure in the tube is kept between 24 to 28 Hg to optimize sap production. Inspecting the tubing system is the biggest part of the job during the maple season. Maple producers need to walk many km in the snow daily to find the problems. They often use snowshoes to move through the snow.
6. Reverse Osmosis
Modern technologies carry out the process of reverse osmosis to concentrate content and increase sugar. The reverse osmosis machine has a membrane system permeable to water, applying pressure and supplying heat to thicken other components in the sap.
Reverse osmosis takes place ahead of evaporation since it concentrates 66 per cent of sap, reduces time, and saves energy.
7. Evaporator
Sap boils in a large, modern evaporator with a pan with front and rear portions. The pan's heated in an oil-fired furnace to evaporate fluid, decrease volume and concentrate the sugar content.
Partially, the sap evaporates, concentrated sap moves to the evaporator's front pan, and the rest remains at the rear portion until it thickens.
Conclusion:
The industrial method requires massive investment and infrastructure on a commercial scale. Still, sugarmakers prefer this technique to collect maple sap to optimize production, extracting large amounts of sap faster from multiple trees simultaneously.
On warm days, bacteria might grow in traditional methods. In contrast, bacteria don’t develop in industrial equipment as the sap processes to form syrup within a few hours after collection, making it healthier and also enhancing the taste.
About 40 gallons of maple sap has to be processed to form one gallon, that's 16 cups of syrup.
So, try the natural maple sap collected through unique biological processes now!