Spring, summer and fall are the most popular times to visit northern New England but most interesting is early spring – or early mud season – when for a short span harvesting sap from sugar and red maple trees signals the start of the sugaring season. Turning sap it into syrup – or what natives call liquid gold – fills the days and nights.
Each year during a period of several weeks as temperatures rise above freezing during the day and drop down at night, sap flows and has been harvested by northern New Englanders for generations. The process begins with setting environmentally friendly (short) tree saver spouts of 5/16th of an inch into the maples and either hanging buckets (traditional) or laying tube (modern) to collect the sap.
In Etna, New Hampshire, a stone’s throw from Dartmouth College, Dave Cioffi collected sap from some of the 400-plus trees he had tapped in early February. On a blustery day with the temperature in the low 30s and snow squalls interspersed with blue skies, he trekked through 12 inches of snow for the collection process, the first step in production. It is hard work.
At times, Cioffi who, before retiring ran the Dartmouth Bookstore – the largest bookstore in Northern New England – can check and empty a sap bucket into the 125-gallon collector tank within a few steps of the back of his tractor. Other times, he troops 100 yards or more into the woods to empty buckets into a large metal transfer jug before lugging it back to the tractor. Collecting sap isn’t a one-day, couple of hour task. It is several times a day. When temperatures rise early in the morning, sap can dribble out of the tree for eight or nine hours and fill one of the 4-gallon buckets. The best temperature for sap to collect is 45 degrees during the day and 25 degrees at night.
In modern sugaring, large corporations produce thousands of gallons of syrup close to gigantic tree farms by collecting sap through miles of tubing attached to the maple taps. The tree taps are connected via a spider maze leading to large collection tanks. Some modern facilities also add siphoning that sucks the tubes dry not relying just on gravity.
Turning sap into syrup takes skill, time and most of all lots of sap. The sap from the early harvest after it just begins to run is high in sugar content and yields about a gallon of syrup from 30 gallons of sap. As the run progresses, the sap has less sugar content and it may take up to 60 gallons of sap to produce a gallon of syrup.
Cioffi uses a 35-gallon evaporator in the first stage and it is heated the traditional way with wood he has cut from his woodlands during the year. He cooks it for eight hours watching carefully as the water evaporates leaving the beginnings of syrup.
The remaining liquid is moved to a second, smaller evaporator fueled by propane so Cioffi has more control over the temperature for the final finishing process that can take an additional one to three hours. Cioffi again watches the syrup carefully and when he thinks it is the right consistency, he tests the specific gravity with a hydrometer and confirms it is ready to bottle. If the syrup gets overcooked in the second evaporator, maple candy crystals form in the evaporator which turns into a time consuming project to clean.
Because the syrup drops in temperature while being filtered, Cioffi then moves the syrup to a smaller 2-gallon holding pot where the temperature is brought back up to 180 degrees and the syrup is removed, bottled and sealed with special caps so the product does not have to be refrigerated until opened.
Cioffi and other hobby maple farmers produce about 50-60 gallons of syrup during a five to six week season.
The grading system for syrup has recently changed and is much less confusing. Rather than fancy, grade A, grade B and the like, syrup is now classified golden, amber and dark. Golden has a light, delicate taste. Amber has a rich flavor and the dark is robust. Very dark syrup with a strong taste is almost black in color and runs in April when buds are forming on trees and is used primarily for cooking.
On a cold, late March morning Cioffi studied the syrup carefully as he has done for years. There is an old New England tradition of dropping hot dogs into the syrup to cook but Cioffi said his tradition is sausage and it makes a great lunch on the long days of production with two evaporators and the finishing pot working and no time to take a break.
Cioffi resembles a one-man genie during his busiest times. He can spend a full day gathering sap from the trees, storing it in large plastic barrels – backbreaking work. On alternate days, he runs both evaporators and the finishing pot also finding time to bottle.
Cioffi sells his syrup to neighbors, friends and a few local stores at well under market price and he is sold out quickly.
Both the New Hampshire and Vermont tourist websites have information on sugaring and the special early spring maple sugar weekend festivals in each state.
– Story and Photos by Art Petrosemolo
