Tapping Trees

In February, as the weather begins to warm, we tap our sugar maple trees that are at least 10 inches in diameter by drilling a small, 1 ½ inch hole in each tree. We insert a sterile spile (spout) that connects to a drop line and the rest of our tubing system.

Maple sap begins to flow through the sugar bush in the early spring when temperatures are above freezing during the day but below freezing at night. During this short window every season, we harvest the sweetest sap to produce the highest quality maple syrup. The sap is gravity feed through our tubing system into our sugar house where it is boiled down into maple syrup.

Boiling Sap

Before boiling the sap we run it through our reverse osmosis machine to separate the majority of the water from sugar, minerals, and other impurities. This process removes 50% to 87.5% of the water from the sap.

Next, using wood harvested through our farm’s forest management to fire our evaporator, we boil down the sap until the sugar is at 66 Brix. If the sugar is below 66 Brix it can ferment and cause an off-flavor; while if it is above 67 Brix it can crystalize in the bottle. It takes about 43 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of finished syrup.

Finishing Syrup

When the syrup is at 7.1 F above the temperature of boiling water (212 F at sea level) it is time to filter out any sediment. After filtration we hot pack the maple syrup at 190 °F into glass bottles.  

After the season is over we remove the spiles from the trees. The holes eventually fill in with new tree growth. Using sustainable harvesting practices ensure our maple trees live long and healthy lives.

All of our Timber Trails Forest Farm syrup is tapped, wood-fired and bottled on our farm in South Bristol, New York.