Tapping into the local maple syrup sweetness

Chris Evers of North Salem last winter made about six gallons of maple syrup by tapping local trees. Chris evers Photo

Chris Evers taps trees with KooneyKooney the pig. LISA SCHNEIDER PHOTO

A sap to syrup kids educational tool at Muscoot Farm. AMY SOWDER PHOTO

Maple sap evaporating over a wood fire. LISA SCHNEIDER PHOTO

By AMY SOWDER

Jonathon Benjamin clomped through the light snow to the cluster of four sugar maple trees, each with two shiny pails protruding from their trunks, their naked branches shimmying in the 43-degree air.

It’s maple-sugaring season in Northern Westchester. 

“There’s no real science on where to tap, but some people look for the sunny side because the wood might be softer. And not too high because the buckets can get pretty heavy, and you don’t want it to spill over you,” said Benjamin, farm director of Muscoot Farm in Katonah. “The tree will self-heal, but you never want to tap the same spot.”

Local, historical connection

Despite the sugar maple, or acer saccharum, earning the designation of New York’s official state tree since 1956, many born and bred residents don’t know the first thing about the tree’s ability to sweeten their lives, said Benjamin, who’s been working at the farm for 18 years.

Long before Europeans settled here, Northeastern indigenous people have been making maple sugar and syrup from the sweet sap that flows through the trunk of the sugar maple.

Full disclosure, it does take 40 gallons of the clear sap to make 1 gallon of rich, golden-brown maple syrup, so it’s not economical. Maple sugaring, as the process of tapping the tree sap and boiling it down into syrup, sugar or candy is called, also can be time-consuming and labor intensive. It does give you a new appreciation for the price on that bottle. “That’s why maple syrup is so expensive,” he said.

But there’s something about pouring onto your pancakes a rich, amber syrup that came from your own backyard trees — that’s as local as it gets.

“Tapping maple trees for syrup is about connecting to the land and appreciating nature. Who would think that such a sweet liquid would come from those huge trees?” said Ellen Best of Pound Ridge. She’s been tapping her maple trees for about 10 years and often gets enough syrup — a gallon or so — for the following year by just tapping three trees with two taps in each.

Maple math

The changeable weather makes it an inconsistent process. 

The trees need several back-to-back days of below-freezing temperatures at night and above-freezing temps during the day in order to offer any sap. Sometimes it’s an agonizingly slow drip. Other times, it’s a bounty.

Lisa Schneider discovered about five old sugar maple trees on her property after her family moved to Bedford Village in early 2020. When the pandemic hit, she had more time to tap into the possibilities. On her first attempt, she made 1/2 a gallon of syrup after collecting about 25 gallons of sap.

“I boiled it all down outside over a wood-burning fire pit all day, for like 16 hours. My husband and kids thought I was off my rocker,” Schneider said with a laugh. “It was really, really fun. It’s not the best maple syrup, but the fact that I made it here makes it really special, so I gave it to family and friends.”

Once the sap boiled down enough to fit in a pasta pot, Schneider continued reducing it on her kitchen stovetop. Don’t do the entire boil in your house because the vapor is very sticky. You’d have a sticky coating all over your walls and cabinets, she said.

Make sure to boil the sap until it’s 219 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 7 degrees above the boiling point, Benjamin said.

“That water has to come out, and what you’re left with is mainly those sugars. It’s brown because you’re caramelizing that sugar,” he said.

Learning the process

Boil the sap too much, and you get granulated maple sugar or rock candy. And if you go further than that, you’ll just have a bunch of burnt sugar. Filter the syrup for debris, and possibly use a skimmer to remove the foam. 

“The process has stayed the same for hundreds of years, but we now have tools — like the refractometer to detect sugar content and reverse osmosis to filter out the water and reduce boiling time,” Benjamin said.

Schneider strains her home-tapped syrup three times to get any grit out.

“And then I poured it into these cute little maple syrup bottles. It’s fun to give as gifts,” Schneider said. “It felt very old-fashioned, boiling sap, sitting outside. It was a beautiful way to spend the day.”

Besides using it on pancakes and waffles, she puts a drop of maple syrup in her coffee sometimes, and her daughter has used it as a sugar substitute in baking. 

Besides Muscoot Farm, Trailside Nature Museum at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River also offers maple-sugaring education, instruction and activities as does Westmoreland Sanctuary in Mount Kisco.

And White Oak Farm in Yorktown Heights is Westchester’s last remaining commercial maple syrup farm and a participating host for New York State Maple Weekend, March 21-22 and March 28-29. Expect pure maple syrup, granulated maple sugar, creamy maple spread, maple sugar shapes, maple candy or lollipop, maple cotton, and maple versions of popcorn, nuts, fudge, barbecue sauce, hot sauce and dog biscuits. 

Different sweet options

While sugar maples are the sweetest maple trees you can tap for syrup as the name implies, you can also tap red, black and silver maples, but not Japanese maples. Birch and black walnut trees can also be tapped for syrup, but the flavor is noticeably different and less sweet.

Chris Evers of North Salem made about six gallons of syrup last year from 36 sugar and red maple trees mostly at his home and some trees on his neighbor’s property, plus 31 black birch trees they have through the North Salem Open Land Foundation.

Evers likes to use the syrup for salad dressings, marinades, pancakes and waffles, in coffee and on ice cream with cherries or raspberries.

But lately, Evers and his wife, Rebecca Bose, are enjoying the clear, barely sweet maple sap itself. It’s a hydrating substitute for regular filtered water. They gathered 10 gallons of the sap, which is about 2% to 4% sugar.

“On the road, I bring a Ball jar of maple sap filtered by the trees,” Evers said, mentioning the electrolytes and other nutrients found naturally in the sap. “We love drinking the sap. It’s got a different texture to it. It’s almost smooth. We find ourselves better hydrated during maple season than any time the rest of the year.”

Understanding grades and colors

Note that the grades and colors of the syrup you see don’t indicate differences in quality, Benjamin said. The light-colored Grade A syrup from early season has the highest sugar content and is the sweetest. Grades B and C fall in the medium range of color, sweetness and season. Grade D, the darkest in color, least sweet and most maple-y in flavor, is often used commercially as flavoring. There’s no regulation on product label descriptions of light or dark, though, and “B, C and D are good, just different,” Benjamin said. 

“The only difference between the grades is the time of season in which you collect the sap.”

The earliest season sap has the highest sugar content, requiring less boiling to reduce the sap and less time to caramelize the sugars, so it’s lighter in color.

You can get maple-sugaring supplies at Tractor Supply in Baldwin Place, as Evers has, or on Amazon, of course, like Schneider has. The True Value hardware store in New Canaan, Conn., and White Oak Farm in Yorktown Heights also sell maple sugaring kits.

Evers started by tapping sugar and red maples, then he added birch trees and now he’s eyeing his sycamore trees for their syrup potential. Each year, he learns more about the process and benefits.

And if all else fails, just sip the maple sap for nature’s sports drink, Evers said. You don’t have to boil it, get an evaporator or other supplies or worry about building a sugar house. His wife Bose, their German shepherd named Maku, their pig named KooneyKooney and their donkey all love drinking the sap.

“It’s a family activity,” Evers said. “I think it’s a fun way to appreciate nature just a little bit more and make a connection with what’s on your own property.”

“It’s a sweet way for us to enjoy a little spring in the middle of winter.”