Spring Break
Tapping The Trees
Club Collects Sap, Boils And Sells Maple Syrup
Timothy Bleasdale
Issue date: 3/21/07 Section: News
Robin Donohue knows something that most don't -the answer to an age old question. It's one that most of us have asked as children sitting at the breakfast table on a Saturday morning eating pancakes. Staring at the bottle of Mrs. Butterworth's syrup, most people were either waiting for the bottle to come to life or wondering, "Where on earth does that sweet, sticky ambrosia come from?"
The answer, of course, is that maple syrup comes from sugar maple trees, something Donohue, a 6th-semester natural resources management and engineering major and president of the Forestry and Wildlife Club will readily explain. But he'll quickly add with a smile that Forestry and Wildlife Club syrup is far better than Mrs. Butterworth's.
"This is pure sugar maple sap," Donohue said. "What you get in most name brands like Mrs. Butterworth's are mostly corn syrup, artificial sweetener and maple flavoring. What we're making has nothing added. All the flavoring comes from what's already in the sap."
For the past several weeks, the Forestry and Wildlife Club has been collecting sugar maple sap in the club's sugar bush off Old Turnpike Road. A sugar bush is a stand of maple trees that are tapped for maple-sugaring. The club's sugar bush is made up of a little over 50 trees, according to Donohue. Rather than the old-fashioned tap-and-bucket system that most people are familiar with, the club uses an intricate web of plastic tubing to channel sap from the trees into a storage tank. With an eye toward environmental stewardship, they are using 'tree-saver' taps, which have a smaller diameter and leave a smaller hole that easily heals.
Once enough sap has collected in the tank, Donohue and several other members of the club bring the sap down to their sugar shack on Farm Services Road to boil the sap into syrup.
The sugar maple sap is stored in an elevated tank outside of the sugar shack. A pipe coming in through the wall carries the raw sap into a rather rustic-looking metal contraption known as an evaporator. The evaporator is made up of a series of pans, which resemble large rectangular boxes of sheet metal, placed over a wood burning firebox called an arch. The largest of the pans is called the flue pan because it has thin rectangular heating elements that extend up into the sap to augment the ability of the fire to heat the sap. The smaller pan is called the syrup pan.
The answer, of course, is that maple syrup comes from sugar maple trees, something Donohue, a 6th-semester natural resources management and engineering major and president of the Forestry and Wildlife Club will readily explain. But he'll quickly add with a smile that Forestry and Wildlife Club syrup is far better than Mrs. Butterworth's.
"This is pure sugar maple sap," Donohue said. "What you get in most name brands like Mrs. Butterworth's are mostly corn syrup, artificial sweetener and maple flavoring. What we're making has nothing added. All the flavoring comes from what's already in the sap."
For the past several weeks, the Forestry and Wildlife Club has been collecting sugar maple sap in the club's sugar bush off Old Turnpike Road. A sugar bush is a stand of maple trees that are tapped for maple-sugaring. The club's sugar bush is made up of a little over 50 trees, according to Donohue. Rather than the old-fashioned tap-and-bucket system that most people are familiar with, the club uses an intricate web of plastic tubing to channel sap from the trees into a storage tank. With an eye toward environmental stewardship, they are using 'tree-saver' taps, which have a smaller diameter and leave a smaller hole that easily heals.
Once enough sap has collected in the tank, Donohue and several other members of the club bring the sap down to their sugar shack on Farm Services Road to boil the sap into syrup.
The sugar maple sap is stored in an elevated tank outside of the sugar shack. A pipe coming in through the wall carries the raw sap into a rather rustic-looking metal contraption known as an evaporator. The evaporator is made up of a series of pans, which resemble large rectangular boxes of sheet metal, placed over a wood burning firebox called an arch. The largest of the pans is called the flue pan because it has thin rectangular heating elements that extend up into the sap to augment the ability of the fire to heat the sap. The smaller pan is called the syrup pan.
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