Pure Maple Syrup
Our Pure New York Maple Syrup is produced start-to-finish on our own farm, by members of our family.
The Process:
Our 300-tap Sugarbush employs both old-fashioned buckets & modern gravity pipelines. Sap must be checked and gathered daily when it is running in late winter and early spring.
It is our personal preference to NOT use a sap vacuum pump, reverse osmosis technology, or a syrup filter press. At every step, care is taken to ensure our customers will enjoy top-quality Pure Maple Syrup.
Our evaporator is fired by wood, not oil. In 2019, it took on average 1 cord of wood to
produce about 15 gallons of syrup. Culled and dead trees from our hedgerows and woods provide much of the required fuel. The evaporator is stoked every 8 minutes, to keep the sap reducing at the optimal rate. Boiling often goes on late into the night.
If you see steam rolling from the sugarhouse roof vents, we’re boiling!
Good stewardship practices are important to maintaining quality. Buckets, tanks, and evaporator pans are kept thoroughly clean. The sugar content of each day’s sap is tested. It takes 40 to 50 gallons of raw sap to produce one gallon of syrup. Syrup must reach 219°F and be tested with a hydrometer to achieve correct density. On our evaporator, it takes about 3 hours to boil 100 gallons of sap to reach the syrup stage.
Syrup is filtered twice to remove niter and impurities; first, when it is “drawn off” from the evaporator; and again at final bottling, through a 100% wool filter. Finished syrup is graded to international standards — and is then ready to enjoy!
