How Vermont Maple Syrup Sap is Collected from Maple Trees

Pure Vermont maple syrup starts with sap from maple trees. It has to be collected before it can be boiled. Most people have the image of maple sap buckets made out of tin, hanging from tree to tree with a tin lid over it.

Now a lot of places still do that, even big operations in areas where that is the only way it can work. But today most places that make a lot of that pure Vermont maple syrup just tap too many trees to make that feasible. Heck some places tap over 20,000 maple trees! You would have to hire a crew of 20 to work non stop collecting in buckets.

So the maple sugar industry came up with a practical and environmentally safe way to make collecting all that maple sap a whole lot easier. Vermont is a very hilly state. You almost can't find any flat ground around here. So, sugar makers take advantage of the fact that most maple trees are up in the hills above the sugar house.

Within reason they try to make their sugar house on the lowest part of their property, if they collect their sap right there. Then what they do is, instead of tapping in metal spouts that stick out from each tree to hang a bucket on, they tap in a special plastic tube that is a few feet long.

Then they string a food grade tubing from tree to tree, and plug in each smaller tube that is tapped into the trees into this bigger one. So if the lay of the land is right, you have a big long plastic tube that runs from each tree, going down the mountain using the force of gravity to collect all the sap, neat huh!

Now since plastic is very stretchy it would not take long before the weight of the sap dragged it down to the ground. So what they do is attach a thin wire that can take tons of pressure way up at the top of the line around a big tree. The run it through plastic so it will not damage the tree.

Then they tie all the tubing to the wire so it will stay up and straight. They make dozens of these big lines leading from the sugar house or where they collect the sap up and out into the hills like a big fan. As you can imagine, this is a LOT of work!

Most maple sugar people keep this network of lines out all year. It does not damage anything and is safe for all wildlife. However over time you get branches that fall down on the line, maybe even whole trees. Also for some reason squirrels seem to love the taste of that plastic!

So it's a year round battle of clearing branches, trees and fixing holes chewed into the line by squirrels. From time to time you may even get a moose walk right through the lines, to them it's just thread!

Some also attach a pump down at the end that sucks the sap down, making it more efficient. This also keeps lots of junk out the sap, as it goes right from the tree into the tubing all the way to the collecting tank. So that's how most maple sap is collected today!

The rest is pretty much the same as it's always been, boil the sap until it becomes pure Vermont maple syrup, with nothing else added. I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about the whole process of making maple syrup, now go and get some of that pure Vt. maple syrup to enjoy!

Source= Vt. Maple Products