Tapping The Trees

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.

According to Donohue, as the raw sap boils in the flue pan, the water evaporates out of the sap causing it to become thicker and more syrup-like. This process continues as the sap flows through a series of maze-like dividers which move in a zig-zag pattern through the flue pan into the syrup pan. The dividers separate the raw sap from sap that is closer to the consistency of syrup, which allows the boiling to be a continuous process.

As the sap reaches the desired temperature - 218 degrees Fahrenheit - it is drawn off through a spigot in the side of the syrup pan and poured into a separate container called the finishing pan. The finishing pan is a much more refined device that heats the nigh-syrup over a propane fueled fire, which ensures even heating. When the sap in the finishing pan has completely boiled down to syrup, it is poured into bottles and sealed.

According to Donohue, it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup and the club's evaporator can boil off about 5 gallons of water an hour. At their first boil of the season on Saturday, Forestry and Wildlife Club members produced about one gallon and eight ounces of syrup.

"I think the coolest thing is you see maple syrup in the store, but we're actually getting to see the entire process from start to finish - collecting [sap] from the trees and boiling down for hours and then finally bottling it up," said first-time-boiler Kelly Chevett, a 4th-semester natural resources management and engineering major and member of the Forestry and Wildlife Club.

The club also hosts visitors interested in maple sugaring. In the past the club has held boiling demonstrations for Boy Scout groups, grade-school field trips and group homes for mentally handicapped adults in addition to curious UConn students and local residents, said Donohue.

On Monday the club hosted a group from the Brooklyn Learning Center. The visiting students were amateur tree-tapers collecting maple sap which their program leader, Doug Farrow, then boils to syrup for them in the evaporator at his house.

"At the end of the year we have a pancake dinner for the whole school," Farrow said.

Donohue said the maple-sugaring season will continue as long as the optimal temperature conditions hold out. The best conditions for the season are high 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and freezing at night. Warmer daytime temperatures allow the sap to flow out of the tree, but cold nights keep the tap-holes from healing over.

"We've done a lot of boiling so far this season, but the season's not over yet," Donohue said. "We've still got more sap to boil. Anyone who is interested should feel free to contact me, we're always glad to have more people at our boils. If the temperatures hold, we should have a few more boils this season."