CASS COUNTY, Mich. -- When you’re dealing with growing any kind of plant you’re going to need the basics, sun, water, good soil. But when it comes to maple trees and maple sap, how much sun and water could determine how your syrup tastes.
“The quantity of sugar in the sap is dictated by many things. But it’s not only the weather in the spring that determines that but the weather throughout the year that has an effect on that”, said Daniel Olsen, owner of Maple Row Sugarhouse.
A lot of this goes back to sun and water quantity. In years where there is a lot of rain, there will be more water content in the sap which would make a runnier, less sweet sap.
In years where there is more sun and drier conditions there would be more sugar available to the tree, and the sap would likely be thicker.
This matters to syrup producers because it takes less gallons of a sweeter sap to make the same tasting syrup when compared to a sap that has more water content in it.
Olsen stated, “The sugar changes in the syrup daily. So, some years it could take 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup, the worst we’ve had is 106 gallons [of sap] to boil to make a gallon of syrup. It’s all 100 percent what the weather gives us, we can’t change it, we can't do anything to help that number, it just is what it is.”
Daniel did tell me that this year they were using around 75 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup, and you can see that process in action this weekend at the Maple Row Sugarhouse Michigan Maple Festival in Jones Michigan.
When you’re making syrup, you need sap, and when you are able to collect sap is highly dependent on the weather
"Last year there were guys that were tapping in November, and they were making syrup from November all the way until the end of march. Just because the weather conditions were perfect it was freezing at night and thawing during the day, and it happened essentially from thanksgiving to mid-March", said Olsen.
When you are trying to get sap out of a tree, what you need is freezing overnight and thawing during the day. This is due to how the maple tree store sap.
There is a very complicated process for how the sap flows around the tree but the big thing to remember is freezing at night thawing during the day.
The tapping season ends either when the tree stops giving sap, or when the trees start to bud
Olsen stated, “The buds on the tree actually break open, when that happens that throws a bitter taste in the syrup and essentially, you’re no longer making a table grade syrup you’re making a bitter tasting syrup”
When the trees start to bud, all of the sugar and nutrients that the tree store in the sap will start going to the buds to help them grow.
So, while the rest of Michiana may be excitedly waiting for the days to get warmer, sap farmers might not be.
Maple Row has found somewhere that will take the bitter syrup
“We have a market for that we sell it to a place that uses it as a sweetener for all natural pet foods”, said Olsen