by Julie Longstreet Wehmeyer

Created on: August 10, 2008

Nothing is more yummy than a big plate of pancakes, covered in fresh butter and swimming in natural maple syrup. It makes a rich satisfying and uniquely American breakfast.

Maple syrup comes from the sap of maple trees, most notably the sugar or rock maple and the black maple trees. Sometimes, the red maple tree is tapped also, but traditionally it is either rock maple or black maple.

Current areas of North America that produce maple syrup include Quebec and Ontario in Canada, and Massachusetts, Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin in the U.S. For the best sap collection, the temperature during the days should be above freezing, with the night temperatures below freezing, with the late winter or early spring being the ideal time just before bud formation.

No one really knows who discovered that you could make delicious sugars and syrup from maple sap, but we do know that maple syrup was a major commodity to the North American Indians who used the products from the maple tress to barter with settlers. It is also known that the settlers took to this new treat with a fervor!

The process of making maple syrup is fairly simple. First you cut the bark of the tree or you drill a hole into the tree. A clear, watery, thin sap will run or leak out of this cut or hole. If you then boil this watery sap down, evaporating the water, you will eventually get maple syrup. It takes about 30 to 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple pancake syrup; and one single tree might yield ten gallons of sap over four weeks. So as you can see, it takes a lot of trees to make a gallon of syrup! It is not a quick process but like they say, good things come to those who wait!

Before 1940, sap was primarily collected in buckets by drilling a hole into the tree and pounding in a wooden tube for the bucket to hang off of. Nowadays, plastic taps and tubings are used with the sap pouring to a centralized location. Sap is traditionally boiled down in large, flat pans. Although gas and electricity are good heat sources; many maple syrup lovers prefer syrup that has been cooked down firewood which gives the syrup and an extra smoky flavor.

If you desire to make maple syrup yourself, and it is a relatively simple and easy, although time intensive, process, here are some tips and general instructions.

1. Do not tap into trees smaller than 12 inches in diameter.
2. Sap production is higher on the south side of the tree, especially earlier in the season.
3.

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