During the winter, the sugar maple must protect itself from frost. In the fall, it gets rid of much of its water and to our great delight, produces sucrose which acts as an antifreeze to protect itself. The sucrose stored in the tree throughout the winter is only released in the spring when the tree reabsorbs water from the ground and the mercury rises.

The contrast between cold nights and sunny days creates a play of negative and positive pressure, so the cold causes water to rise in the tree and the sun creates enough pressure to push the sap out of the tree.

Notching

Using drills, the notchers go through the woodland to drill a hole and insert a torch to connect to the tubing.

Choosing the location of the notch requires a good knowledge of the woodland, as the new hole must be at a good distance from old holes from previous years.

In this way, we give the tree every chance to heal quickly and to maintain an overall sugar production that will last for many years. This is called sustainable yield production.

Collect

Traditionally, maple water was harvested in boilers. However, technological advances in recent years have made it possible to develop a tubing system.

The water flows through the tubing to be conveyed to the maple grove, either by gravity or with the help of a vacuum pump system. At the cabin, the maple water is received in basins and directed to a membrane filtration system, osmosis, before being boiled to make maple syrup. This operation reduces heating costs as well as the environmental impact of the boiling operation. The filtrate resulting from this operation is almost neutral water.

The osmosis unit is a technology that concentrates the sugar content in maple water.

Example: we have a maple water with 2% sugar, with the osmosis, we will go to a water with 15% sugar .

Evaporation

Once we have filled the evaporator with maple water, which has a 15% sugar content, we can leave the machine.

We have to calibrate all the instruments we will need to get a superior quality syrup. A refractometer that will tell us how much sugar we have taken out of our syrup and the percentage of light.

A thermometer placed at the outlet of the evaporator will tell us according to the atmospheric pressure at what degree we should let it out for a quality syrup. For conservation, we must have a percentage of 66% sugar at the very end.

Filtration

The first filtration is done when the maple water arrives at the sugar bush in the ponds. Then when the water is directed to osmosis, it passes through a pre-filter, 2nd filtration, and is then moved to 2 large membranes, 3rd filtration.

Once the syrup has 66% sugar, so that it is ready, it has to pass through a press to eliminate some impurities and calcium malate which makes its texture a bit rough. This is the 4th filtration.

At the end of the process, the product is translucent and soft in the mouth.

Did you know that?

Notching

Collect

Evaporation

Filtration

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