The Fleeting Sweetness of Spring

Most folks love the sweet taste of maple syrup. So why is it only produced during the short period when winter turns to spring? There are a few reasons:

·         Sugar makers rely on a combination of warm, sunny days and below-freezing nights to collect sap from sugar maple trees. The warmer days create pressure within the trees, causing sap to flow. If you tap a hole correctly into a tree, that sap will flow out the hole and into the metal bucket or plastic tubing sugarers use to collect it. Cool nights create suction within the trees, drawing water up through the roots and into the tree, thus replenishing the sap, so the whole process can be repeated.

·         While sugaring season typically lasts about six weeks, the sap doesn’t flow every day – the weather has to be just right. A quick rise in temperature during the day will enhance sap flow, but a cool day can slow it to a stop.

·         Once the leaves on the maples bud, the sap turns from sweet to bitter, and the sugar making season comes to a close.

Sugaring season is fleeting, but that makes it all the sweeter! To learn more about how maple syrup is made, check out the season’s maple tours at the New Hampshire Maple Experience. 



Tree ID is Key

With several species of maple growing in the North Country woods, the first step to maple sugaring is determining which trees to tap. While red maples and silver maples produce sap that can be boiled into syrup, the preferred species is the sugar maple, whose sap has a higher sugar content.

When the maple sugaring season begins, there is still snow blanketing the ground, and the trees are still winter bare. But if you look closely at the buds emerging at the tips of the branches, you’ll be able to pick out a sugar maple from a red maple. Bark, branch placement and other hints tell sugarers what they need to know in the first step of making syrup – which trees are the sugar maples, whose sweet sap boils down to maple syrup and sugar.

Tree identification is critical to efficient sugaring – and it’s one of the many things visitors to the New Hampshire Maple Experience learn. Check out our latest YouTube video for a few Tree ID Tips.

For a peak of our interactive Maple Experience museum, which is also open in the summer and fall months beyond sugaring season, visit our panoramic tour.