We have changed our name to make it shorter and likely easier to remember (from Dave’s Sugarhouse or Dave And Joan’s Sugarhouse to CNY Maple). You will find that while the old sites had no shopping cart, the new one does. In the shopping cart you can see how many of each size and grade syrup we have in retail containers, we usually have more most of the year packed in stainless steel barrels (this year, however, on 11/17/17 we packed our last barrel of our last grade, Dark Color, Robust Taste) .
When this is gone we will have no more until production starts for the 2018 season. I the recent past our season has started anywhere from the 3rd or 4th week in Jan for the earliest to as late as the 28th of March. It all depends on the weather. To make syrup we need cold nights and warm days. When we go below freezing the maple tree draws water thru the roots. As the temperature then rises above freezing and the tree thaws, the tree produces a pressure to push that water, which has now dissolved some stored sugar to become maple sap and the pressure pushes the sap up to the highest buds on the tree. We drill a 5/16″ hole about 1.5″ deep to intercept a very small percentage of the available sap. We then collect it with a tubing system, which, aided by vacuum on the tubing pulls the sap to a large collection tank. We then pump the sap into tanks on a large trailer and haul it back to our sugarhouse. One tubing system is right at the sugarhouse, thus that one brings the sap right to one of our large sap tanks just outside the sugarhouse without having to truck it.
We then filter it and run the sap thru a reverse osmosis machine (RO) which removes a lot of the water before we send the sap (now concentrate) to the evaporator, where all of the magic happens, changing concentrate ( sap with 75% to 85% of the water removed) into the maple syrup we have all come to love. The RO neither adds nor subtracts any flavor, it simply removes some excess water. The flavor all comes as the sap caramelizes on the bottom of the evaporator pans. This gives maple it’s color and most importantly it’s taste.
Each region has it’s own taste profile because the soils are different, the growing condition vary and the sugarmakers vary. We have been truly blessed to have some of the best soils for making great tasting maple syrup. For this we enjoy an ever growing list of repeat customers who buy our syrup every time they start to run low.
Dave Klish