Every year trees of all types make the food they need from photosynthesis, converting light and carbon dioxide into sugar. In the Fall, as the weather begins to cool down, these trees begin to lose their leaves and transport their sap into the roots where it is stored until needed in the Spring. While all trees have sugar in their sap (usually less than 1%,) some trees such as sugar maple and black maple trees, have a higher concentration of sugar (usually greater than 2%,) making them better for making syrup than others.

When we make Maple Syrup

That difference in one percent sugar concentration is the difference between evaporating 100 gallons or more of sap to get one gallon of syrup versus just over 42 gallons of sap to get one gallon of syrup.

In the mid and late winter the freezing nights and warmer days create pressure differences in the tree branches which cause sap to flow. If the temps stay above freezing too long, sap flows slow or stops all together. We start sometime after January 1st here in southern Ohio and collect through the beginning of March. But it all depends on the temperatures. Compared to 2017 and 2018, 2019 & 2020 were spectacular years for maple syrup production in southern Ohio.  

We have high hopes for another good year in 2021, but has started off a bit slow. To make things easier (boiling time less and less firewood used,) we built a reverse osmosis system. It has done its job decreasing boiling time with no loss of quality.

While theoretically you could collect sap in late Fall, the sap usually has a lower sugar content before concentrating in the roots, and in the Spring, when the trees start to bud out, the taste of the concentrated sap (syrup) changes to less than desirable taste. Hence, the best time to collect sap to make maple syrup is the short period of time mid to late winter for us in the south and late winter to early Spring for the folks up north.