Maple mania at Sharon Audubon

SHARON — The sap was no longer flowing from the maple trees at Sharon Audubon Center on Saturday, March 19, but that didn’t stop the staff and volunteers from holding their annual Maplefest anyway. Throughout the sunny but cool day, Audubon offered free tours to the public, and demonstrated how sap is collected from maple trees on the property and then boiled slowly down at the sugarhouse into thick brown syrup. The tours began with a walk in the woods, led by Audubon volunteers who explained the weather conditions that coax the sap to flow up and out of the maple trees: Temperatures have to drop below freezing at night and have to rise above 40 degrees during the day. The pressure created by the mix of warmer and more frigid temps essentially squeezes the sap up through the trunk of the tree — and out through taps driven into the tree trunks. Tour guide Sandy Slemmer explained to her group that this year was not a good one for sap collecting because the weather didn’t meet the temperature requirements on enough days. But as bad as this year was, last year was worse. “Last year it just got warm too fast,” Slemmer explained. The weather that works best for people, she noted, works worst for maple syrup.As she led her group through the woods on the way to the Audubon sugarhouse, Slemmer explained how the watery, clear sap is extracted from the trees and converted to thick, brown syrup. The process begins with the drilling of holes in the trees, which Slemmer assured the visitors does not permanently harm them. The holes eventually heal over, like a cut on an animal’s skin. If the weather conditions are right, the sap flows out of the little spouts called spiles. The sap can then be collected in buckets or through tubes that wind around the trees and bring the clear, sticky liquid to a central tank for collection. The tour then proceeded to the sugarhouse, where the sap begins the slow process of being boiled down in a large metal tank heated by a wood-fueled fire. Buckets of sap are poured into the boiler and after hours of exposure to the heat of the fire they are reduced to their sweet essence. Audubon Education Program Manager Wendy Miller led the discussion in the sugarhouse, explaining that it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. The sap is made up of 97 percent water; the water boils down to syrup, which is 67 percent sugar. Once the syrup is cooled, it goes through a filtering process that takes away any cloudiness and any gritty bits such as leftover fragments of twig and bark. The last step in the syrup-making process is grading, which is done based on the color of the syrup, which changes depending on the amount of tannins and minerals found in the syrup. While many people believe that grade A maple syrup is the highest quality, Miller explained that the grading has nothing to do with quality — only color. At the beginning of the season, the maple syrup will be a lighter color. Toward the end of the season, more of the minerals and tannins in the tree flow out with the sap, changing the taste of the syrup and making it darker. This syrup is often called Grade B.Syrup is available at the Audubon Center Nature Store, which is open Tuesday through Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 1 to 5 p.m., closed Monday.Several different sizes of glass and plastic bottles are available, with prices from $5 to $40.