(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Illinois Stories is brought to you by The Corporation For Public Broadcasting Illinois Arts Council Agency and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hello welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in rural Morgan County not too far from Murrayville.

Have you ever wondered how maple sap becomes maple syrup?

Well if you look off into the woods behind me and you see those blue sacks that are tagged to those trees well that's a maple grove, sugar maple trees.

We're on the property of Barb and Pat Ward here.

They've got some 200 maple trees that they tap every winter and then they'll come around like we are here in late February to early March and they'll check these bags and that's when the sap starts running and what we're gonna learn today is how you collect the sap, filter it, cook it down and then finally bottle it.

So let's go on up to hill.

Pat Ward, some years are really good years when these trees are running like crazy and some years the weather just plays tricks on you, doesn't it?

- It does I thought I had it all figured out after eight years and this year now I think I'm a rookie.

I expect these bags to have three gallons each - Is that right?

- Of sap in them this morning because we're above freezing we had a nice warm run last night and instead I've got maybe a gallon and a half.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So, you just- - It's hard to plan.

It's kind of like going fishing and checking your trout line, isn't it?

- Yes.

- You never know what you're gonna find, huh?

- You don't know and we have a short season kind of like the fishing season sometimes and the sap season's pretty short and every year's different.

- Yeah, yeah.

We're gonna show how you tap a tree a little later in this program but just to bring people where we are here.

These trees have been tapped and you tap them sort of what, mid February or?

- About mid February yeah you wanna be above 20 degrees when you tap so you don't split the wood.

and then you might not get any run for several days.

You don't wanna tap too early because the holes can dry out and then you don't get a run.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Pat] So, it's a little bit of a tricky situation to tap them at just the right time.

- Yeah.

- And catch the run.

- Okay, now how do you identify a sugar maple?

- Well, the easiest way is by leaf and the Maples we have here in Illinois mostly are the red maples the sugar maple and the silver maples and all of those have sugar in them but the sugar maple has the highest content.

- Okay.

Which is about two and a half to 3% and like a silver maple you can get a lot of sap from a silver maple that you can boil the rest of your life to get a little bit of syrup.

- Yeah, yeah, Okay.

- So anyway, we do it by the leaf.

I can tell by the bark and the buds because I've done it long enough and the other trick that we can tell is a lot of them have a yellow dot on them because I walked around this fall, when they were beautiful yellow colors and I painted a little yellow dot on them.

- Oh okay, so you looked at the leaves - I did, yes.

- at that time - Okay, and that's how you, okay.

So, a person who doesn't have a trained eye, would look at this and... "Well how do you know that's a sugar..." Well, if the leaves were on, you would know.

- You would know, yes.

- Okay so you come around in mid February or so depending on the weather and you tap them you drive your tap in.

We'll show that later on.

and then you hang these bags, right?

- Yeah, In the old days they had the pretty little copper pots that hung all through the woods and that was the first... Well if we go back far enough, the first approach somehow the Indians tapped sugar maple trees.

Even the Pottawatomie Indians in Illinois traded in the sugar, actually blocks of sugar and to boil this all the way down to sugar in our modern materials is tricky enough so how they did it with a hollowed out log, I don't know.

But anyway, the Indians started out first and they used just a piece of sumac stem.

Hollowed out that stick in the tree.

But we have...

I'll show you different types of taps that we use.

But then we...

This woods was full of gallon milk jugs when we first started out - That's how I've seen them yeah.

- Yes.

And they'd fill up and we'd say "Oh, this one's overflowing."

Not knowing what we were missing.

After we started using these sap holders with bags that'll hold three gallons some days we're missing two gallons worth of sap.

So this is not as aesthetically pleasing plastic bags hanging on your trees.

But it is much more efficient.

- Yeah, keeps it in there.

Now, Barb and Ben Barb your wife, and Ben your grandson are gonna show us some of the sap, how you collect it.

- Yeah.

- And Ben, he likes these big buckets, boy.

He's a little kid, but he carries a big bucket.

(laughing) - You wanna get some sap?

- [Mark] Let's see how it's collected.

Let's just see how they do this.

Okay, so that's... (laughing) aha yep.

Oh, I see so, you really don't have to- - No it's not- - No rigamarole You just pour it out huh?

And it's perfectly clear, it looks like water.

- [Pat] Yep.

- [Mark] It's not sticky.

- [Pat] Nope.

- [Barb] You can see there's a little... - [Mark] Yeah.

- [Pat] They're dripping today.

They're running a little bit.

On a good sap flow day, you just see them drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, that fast but today's a little slow.

- [Mark] Good job Ben, good job.

- How about some for your little bucket?

- [Mark] Oh yeah, let's get Ben's little bucket.

He likes those big buckets.

- [Pat] He does.

- I'm gonna carry the big bucket.

- No I wanna carry the big bucket.

- Okay, we'll do it together.

- And Pat, point to us here on this spigot on the tree here and I think it's probably still dripping, isn't it?

- Yeah, it is.

See, it's dripping out of there.

and that's just the sap, looks just like water.

Nice and cold.

It has just a little bit of sugar content.

- It's just above freezing and sometimes, like you say, if it's too cold what'll happen is the sap won't run at all it'll just freeze up in there and then you're out of luck.

- And another trick is the sap will run during the day and at night, it'll freeze up and I have a chunk of ice in the bottom of my bags.

and then you have to take this system all the way apart.

We replace the bags every year but see it's just a metal band in here that we wrapped the bag around and that slides into the sap holder.

And for me, this is a much more modern approach but it is ancient next to the big producers that have everything wired up with plastic tubing.

- Oh, and it goes to a central reservoir, huh?

- Yes, and they use- - Oh, that's not fair.

- No.

- You don't have to hike these big buckets- - No.

- Around the Hills.

- You don't build any muscle.

- No, that's no fair.

I'll tell you what, next let's go... Now what you do is you've brought your all-terrain vehicle up here and you've got a big pit to haul water in you've got a big water hauling thing and you filter this stuff first and pour it in there and then you take it back to where you're gonna cook it down right?

- Right.

Yep, haul it back up the Hill.

- Let's go see that process.

- Okay.

- Barb, before you pour all of that out could we get just a little taste of that?

Is it healthy?

- Oh, absolutely.

- Okay that's good, that's good.

- Got it.

- Okay, I'm gonna get the...

There's a couple of gnats in there I'm gonna get those out of there.

Here we go.

Look at that, look how clear that is.

Look how clear that is, it's... You finished yours already?

(laughs) - Oh, that's good.

I'm actually 108, that's so, so good.

- Can I take some of this home with me?

- Mm-hmm, it's excellent.

- You know what, it tastes like regular water with just a little bit of sweetener in it.

- Mm-hmm.

- It doesn't really have any maple tastes that I can tell.

- No, not yet and it pulls up all the minerals from the soil so it's got tons of minerals.

They've done some studies, it's really good for you.

- It tastes great.

- And it's cold.

- We'd better help her with this filter okay, she's got a big old bucket.

- Got her, okay.

- [Mark] Wow, you have to be strong to do that too That's about five, that's a five gallon bucket that weighs 40 pounds.

- [Barb] Yeah.

- She figured out one time that for a gallon of syrup we have to carry 320 pounds of sap down this hill.

- Well, okay, it's almost full.

- She's always figuring these things out.

- Look at that.

- She probably wants a raise.

- Okay Pat, now this is back in February when you started drilling your holes in these and let the sap come up.

That's all you have to do, is a little hole like that?

- That's it, we go in about two inches and there's sap starting to come already on this one.

- Oh, I'll be darned.

Well let's not waste any, what do you do next?

- Then you put in a tap and these are 5/16 inch taps so we have a very small hole so it heals over easily.

Some trees have been tapped for over a hundred years and are still nice healthy trees.

And we tap it in a little bit.

- [Mark] I think even I could do this.

- [Pat] It's pretty easy.

- [Mark] Yeah okay, and then you've got your blue bag.

and we saw these hanging from the trees.

- [Pat] And then it's ready to start drip, drip, drip.

We like a tree about 11 inches before we tap it the first time.

A lot of people go smaller than that but we like a little bigger tree and if a tree's much larger we can put two taps on it, or even three.

And some people put even more taps but we're taking some of its energy away so we don't like to take too much away from the tree so that we'll be tapping these in a hundred years.

- So you make a small tap, and then at the end of the season you take - Yes.

the tap out and you want it to heal over.

- Yes.

- And when you tap it the next time you tap it at a different place.

- We gotta move two inches away from a existing spot and we don't put anything in the hole because we want it to seal up with the natural bark of the tree.

So we just pull the taps out and they quit running real quickly because then the air can get in there and it dries it up.

So they quit losing sap and then the bark covers it and sometimes after two or three years it's real hard to tell where we tapped before.

- [Mark] Okay well let's proceed and get some of this sap back to the house.

- [Pat] Back to the burners.

- [Mark] Yep.

- [Pat] Okay guys, we're heading up the house.

- Barb, this would be my favorite part is this your favorite part?

- It is, especially on a sunny day.

- Well you come out here Actually, it's kind of a nice day because it's chilly.

- Yeah, and you can stand- - And it feels so good to stand here in the steam.

- Yes, yes.

- As you cook off the water off the syrup.

- The other day though we were out here and it was sunny, we brought a drink out brought a book out and just read while this just boiled away on it's own.

- It smells so good too, you know?

It doesn't knock you out, it doesn't have a strong smell but it just has a real earthy smell.

Smells delightful.

- It's a good way to get into spring.

- Yes it is, Yes it is.

Okay so when we left the woods we had poured all of these buckets of sap into the container, which is over here and then what we did is we transferred from that container and we saw us drinking some of that out of the styrofoam cups.

- Right.

- Into here, right?

- Right.

- And what is this for?

- This is a pre warmer or, actually just a warmer.

We take the sap directly from the golf cart and put it in here while this sap is cooking.

So as that heat rises it starts taking this down in temperature a little bit.

- Oh.

- So that it's not quite so cold.

- So if you poured cold sap in there it would stop boiling you couldn't keep it boiling - It breaks the boil.

- Got you, okay.

- Exactly.

And then it takes even more wood and longer to bring it back up to a boil.

So we can regulate it right here and we let it just kind of slowly drip in and so it still maintains a boil but we're adding a little bit at a time.

- And it kind of stays at this level because it's evaporating as it goes right?

- Yes, yes.

- So, you're dripping it in and it's just kind of evaporating out.

- And you just have to watch to make sure that it doesn't get too low because you don't wanna scorch anything and you don't want it too high So, it's kind of a - Yeah.

A guessing game.

- But that's the right looking boil, right there's the right boil.

- Right there is a good boil.

- Okay, and what about the foam on top?

- That's some of the residue.

Some of the minerals and everything that's in the water portion of it and so we don't necessarily wanna keep that so we just take an old strainer and just skim that off.

- Gee, this is really hard work isn't it?

- It is.

- Yeah.

- It's strenuous.

- Is that about the right color?

Is it- - It's gonna get darker than that.

This is fairly fresh It's only been cooking for a couple hours this morning.

It'll usually cook for five or six hours and it gets a little bit darker.

- Five or six hours and how do you know when it's time to move it inside You taste it?

- You can kind of see when the boil starts changing a little bit or it starts getting dark, or you get tired, or- (laughs) So we don't know the science of it yet.

- Yeah.

- We haven't gotten an exact- - You just know.

You just know.

- We just are figuring it out.

Because you can keep adding fresh to it So we could boil probably for 24 hours if we wanted to.

- But what if it went dry?

- Well then we'd be- - That would be a bad news wouldn't it?

- We'd be in big trouble.

- If you went in the house and fell asleep and you... - Oh my gosh, it would be... - It would be all stuck wouldn't it?

- Well if you take sugar and you cook it down long enough you get carbon.

- Thick.

- Yes.

- and that's not fun.

- Yeah, okay.

- And nobody wants to eat- - Nobody wants- - You know those marshmallows that the kids eat - Yeah.

- That are all carbonized.

- Yeah.

No good.

- No, not good.

- Yeah, okay.

- Not good, not good.

- Okay so this can be a daily affair if you're collecting every day you'd come out here and you boil it down every day.

- Yes.

- And once it gets to a nice dark tan-ish color it's done and you take it in the house.

- We take it in the house.

- Okay.

- Yep.

- Terrific.

- And we have a little draw off here that allows us to draw it off and we filter it again just to make sure that we try to keep the sap as clean as possible but we can draw it off right here and then we carry it into the house where I finish it off.

- Okay, well let's go see that process, okay?

- Absolutely.

- Let's do that.

- [Mark] Well Barb, it just takes some good old fashioned cooking sometimes, doesn't it?

You gotta get in the kitchen.

- [Barb] You do, and it's a little cliche but this is my place, is in the kitchen.

- All right.

- Finishing it off.

- [Mark] And this is similar what we're seeing boil now is what we just brought in from outside, right?

- [Barb] That's right, I just got it re-boiling in here.

- [Mark] And how long will this process take?

- I boil it here for about two hours, probably.

- Really?

- Yes.

- And you kinda have to watch it too don't you?

- Oh, yeah.

- Because if it over boiled or...

Same thing, right?

it would burn?

- Yes, yes.

- Okay, do you have to stir?

- No.

- No?

- Actually, I don't.

Every once in a while I watch to make sure that there's nothing that I have to skim off the top but this has actually been pretty clean this year so I haven't had to really worry about that.

- [Mark] Okay and how do you know when it's right to move it along in the process?

How do you know when that the right... - Because the boil starts changing the bubbles start changing.

- [Mark] Yeah?

- If you look at this pot over here.

- [Mark] This one here in front of it?

Okay.

- [Barb] The bubbles are considerably different.

They're just little fine, white bubbles.

- Yeah, they don't look like they're rolling quite like they did - No.

- in the other one.

- [Barb] So this is really close, if not syrup.

- [Mark] Okay and this has taken hours and hours and hours of boiling, hasn't it?

- Yeah, it has.

- Yeah, okay.

- It has, yeah.

- [Mark] And so you don't have to stir it You just watch it and make sure it doesn't burn - Every once in a while just because I'm bored I probably come along and stir but it's not really necessary.

- It's down to, I mean, it's really cooked away.

- It has.

- There's not much left, so.

- No, it's gotta go from 40 to one.

- It takes a tremendous amount of sap, 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, right?

- One gallon of syrup, yes.

- Oh, my goodness.

- Yes, yep.

- Okay, so when you see these tiny little bubbles over on our right here then you know that this is just about where we are and then you move it along again, right?

- Yes now it's time - and it goes to the next- - to test it.

- Okay.

- And see if it is in fact the right consistency to be considered syrup.

- Okay and how do we do that?

- Okay, well the first thing I have to do I have a tube here, that's all metal and I have a hydrometer and the scale on here is called the Baume or Baume scale.

B-A-U-M-E, with an apostrophe on it and when it's cold, it's syrup at this line but we're dealing with an extremely hot liquid so when it gets to this mark here, which is 32 then that means it's syrup.

- [Mark] Okay, and that's on the Baume scale 32 doesn't really mean anything to us - Doesn't mean anything - [Mark] Fahrenheit or centigrade - No, no.

- Okay.

- [Barb] So what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna dip out some of this out of the pan where it's boiling- - Very very hot, boiling hot.

Okay.

- [Barb] And I'm gonna almost fill this tube.

After taking consideration that the hydrometer is gonna actually force some of it back out over the top.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Barb] So, I leave about an inch there - [Mark] Okay.

and this will tell us whether it's syrup or not and when it floats...

Okay, you float it in there.

- And actually that's- - It determines- - [Barb] That's real good syrup.

- [Mark] Okay, and you know that why?

- [Barb] Because that red line, it's floating...

It's gone below that red line.

If that red line were right at the surface then that's the very beginning of that's- - [Mark] Ah, okay.

- [Barb] I can bottle it at that point.

So since it's below that, it's definitely syrup.

- [Mark] Okay, so it's a little more- - [Barb] A little thicker.

- [Mark] A little thicker, gotcha.

- [Barb] We're not doing light syrup here.

- [Mark] Okay.

- Okay so I take this out - Terrific, okay.

So you're ready?

- [Barb] Put this back in the pan.

and then I'm gonna excuse myself but I'm gonna have to come over where you're at.

- [Mark] All right, okay.

And then do I have to hold that for you?

or would that filter- - No.

I think it'll be just fine.

This has got two filters in it.

The first one is a pre-filter made out of paper.

- You don't give a bug a chance, do you?

You've caught every bug in the process here.

- No, we don't give anything chance.

And I'm gonna turn that heat off too.

So, we've got a pre-filter that's paper and then this one is very thick Orlon.

- Okay.

- [Barb] And that's the final filter.

All right so that's gonna be dripping through there.

- [Mark] So you dispose of this, but you keep- - [Barb] You can actually reuse both of them.

- Really?

- I can rinse them out.

At the end of the season I'll definitely throw the paper ones away but these can last a season or two.

Now right down here... - [Mark] That was just one last opportunity to filter that That's all that was was putting it in that - That's all that was.

- stainless steel.

Oh goodness, look at that.

- And there's your syrup.

- Hold that up for us.

Yeah, so we can get a good look at it.

It is absolutely pure, there's nothing floating - Nothing.

- No grains, nothing, just- - Nothing, nothing.

- Is that real hot?

- You can hold it.

- Okay, if I put my finger in it, would it- - Go ahead.

- Oh, no, it's not too hot.

- It's good stuff, isn't it?

- Yeah.

I wanna chug it.

- I'm not sure that it's good for your sugar count but other than that.

Now let me draw another one off.

- Okay, here let me tip it for you.

- Oh, thank you.

Has more to do with my counter than anything else.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Barb] Okay and then we just take a cap slide that on there Make sure it's nice and tight and then I lay them on their sides to cool.

That hot liquid up against the top of that cap helps make sure that that's completely clean, sterilized and ready to go.

- Oh, okay.

All right.

- [Barb] So, I leave them that way until they cool and then I can put labels on them.

- [Mark] Okay, and this is the labeled product right here?

and you can see this is a little different color than what we just saw and I wanna show the back too because this is where you put your brand on it.

You've got the nutrition facts and this is peeled off but it says Happy Hollow 100% pure maple syrup, bottled in 2015.

You even put the vintage on their for us terrific.

- Yes - [Mark] But you can see that there is a difference here between what you get early in the season and what you get late in the season.

What's the difference?

- And this is actually from late last year and this is what they call frogs syrup and that's because that's when the frogs start chirping in the spring and that's about time that the old timers knew it was time to stop the sap flow or stop collecting the sap because this becomes - Unless you really like it.

- Very strong, It's got almost a molasses flavor to it.

- Oh, okay.

- So, first run is really light and then this is just a shade darker this is what we did today.

- [Mark] Oh, that's...

So, it's still light it's still a light syrup today.

- It's still light but it's just a shade darker than the other one was.

So, as the season goes on, it can get a little bit darker.

- [Mark] And one other thing I want you to tell us about you described this to me as maple sand.

Where did this come in the process?

- [Barb] Okay, when I dumped that hot maple syrup into the filter by tonight when all of that has filtered out and whatever else I add to it this is what's left in the filter and this is any impurities and if you take this, you can feel it's actually sandy.

- [Mark] Yeah, it's gritty, it's gritty, yeah.

- That's some of the minerals and everything else that have been- - I bet it tastes good though doesn't it?

- It's got a little bit of a gritty flavor to it but it's not bad.

- It's healthy, isn't it?

- Oh yeah, oh yeah.

- Tastes fine to me.

- There you go, there you go.

And so this is what it actually looks like.

- Oh, in the filter.

- In the filter itself.

- [Mark] This is what's left behind after the very last filtering?

- [Barb] Yes.

- [Mark] Okay.

One last, I said one last thing but I mean two last things.

This is also a by-product if you choose it to be, right?

- Yes, you can take maple syrup and you can boil it even further.

I think it's about 30 degrees further past the point that it's syrup and it gets really, really thick and really dark and then you start stirring it and you stir, and stir, and stir and it gets glossy, and it gets thick and you keep stirring and all of a sudden there's a little of puff of steam and it turns this light brown color, and it's sugar.

- Do you ever cook with it?

- Oh, absolutely.

- Yeah.

- It's really good.

You can use it instead of regular granulated sugar or you can use it instead of brown sugar.

- Instead of brown sugar, it looks like brown sugar.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So, chocolate chip cookies made with maple sugar have a little hint of maple flavor to them.

They're really good, really good.

- Wow, very interesting.

Well thank you for- - This is an old time product, actually.

The pioneers and everybody, they used a lot of maple sugar they didn't know anything about the white granulated sugar.

So it's kinda fun to do that.

- Well, thanks for walking us through the process and letting us in your kitchen.

- (laughs) No problem, no problem.

It's always a pleasure.

- Eventually the Ward's hope to produce 50 gallons of maple syrup each year.

That's 2000 gallons of sap and they wanna do it in the maple house they're gonna build with these logs that they got from their own property.

With another Illinois Story in Morgan County, I'm Mark McDonald, thanks for watching.

- [Narrator] Illinois Stories is brought to you by The Corporation For Public Broadcasting Illinois Arts Council Agency and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

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