not a hard task, but a demanding one...
Maple syrup is without doubt the finest edible material from nature that there is, and I will happily share my experiences in preparing this delectable with you. There is a great deal of it made here in southwestern Ontario (Canada).
Firstly, maple syrup can be made from the sap of practically any species of maple tree. But as you may suspect, some species are more prolific in their production of sap than others, and produce sap with a somewhat higher sugar content. One must watch the time of the season somewhat. The sap run is to bring the tree out of winter 'hibernation' if you want to call it that and prepare it for making leaves and such. As the season advances, the tree gets to a stage where it adds other components to the sap along with the stored sugars. After this point, the sap and hence any syrup made from it has a very disagreeable flavour.
The process of making syrup is simplicity itself: collect the sap and boil it down (to remove the excess water in the sap) until what remains is a relatively thick, light golden-brown liquid. That's the syrup. It does not matter how you go about boilng the sap, but a caution here is that the more you boil out the water the thicker the syrup becomes. Boiling even a minute too long produces a syrup that will begin to crystallize when it cools and puts you on the way to making maple sugar. The sugar is what you get when essentially all of the water has been removed.
Collecting the sap is relatively easy, but it requires that you drill holes into the outer layers of wood in the tree trunk to direct some of the sap out of the tree. I have used the following 'ecological' method several times. Take a piece of a small brranch about 1/2 to 3/4 inch in diameter from the same tree and cut it into pieces about 5 inches long. Drill a 1/8 inch or so down the centre of a piece, peel off the bark, and carve off half of the piece down to the middle so that what you have left looks like a combination of a tube and a trough. Whittle the open end of this 'spile' to fit the size of the hole you have drilled about 3 - 4 inches into the tree, and tap it into the hole. In a very few seconds the sap should begin to follow this path out of the tree and begin to drip steadily from the end of the spile. I have seen it happen during a good sap run that the sap runs out in a steady stream rather than dropwise. I use branch pieces from the same tree in order to not introduce foreign organisms or materials that may infect the tree during the sap run, and when the run is finished, one can simply break the spile off and allow the tree to grow over the piece that is left inside of it. Much easier on the tree than trying to cover over a gaping hole.
Now it should be obvious that once the tree has been tapped, you need to provide clean containers to catch the dripping sap. Transfer the sap from the containers to the pot for boiling, and away you go
Incidentally, if you want a real coffee taste treat, take a cup full of the sap that has been half boiled down to make an instant coffee. Unbelievable flavour!
What I have described above works very well for small-scale syrup production. It goes without saying that the more syrup you want to make, the more efficient must be your collection and boiling methods. 'Industrial' scale production of maple syrup uses a network of plastic tubing to interconnect the trees and lead the sap directly into the refinery (what used to be called the "sugar shack"). Once there, the sap may have much of the excess water removed through osmositic pressure separators before going on to the boilers. Please note that maple syrup can ONLY be made by boiling the sap, as the flavour comes from the caramelization of sugars through heating. It is not simply a matter of removing all the water.
When making small batches of syrup, say by boiling down a pot of sap on your kitchen stove, be prepared for a mess on the ceiling, and whatever you do, do not go away even for a minute thinking you will be back before the pot boils dry. (But that's a story for another time...)
Finally, it is worth noting that syrup can be made from the sap of a number of tree species, not just from maple sap. The two most common in addition to maple are walnut and birch. Both of these species run sap in sufficient quantities to make syrup that is indistinguishable from real maple syrup by all but the most discriminating tastes. Fruit trees may also run large quantities of sap. I have seen a pear tree actually form a puddle of sap on the ground below a branch that the tip was broken off of just before the sap run began. The determining factor in these cases is usually that the size of the tree is not sufficient or that there are a great deal more maple trees around than the other species. Typically, one would put AT MOST three spiles into a tree that is between 1 and 1-1/2 feet in diameter, and most likely only two. Smaller trees are generally left alone.
I'm glad to see you are doing your homework as a writer for the details of something with which you are not familiar. I once read a book who's story was set on a tobacco plantation in the Philippines. Very interesting story until three-quarters of the way through the book, when the author for some reason had a fire running rampant through the tobacco fields. If you have ever seen a field of full-grown tobacco you would know just how impossible that scenario would be, and as a result that author's credibility took a very steep nosedive in my estimation. Keep up the good work. If you would like more discussion of this, just let me know.
