Making Maple Syrup!

Here at Gillilan Family Maple we are immersed in maple year round.  Making maple confections like maple sugar and maple cream, working to manage the forest, making improvements for next year, it never stops.  Here is a closer look at the annual process that we go through each year to produce the Award-Winning Pure Vermont Maple Syrup you love.

January - This is prep-time.  With the season fast approaching, Bruce, Bradley, and Bryan are working in the woods to finish improvement projects like new tubing installations.  This is also a time to walk the woods and make sure that all of our tubing lines are up and out of the deep Vermont snow.  Throughout the year wind, ice, and snow will often leave parts of the system buried, and we need to do the necessary repairs to make sure that the system will be ready when it is time to tap.

February - Tapping Time.  In mid-late February each year, Bradley and Bryan will begin the process of visiting each one of the families maple trees and assessing the best possible place to drill a new hole for this years collection.  A new spout (also called taps) is sealed into the hole by tapping it lightly with a hammer.  We have to take our time and be very careful, because this process is the most important step of the year.  A good tap hole will stay open and provide us with sap for up to 12 weeks, but a poor hole may not yield any sap at all.  While we are tapping we also analyze the overall condition of the tubing system, and make minor repairs as necessary.  

Often in late February we will get a few warmer days and the sap will begin to run.  During this time the vacuum system is turned on for the season, and we begin to repeated walk the 7-8 miles of tubing, repairing all leaks no matter how small to assure optimal performance.  This process will continue almost every day that it is above freezing until the end of the season in mid to late April.

Late February-April - The Season Is Here.  We never really know when mother nature is going to cooperate, and give us the warm days and cold nights that make for ideal maple sugaring conditions.  Each day that we have temperatures above freezing, sap will flow to our collection tanks and fill our buckets.  Once the kids are home from school, Grandpa and the children get all of the buckets emptied and collected into a small gathering tank on the tractor.  The best window of weather is usually the last 7-10 days of March through the first 10 days of April, but it does vary every year.

Once enough sap reaches the sugar house we begin processing the sap through a Reverse Osmosis machine (R/O).  The R/O will remove significant amounts of water from the sap to make it more efficient to boil, and more eco-friendly by using less energy to reach the desired density.

Time to light fire, which usually happens later in the evening when all are home from daily work around 5:30-6pm.  Managing the sugar house is matter of consistency and constant supervision.  We fuel our 30 inch wide evaporator with wood, staged on metal racks that Brett and Bruce built to be handled by the tractor.  The Vortex Wood Fired Arch designed by Bradley is ultra-high efficiency burning very clean, and using as much energy from the wood as possible.  The fire box can reach temperatures over 2500*F, which make the sap viciously boil throughout the evaporator on its way to becoming Pure Maple Syrup.  Keeping the fire hot is a matter of feeding the evaporator every 5-10 minutes with a small amount of wood, which Bryan executes with the help of a timer.

Concentrated sap from the R/O machine (usually around 10-12% sugar) is stored in a small tank on the second floor of the sugar house, and then flows into the evaporator through a float system to maintain a consistent liquid depth during operation.  The sap travels through a series of petitions in the two evaporator pans, constantly gaining in temperature during the continuous flow process.  Once the boiling sap reaches a temperature near 219*F it is tested for proper density and then drawn off the evaporator with the help of an automated motorized valve.  

From there the syrup is pumped through our pressurized filtering system to remove all sediment, and most of the time the crystal clear syrup is then pumped into a Stainless Steel Barrel for storage.

The 40 gallon Stainless Steel Drums full of syrup are cooled and then stored in the cooler room at the sugar house until we need to re-heat and package them into smaller containers for your consumption.

Once all of the days sap has been processed through the R/O, and the last of the concentrate reaches the evaporator, and the fire is out, it is time to meticulously clean up the sugar house to prepare for the next day.  It is a team effort to run the sugar house effectively, and on the odd occasions when one of the group is missing, others have to add to their duties to pick up the slack.

Grandma Josie, Gabrielle, and Carey often bring the kids to the sugar house while we are boiling.  The kids have to make sure the syrup we are producing is good enough to be Gillilan Family Maple syrup, so a warm taste test is always required. Few things are better than warm, fresh maple syrup in the sugar house.

Late April and May - Clean Up Time.  Now it's time to pull the spouts from the trees, and plug off the tubing system.  Tanks need to be cleaned.  The R/O and Evaporator have to be properly cleaned after a long season of use, and properly prepared for storage during the long off-season.  This is also time to analyze our season and as a family discuss improvements for next year.  Often times, small sections of the tubing system are removed so that forest management and tubing improvements can be completed during the off-season.

Summer Time - No Rest Now.  This is when we need to re-fill all of the wood racks that were emptied during the previous season, usually 7-10 cords.  The annual forrest management projects are in full swing, so that as we improve the forrest, we are also making the fuel supply for the future.  Cleaning up downed trees, thinning young sections of the forest, and removing older trees that are starting to die is a great way to improve the health of our forrest, which will ultimately produce more of our precious maple sap.

Fall - It's So Beautiful.  The woods is for so much more than making syrup.  Our management efforts also help to create habitat for the animals.  The foliage season attracts lots of visitors to the state of Vermont, and maple producers not only offer products for them to consume, but we are the stewards of this wild landscape that transforms like a kaleidoscope of orange, yellow, red, and green.  Syrup sales start to ramp up and as a result we are spending lots of time packaging syrup, making maple cream, making maple sugar, and preparing for the busy holiday season to come.

Early Winter - Happy Holiday's.  Maple makes a great gift, no matter the holiday.  As a result this is primetime for customer service and getting those gift orders out on time.  We are also spending time walking the woods before the deep snow and cold of winter sets in, to clean up any damage from summer and fall storms that may have blown over or broken trees in the woods.  Forrest management projects need are finished up and new tubing installations need to be started during this time to make sure they are ready for the upcoming season.

Most importantly this is the season for spending time with family and friends.

Throughout the year, as orders dictate, we take time to carefully re-heat our high quality maple syrup, re-check all aspects of the product in the process of packaging it into glass and plastic containers to ship to our valued customers.  Then from time to time, we will take some of the syrup and boil it even further, before turning it in custom equipment that helps make the delightfully smooth maple cream, and unmatched granulated maple sugar.  By waiting to re-pack the maple syrup and produce the confectionary products we ensure the freshness in your container year round.

Stewarding the land is a passion passed down for generations at Gillilan Family Maple.  We have the opportunity to play a small role in improving our working landscapes within the beautiful State of Vermont.  Beyond providing the worlds best all natural sweetener, our forest helps to consume carbon and mitigate the effects of climate change.  This is why we take our same dedication, passion, and energy that we apply to making our delicious Vermont Maple Syrup, into managing our land and making sure that Gillilan Family Maple will thrive for generations to come.

So you see, when you buy a bottle of maple syrup or a tub of maple cream, it is so much more than what is in the bottle.