Looking Back: The Making of Syrup

While I am hardly old enough to reminisce about the good old days when maple syrup was hand-boiled by families across the north east and the corn-syrup “Aunt Jemima” substitute had never been invented, I nevertheless find myself thinking back to those times. Because although I am a child of the Aunt Jemima generation, I was fortunate enough to be raised on nothing but pure and sweet real maple syrup—I have never seen a bottle of fake syrup in my house in all the 16 years I have been alive. I grew up with home-tapped, home-boiled, home-made maple syrup that came from my grandparents' farm in Vermont; some of my fondest memories are of sitting by the huge furnace in the sugar shack, eating hot dogs and talking through the cold March nights.

And then, a few years ago, I decided to make syrup myself. With my parents' support, I bought the taps, the plastic tubing, the buckets, and the cinderblocks to build the fireplace, and jumped right in and made maple syrup. People say watching the ocean is calming, but nothing can compare to sitting outside under the shelter of a little overhang on an old stump, and settling down beside a fire-brick and cinderblock oven to watch vats of syrup chug away merrily, filling the air with steam and the sweet smell that only those who have boiled their own can imagine. And then the end result—the jars of golden liquid you eventually bottle, each batch tasting completely different, lined up on a shelf to be used in the months to come.

Boiling syrup has been a north-east tradition, one started by the Indian tribes who lived here first. The method of making maple syrup has remained unchanged through the hundreds of years it has been around; the trees are still drilled, the sap is still collected, and the syrup is still boiled over open flame. But unfortunately, the time when early spring was a season where every farm across the state was busy hauling buckets of sap and anxiously stirring pots of syrup is long gone.

A Sweet Dilemma

I come from a pancake family. By that I mean that pancakes were (and still are in my house) the celebratory food of choice for major events: birthdays, family visits, holidays, etc. My grandparents had a few homemade recipes to choose from (even buckwheat pancakes that had to sit overnight in the fridge), but the other part of the pancake ritual was the syrup.

Not just any syrup...THE sirup. My grandparents lived in central Illinois and bought their sirup from Funks Grove in Shirley, IL. Founded in 1824 by Isaac Funk, a future member of the Illinois Senate and a friend and supporter of Abraham Lincoln, the property is located near what eventually became Route 66 in that part of Illinois. Funks Grove Pure Maple Sirup (spelled with an "i" on purpose) has a fascinating history and the best sirup ever. Of course, it's about the only sirup I've had, unless you count that other stuff I have to have when I'm at IHOP or Denny's or some other pancake serving place. I order 2-3 gallons of it each summer and carefully ration it all year long.

Thus my dilemma...I got behind on my paperwork and when I sent in my order, there wasn't any left. Mind you, it was not a good year for sirup in Shirley, IL, and so production was down as well. So now I must humbly ask if anyone knows of a local CT maple syrup producer that I could try. While I cannot claim to be a New Englander, all three of my children can, and I'm sort of hoping to try out a more local option that they could remember visiting and getting syrup from. No offense to Vermont Maple Syrup producers, but I find that option to be too sweet and heavy. So, I will attempt to get over my sirup snobbery at least for the next little while if anyone can point me in the right direction. I'm happy to let you know how it goes!

P.S. I'm also looking for honey, but not the clear runny kind you buy at the store. I'm looking for the solid, cloudy stuff you have to scoop with a spoon. That's another childhood memory I'm chasing...

Sugaring Off Downtown

A sugar maple is a sugar maple wherever it grows. If it's growing three blocks from Main Street it will still produce sap, which will produced maple sugar, and maple syrup as North End resident Kevin Markowski found out from his neighbor, a Vermont native, who helped Markowski tap a 150 year old maple in his yard. He was surprised how quickly the tree gave off its sugary treasure.

Markowski boiled down several gallons of early sap to make syrup for his family.

At his daughter's birthday party today, he gave away about 5 gallons to give to one of the attendees. When he said he was going to throw the other bucket away, I told him I would take it.

I carted it off in an old pressure cooker pot, which spent the afternoon sitting on my barbecue smoker. Boiling off maple sap water indoor can put so much moisture in the air that wallpaper will fall from the walls.

It boiled for several hours over a wood fire until the pot was black and the syrup brown and condensed. Late-season syrup is darker, and considered a lower grade because the sugars in the sap contain slightly higher levels of fructose and glucose though sucrose is still the main sugar.

I transferred the not-yet-finished syrup into a smaller pot and continued to cook it down. Unfortunately when I drove to Stop and Shop to pick up some cheesecloth for final straining, the remaining syrup cooked down faster than I foresaw, and when I was a block from home Lucy called to tell me that it was burning. She took the pot off the fire, and the syrup was indeed a bit scalded, but salvageable.

I ended up with about eight ounces of thick, amber, smoky-flavored maple syrup, and a few lessons about the nutrition you can find in your own yard.