The fourth March weekend in Maine is Maple Syrup Weekend, particularly Sunday. Since it is supposed to snow five inches tonight, Debbi and I set out on Saturday to learn about maple syrup. We first headed west to Dover-Foxcroft, to Bob’s Sugar Shack (https://mainemaplesyrup.com/). Bob is 80 and has been making maple syrup for 70 years. It’s a commercial operation and accessible to many areas, so there were a bunch of people. The retail shop offered lots of maple products—syrup in a variety of shapes and sizes of containers, maple sugar candy, maple-syrup glazed popcorn, maple flavored BBQ rub, and maple sugar cotton candy! Helpers were serving small bites of maple cookies and even vanilla ice cream with maple syrup on top (Deb nommed that!)
Bob’s operation uses oil fired burners to boil off the water content of maple sap to reveal maple syrup. We chatted with Bob and a couple of his folks about the very large boiler. At full blast, the burners use 27 gallons of fuel oil an hour to reduce the maple sap by a 40:1 ratio down to syrup. Bob buys sap from 6000 taps over six local areas, and there can be up to four taps per tree. The sap is collected into very large tanks and gravity fed into the boiler. The boiler uses heat recovery to warm the incoming sap to almost the boiling point. It then follows a serpentine path in the boiler to get all the water out. Think the waiting line for the E-ride at Disney, back and forth until you get to the prize. The boiling area is very steamy, warm and humid. Our skin rejoiced at humidity for the first time since early February!
We then headed northwest to Shirley to a smaller sugar shack. Baker’s Maple Syrup (https://sites.google.com/site/bakersmaplesyrup) is in the Maine highlands (ears popped on the drive there) and taps about 1300 trees, with a gravity feed down to the shack. They use a vacuum pump to suck the sap down from the trees, because the closest tree is about 1000 feet away from the shack. Sap flow is at the mercy of temperature. If the temp is freezing, then the sap freezes in the collection tubes. Today, the temp topped out at 37°F, so the sap was not flowing real well. Mr. Baker has been making syrup for 40 years. Here we learned of the complexity attendant to syrup; temperature and humidity affect everything; hygrometers and hydrometers are essential! This boiler is fired with birch offcuts from a local sawmill, in a cast iron firebox from Quebec. They monitor the flue temperature, wanting it to range between 600°-900°. They do have a small (800 gallons) ready tank, but truly depend on sap flowing. Again, warmth and humidity were wonderful!
Of course, we bought syrup and candy at both places. You can order maple-anything online!
Afterward, we were hungry, so found the Dockside Inn in Greenville. The pub sits right on Moosehead Lake, and clearly will be touristy in summer. We watched snowmobiles on the lake, and wondered that the ice was still strong enough to support them. The seafood chowder was muy delicioso and the Baxter IPA was also. Deb had a Swedish pear cider, Rekorderlig. Imagine cider imported to South Carolina from Sweden, then shipped to Maine. Couldn’t some wandering mariner have brought it directly?
On our way home, we bought takeaway IPA at Bissell Brothers in Three Rivers. Suds for the snowy day tomorrow!
Steve Steele
Hey Deb! How was that Swedish Pear Cider? I like fruit-infused ales and ciders. Is it worth a try?
Sorry Jim… now witty stuff about your entry today. I’m hiring new writers. I’ll try to do better next time.