- It takes 40 litres of maple sap to make 1 litre of syrup.
- The ideal syrup making temperatures range between -5 Celsius at night time to +5 Celsius during the day.
- Gilbertson’s have over 40,000 taps covering more than 500 acres.
- It will take 4 to 5 days for a crew of 12 men to tap the maple trees.
- Our sap is gathered by over 200 kms of above ground pipeline and runs underground through more than 40 kms of pipeline to storage tanks.
- Vacuum systems are used to draw sap through the entire system of pipeline.
- Reverse Osmosis processing is a filtering system used to remove water from the sap before boiling allowing a shorter boiling time.
- Syrup is filtered at the end of boiling to remove a mineral product called “sugar sand”. This filtering process creates the clear golden look.
- Syrup is put into containers above 180 degrees Fahrenheit to allow proper sealing.
- The best method to preserve syrup for a long period of time is to place your container in the freezer.
- When proper bush management is in place the tapping process is not harmful to the health of the maple tree.
- As a rule of thumb a tree measuring 12 to 14 inches in diameter will contain 1 tap.
- The trees can be tapped year after year. However, a new tap hole must be annually drilled into the fresh white wood of the maple tree.
- In a good syrup making year we hope to produce over 1 litre of syrup for every tap we have in the bush.
