Blue Highways: A Journey into America

by William Least Heat-Moon

The evaporator, built in 1930, was an eighteen-foot contraption of plated tin mounted above a long firebox that burned four-foot pine slabs. From a holding tank, the raw, clear sap drained into the upper end of the evaporator pan where it heated to a foamy boil of two hundred nineteen degrees; if the foam began to inhibit evaporation, Hunter would throw in a piece of salt pork or a dollop of milk; the thickening liquid then moved down the pan through numerous little troughs to the strainer and outlet. Once the firebox reached temperature, the sap of two to four percent sugar became syrup of eighty-five percent sugar in about four hours. It is the critical evaporating process that creates the color and flavor of maple syrup and determines the profit. Fancy-grade pure maple, the light-amber premium syrup, brings the best price. Grade A is darker, more pungent, and B darker and more potent yet. It’s a peculiarity of history that the milder tasting grades are the most expensive: in the early days when the primary purpose for maple syrup was to furnish sugar, women didn’t want all their baked goods tasting like maple.