Sweet Life

Des Zucka Haus Specializes in Maple Syrup Production

Writer / Angela Cornell
Photography Provided

Maple syrup season only lasts for a few weeks in late winter. In that amount of time, maple trees are tapped with a special spigot in order to harvest the sap. For Wayne Borkholder, the owner of Des Zucka Haus in Nappanee, making maple syrup has been an annual tradition his whole life.Des Zucka Haus

“My grandpa did maple syrup, then my dad did,” Borkholder says. “I grew up with maple syrup.”

The tradition has continued. Now, his children and grandchildren help too.

In this area, maple syrup season begins in late February or early March. It’s an exciting time of year, and one that Borkholder looks forward to.

“It’s a change of pace,” he says. “It’s a time of year that not much else is going. Here’s something that we can do. Everybody gets together. It’s hectic but it’s fun. Ideal tap weather is 20 degrees at night, and 45 to 50 during the day.”

Very early in the year, Borkholder will tap a tree near his house and check it every morning.

“Sometimes sap will run early, like in January, but it won’t be sweet,” he says. “It will be 1.5% sugar. We like to wait until it’s 2%.”

Des Zucka HausAlthough harvesting maple syrup requires drilling a hole in the tree, it is still considered an environmentally friendly and sustainable practice, so long as the tree is properly tapped and tended correctly after the season is finished.

The science behind it is quite simple. At night, as temperatures slip below freezing, the roots pull the sap into the ground. In the morning as the temperatures rise, the sap surges to the top of the tree. When that happens, it drips through a spile and empties into an attached bucket.

However, that is only the beginning of the process.

“There’s a lot of work involved,” Borkholder says. “Some people can’t even imagine how much work is involved in it until they help. We have people who come just because they want to see how it’s done.”

For the Borkholders, maple syrup season is an operation for friends and family.

“We do all the tapping in one day,” Borkholder says. “We take cordless drills, drill holes and put the spiles in.”

Some of Borkholder’s helpers will spend their days through the season trekking back and forth between the woods to empty the buckets and the farm, where the sap is immediately cooked into syrup.

“The sap is sweet,” Borkholder says. “The moment it comes out of the tree, the bacteria will start on the sugar. The sooner you boil it after it’s out of the tree, the better your syrup will be.”

Refining the sap requires special equipment, which is set up in a special room called a sugar house. The Borkholders use equipment made by Sunrise Metal Shop in Topeka.Des Zucka Haus

In the sugar house, there’s typically one person cooking down the sap, and another is canning the syrup.

“We can cook 175 gallons of sap into syrup an hour,” Borkholder says. “You’re talking four and a half or five gallons of syrup an hour.”

The process of gathering the sap, and preparing and packaging the syrup, continues for three to six weeks.

“When the season is over, the sap will stop flowing or the maple syrup will have an off flavor,” he explains. “The warmer it gets, the more you battle with bacteria.”

The flavor of the syrup depends on several factors, like daily temperature changes, the age of the tree and even the cooking process. Not all maple syrup tastes the same. Since each farm has a slightly different ecological setting and cooking process, the syrup from one sugar house will have a different flavor from the next. It’s even more noticeable from region to region.

It takes 40 gallons of sap to make a single gallon of syrup in a typical year.

“If you gather it by hand like we do, that’s a lot of work,” Borkholder says.

Sometimes that amount fluctuates, depending on the weather. In a bad year the sap only has a sugar content of 1.6%, which means the ratio of sap to syrup increases to 60 to one, in gallons. In better years, like this year, trees can produce sap with 3% sugar.

After the syrup is cooked down and packaged, it’s ready to enjoy.

“We have customers that come every year,” Borkholder says.

They also make other products like creamed maple syrup, available for purchase.

Des Zucka Haus is located at 71772 County Road 100 in Nappanee. To place an order for maple syrup, call Wayne Borkholder at 574-248-0160. To learn more about maple syrup production, visit the Indiana Maple Syrup Association online at indianamaplesyrup.org.

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