NJ maple tree project could pave the way for state’s syrup industry

• New Jersey could soon establish a viable maple syrup industry through a new project.
• Stockton University in southern New Jersey is leading an effort to make syrup from the region’s red maple trees.
• The state has a historical background in maple syrup production, and a small market has grown over the years.

Welcome to New Jersey. Known around the world for Tony Soprano, the turnpike toll booth, chemical plants, and… maple syrup.

If southern universities get their way, that sticky, sweet brown stuff on pancakes could someday come from New Jersey.

It’s part of an effort to use a type of maple tree common in southern New Jersey that has half the sugar of maples from Vermont, the maple syrup capital. The idea is to see if a viable syrup industry can be created in a part of the state best known for its casinos and vast pine forests.

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With the help of a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Stockton University is in its fourth year of producing syrup from the surrounding 300 acres of maple trees.

“Never say to New Jerseyans, ‘It’s impossible,’ because we live for challenges,” said Judith Vogel, a mathematics professor and director of the Stockton Maple Project. Told. “There were many obstacles to overcome in bringing maple syrup production to South Jersey, but the work was fun and the results were very impressive.”

The key to this project is to utilize several underdog trees that are not in the same class as Vermont’s typical sugar maple. Although there are some sugar maples in northern New Jersey, Stockton is located in southern New Jersey, about 26 miles northwest of Atlantic City, where red maples are more common.

Maple syrup has been made in New Jersey since New Jersey was inhabited primarily by Native Americans, who shared their knowledge with settlers, especially in the southern part of the state, where a large-scale industry took root. did not.

Red maples like the one in Stockton “are much less popular, with a much lower sugar content, about 1% from red maple compared to about 2% from sugar maple,” said Ryan Hegarty, assistant director of the Maple Project. talk.

A general rule of thumb is that it takes about 40 gallons of sap from a Vermont sugar maple to make one gallon of syrup, Hegarty said. Red maple requires at least 60 gallons of sap because more water must be removed during the syrup-making process.

This is achieved by using a high-pressure membrane to separate sugar and water molecules. This allows the tree’s sap with 1% sugar content to enter the cooking process at 4%, an important efficiency when establishing new industries using suboptimal trees.

Charlize Katzenbach has been making maple syrup for 35 years at Sweet Sourland Farm in Hopewell, New Jersey, about 130 miles northwest of Stockton. When she first started making syrup in the 1980s, New Jersey wasn’t for sale.

“Nobody’s going to buy it,” said Katzenbach, who advised Stockton on launching the program. “They said, ‘We’re buying syrup from Vermont, and there’s no way it’s going to taste good at all.'”

But through years of perseverance and a growing desire for locally sourced food, we’ve been able to carve out a small niche in maple syrup, New Jersey.

New Jersey produced 1,817 gallons (worth $88,000) in 2022, according to the state Department of Agriculture. By contrast, Vermont produces half of the approximately 6 million gallons of maple syrup sold in the United States each year, worth about $105 million, according to the federal Agriculture Service.

Alison Hope, executive director of the Vermont Maple Sugar Manufacturers Association, said these federal numbers are an underestimate and the actual total is believed to be slightly higher.

Another challenge is the climate in southern New Jersey, which tends to be warmer than New England. It affects when and how the sap flows.

For good sap flow, “you need sub-zero nights, and then you need above-freezing daytime temperatures,” Hegarty said.

In Stockton, work typically begins around the second week of January, when participants use cordless drills to drill small holes in trees and install metal faucets through which the sap will flow. A vacuum-driven hose system helps the sap flow, delivering the liquid to the collection bucket twice as fast as if it were just dripping without assistance.

Trees are not harmed by hitting them. Hegarty likens the process to humans giving blood, which replenishes and quickly heals the wound it infects.

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The sap that comes directly from the tree tastes like water. The sugar content only increases when cooked in a firewood-powered device called an evaporator. The color will then turn brown, just like a white marshmallow turns brown when it approaches the heat of a campfire.

So far this year, Stockton has collected more than 4,000 gallons of sap from 400 trees and expects to produce 55 gallons of syrup, adding, “It’s going to be a great year for us here in South Jersey.” “I guess so,” Hegarty said.

Stockton syrup is darker and thicker than store-bought syrup, and has a slightly smoky flavor during the cooking process. The university is already using the syrup in its school lunch program to develop new flavors of salad dressings and barbecue sauces, which it also sells at farmers markets.

In the project’s next round of funding, Stockton plans to explore partnerships with the food industry and area schools to introduce the syrup more broadly.

“Our syrups in New Jersey are as good as any syrups in the world,” Katzenbach said. “It’s delicious because it’s locally produced.”