Sap Runs, Spirits Rise

On a late-winter morning, a sugarbush wakes to the oldest clock in the Great Lakes—freeze at night, thaw by day. That push–pull sets sap moving, and for a few short weeks producers tap hard maples, gather sap, and boil it down to syrup and sugar.

Michigan’s season typically runs late February into April. When nights dip below freezing and days climb above, the sap flows; when the pattern breaks, the season’s over.

Long before commercial sugarhouses, Anishinaabe communities across the Great Lakes boiled sap into sugar for year-round use—ziinzibaakwad—shaping a spring tradition that predates Michigan itself.

In Petoskey, Maple Moon Sugarbush & Winery waits for that rhythm. “We’re looking for consistency,” says Christi Petersen, co-owner of Maple Moon. “The days go above freezing and the nights go back below freezing.” They’ll tap about a week before a sustained warmup. “We don’t want to tap too early, because they could dry up.” Some years sprint, others stretch. “My shortest season was three weeks and my longest was eight weeks,” Petersen says. “It’s a crap shoot. You never know what your season is going to look like till you’re in it.”

By mid-afternoon, the lines have thawed and the sugarhouse hums. Each morning they reassemble the evaporator, then walk the woods, checking 20 miles of tubing. When enough sap has collected, a reverseosmosis machine concentrates sugars from 2 percent to 8–9 percent before the boil. “I don’t usually turn my evaporator until 3:30 in the afternoon,” Petersen says, and from there the clock belongs to the trees. “I could be cooking for five hours. I could be cooking for 10 hours.”

Finished syrup is about 66° Brix (two-thirds sugar) and, in today’s grading system, labeled by color and flavor: Golden (delicate), Amber (rich), Dark (robust), and Very Dark (strong). All are pure maple—the grade signals intensity, not quality. Color deepens as the season warms because natural microbes wake up and the sap’s chemistry shifts, building caramelized flavors.

Petersen puts it plainly: “It’s the temperatures outside. Early in the season is going to be as light as honey, and by the end of the season, it usually gets as dark as chocolate… The warmer it gets, the more robust the flavor and the darker the syrup will be.” Ask her favorite and she doesn’t hesitate: “Right before the dark… it’s getting pretty dark, but it’s not the darkest.” Whatever the weeks bring, she points to place as the constant. “The flavor comes from the soil, so every farm will have a slightly different flavor.”

For visitors, the best entry point is a tour—an hour-long, “tap to table” walk that finishes at the tasting bar and sets up Maple Moon’s twist: wine. The surprise never gets old. “They’re most amazed that I’m making wine out of syrup. They don’t get it. They think I’m just adding syrup to a grape wine,” says coowner Christi Petersen. “No grapes involved.” The team ferments maple syrup into a base dry maple wine, then pours through variations; that moment of recognition—maple, but not maple-syrupy—wins over the hesitant. “There are people who come in hesitant… they think it’s going to be thick and syrupy, like syrup… and they’re so shocked that they like a maple wine.”

Like many farm stories, this one started as a pivot. The couple moved onto land with stands of mature sugar maples during the recession—he’s a builder, she’s a teacher—and pushed their chips in. “We had to put all our savings, all our retirement funds, into this,” Petersen says. They now own 80 acres, with 28 in sugar maples.

The best part hasn’t changed. When her kids were little, they’d hop off the school bus and run straight in for “shots of maple syrup.” The sugarhouse still holds that kind of pull, especially on big-run days when everything clicks—the sap racing in, the reverse osmosis humming, the pans rolling. “There’s days when the sap is flowing really fast,” Petersen says. “Those are high adrenaline, very exciting days to see what nature does.” It’s the same thrill that hooked them at the start. “I’m just a nature fan, so the fact that this is coming from the trees, that we can do this without harming the trees, and that it gives us sustenance… it’s mind blowing. I absolutely love producing maple syrup.”

Beyond the Syrup

From pantry staples to pints and pastries, Michigan makers push maple well beyond the breakfast table. Consider this your quick tour of what to try—and where—when you’re building a statewide maple spread.

Start with the barrel. BLiS Gourmet (Grand Rapids) makes bourbon-barrel-aged maple syrup—silky, smoky, and built for glazing squash or finishing cocktails. Up in Benzie County, Iron Fish Distillery (Thompsonville) both ages maple syrup in whiskey casks and releases bourbon finished in maple-syrup barrels, drawing gentle maple roundness into the spirit.

If you’d like your maple to come by the pint, breweries deliver. Saugatuck Brewing Co. (Saugatuck) bottles Blueberry Maple Stout; Short’s Brewing (Bellaire) brews Woodmaster, a brown ale with Michigan maple syrup and toasted nuts; Odd Side Ales (Grand Haven) blends maple, coffee, and bacon in its bold Hipster Brunch Stout.

For the pantry, American Spoon (Petoskey) makes Maple Granola and spreadable Maple Cream. In Charlevoix, the Harwood Gold farm shop turns its sap into maple mustards, ketchups, dressings, and infused syrups that skew savory.

Bakeries lean in, too. Zingerman’s Bakehouse (Ann Arbor) bakes the Big O, a chewy oatmeal cookie sweetened with Michigan maple syrup. Farther north, Cops & Doughnuts (Clare) is famous for a maple-glazed long john topped with crisp bacon.

Ice-cream stop: Moomers Homemade Ice Cream (Traverse City) is the farm-side scoop shop locals swear by; the Maple Walnut ice cream is a spring staple.