PENN TWP — One thing brutal winters are good for: they really get the sap flowing.

People will be able to judge that for themselves March 29 when the Succop Conservancy hosts its third annual Maple Madness from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Participants can sit down to a breakfast of pancakes and sausage complete with locally made maple syrup and then visit a number of sites on the grounds illustrating the history of maple tree tapping in Western Pennsylvania.

Ryan Stauffer, the conservancy naturalist, estimated the 20 trees he will tap this month will produce a couple hundred gallons of sap that will be rendered down to three to five gallons of maple syrup.

Chris Kubiak, development associate for the Audubon Society which owns the 50-acre conservancy, said the harsh winter has been good for the prospects of an excellent maple-tapping season.

“This is a more traditional winter because of the cold,” said Kubiak. “The recent mild winters we have had messed up the trees. Trees started running sap in January.”

“This type of weather is really good. The trees haven't wasted energy by coming out of dormancy too soon,” he said.

“It's the warm days above freezing and the cold nights below freezing that really get the sap running.”

Kubiak noted that a good maple-tapping season lasts about six weeks.

“When the sap starts to turn yellow, that means the tree is getting ready to bud,” he said.

Stauffer said, “You basically are enjoying the sugar that the tree made in the summer.”

“We will do a number of different things” for Maple Madness said Kubiak.

“The trees should have already been tapped for a week or two depending on the weather. The sugar boiler will be boiling the sap,” Kubiak said.

Guests will be taken on a tour of the property and shown how Native Americans tapped maple trees for sugar.

“They had an interesting way of doing it,” Kubiak said. “They didn't have metal, so they fashioned troughs and things to collect sap out of bark.”

After the display of Native American practices, Kubiak said, there will be an area devoted to colonial times and how the colonists “took a lot of ideas from the Native Americans and made it for themselves.”

“The colonists didn't have access to cane sugar,” said Kubiak. “The only option was the maple trees.”

“They tapped the trees to make sugar and maple syrup. They would boil the moisture off, a little (moisture) left for syrup, nothing left for sugar.

“There will also be an modern-day sugar shack where we'll explain the importance of maple syrup to Western Pennsylvania, one of the top producers of maple syrup in the world,” Kubiak said.

Pennsylvania can produce so much maple syrup because the region is under the lake effect that produces the above-freezing days and below-freezing nights so essential to keeping the sap flowing, said Stauffer.

Stauffer drills inch-and-a-half holes in the red maple and sugar maple trees he has selected. Sap drips out of the taps into a bucket or he may connect all the tree taps with plastic tubing that drains into a barrel.

“Sometimes you have gourmet syrup that comes from just one tree,” said Stauffer.

He said the tree will heal itself by the time the next tapping season rolls around.

“I've got tons of maple syrup lore,” Stauffer said. “I've been tapping trees since I was a child with my grandfather.”

Whatever the source, maple tree or sugar cane, Kubiak said, “it's the same sugar chemically. The flavor profile of the tree is in there.”

“The lighter the grade, the more expensive the sap,” said Kubiak. “The darker sap had more flavor.”

The rise of mass-produced sugar from cane at the end of the 19th century put an end to the maple sugar industry in this country, Stauffer and Kubiak said.

But visitors will get to try some locally produced syrup at the pancake and sausage meal in a heated pavilion before the tour of the syrup-making areas.

Kubiak said the walking tour runs about 90 minutes and covers about a half mile. People should dress appropriately for the weather.

“Last year we had about 150 people attend which was about double from the first year,” said Kubiak.

“I would encourage people to come with questions,” Stauffer said.

<B>WHAT: </B>Maple Madness<B>WHEN: </B>10 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 29<B>WHERE: </B>Succop Conservancy, 185 Airport Road, Penn Township<B>INFO: </B>To make reservations, call 412-963-6100 or visit www.aswp.org