Jake and Josh Carrick stand in front of their electric maple evaporator, the first one in Ontario. (Charles Summers photo)
Electric evaporation makes Ontario debut
Charles Summers
Farmers Forum
UXBRIDGE — Jake and Josh Carrick dove head first into the maple industry. Going from a couple hundred buckets at home in Uxbridge to purchasing a turnkey operation of 20,000-plus taps on the southern rim of Algonquin Park six years ago; their love of maple has helped them manage to keep their heads above water, and swim against the current.
Handling the sap on such a scale is a logistical wonder in itself, but when the time comes to turn it into syrup, they’ve tried a few things. They started with a massive wood fired evaporator. Despite the romantic appeal of such a fuel source, the reality of it quickly left them looking for other options. Above and beyond the labour and material handling involved, “You can’t really just turn a thing like that ‘off’ conveniently at the end of the day,” Jake recalls, rolling his eyes at the good ol’ days.
They upgraded to an even larger 6 ft. by 16 ft. oil evaporator. While relieving them of wood handling, and certainly improving production and streamlining their activities, it was costing them a fortune in fuel: every barrel of syrup (34 gallons) was costing them over $100 in furnace oil to produce. To only further crunch their evaporation demands, in the meantime they picked up another bush: giving them 46,000 taps to handle.
So, ahead of the 2025 sap season, they took a huge leap of faith and purchased the first electric maple evaporator in Ontario. Made by Quebec’s CDL, their “Master-E” is something quite different to see in a sugarcamp. It doesn’t look, or work, or act at all like a normal evaporator. When I first showed up at the Carrick’s Madawaska site, despite the signage, I assumed I must have come to the wrong place: because there wasn’t a single chimney or steam pipe coming from the roof of their facility.
An electric evaporator is not a conventional evaporator with an electric burner under the pans instead of a wood or oil flame. And it’s not even like a steam evaporator, that relies on the heat of a boiler transferred to coils in a syrup pan. But it’s not a totally unique technology either: you’ve seen something similar hanging from your neighbour’s wall.
Driven by a 100-horsepower electric motor, the Master-E operates via a process known as “Vapor Compression”, originally developed to desalinate sea water. But at its core, the machine is fundamentally a giant heat pump: an electric pump compresses sap and vapour to build heat and pressure. This energy is then used to evaporate the heated sap, misted over the same hot coils in which it was warmed. The evaporation takes place under vacuum — making it even more efficient — and the steam produced is reclaimed and further drives the process (thus no chimneys!).
You don’t have to do much while it’s working: the lack of flame and relatively low temperatures means the syrup cannot burn, and the whole process is automated and regulated by computers anyway. Jake and Josh can clean up, fix problems and hopefully go to bed when they fire up the arch.
Which is just as well, because you would not want to be in the room with the thing! It sounds pretty much like a jet engine, and while it gets the work done, it produces a bit different atmosphere than the quaint traditional Cabane de Sucre.
The syrup that comes off of it is lightly caramelized and tastes sweet. It’s also very consistent and productive. The Carricks will get about three barrels per hour off the Master-E and the best part is that it costs them about $10 per barrel in electricity to do so.
“It’s a total game changer,” Jake sighs with relief, very confident about the machine’s future in their operation. Other than the standard initial calibration of the evaporator, they haven’t had to tinker much with the machine. Any tech support they need, they get with a rep in Quebec, who — via the internet — is working on the same instruments in real time as the Carricks.
A real departure from traditional modes of sugarmaking, it will be interesting to see where their novel evaporator will take Josh and Jake on their career in maple. Watching the industry grow, it’s exciting to see both determined young blood and new technologies.
