Ever since we learned that we had several lovely sugar maples on the property, the idea of making our own maple syrup just seemed so neat.  After all, it’s just a tap, a bucket and an open fire!  And you get delightfully wonderful sweet syrup!  The REAL STUFF!  Not some sort of corn syrup junk with 5% real syrup added.  Real honest-to-gosh maple syrup.

So I did a little research and found that eBay was the place to go and get your supplies!  That and the local hardware store.

I bought ten hard plastic taps.  5/16th in size because I read that it was less harmful to the trees than the larger taps could be.  Sounds good.  And I got 10 feet of plastic tubing.  Between the two, I spent $22. And the taps will last nearly forever, if you treat them carefully.  They are a very hardy plastic, but I suppose you could break them with a hammer or something.

Thanks to Daisy and Buttercup, we had lots of milk jugs!  You can use anything to collect the sap, but milk jugs are nice because they have a handle which you can use to tie to the tap.  Some people put long tubes and just have them go into 5 gallon pails!  I think next year we will do that.  But this year, the milk jugs work pretty good.

With our trusty drill, we drilled a hole in the tops of the milk jug caps.  You can have it just go into the jug or pail with out a lid, but we have found that keeping the system covered means less junk in your sap.  Like bark and bird poop.  Generally considered less than desirable in your efforts!

We cut 1 foot pieces of hose, jut enough to get them into the jugs with a little bit of room for wind and such.  You just don’t want to waste any of the lovely stuff!

Outside, use a 5/16th drill bit and drill a hole into your tree, at a slight upward angle, about 4 feet or so off the ground.

Gently tap the tap into the tree with a hammer.  Your drill bit should go in a wee bit more than the length of the tap.  Don’t just hammer the plastic tap into the tree… you could break the tap and it’s just not very good for the tree.

We were amazed… within a moment of inserting the tap and hose, the tree starts to ooze sap!  Pretty crazy stuff for us city folk!  it works!!!

You need nights below freezing and days above freezing for good sap runs.  And that has been our weather right now!

This was our haul for one day!  Almost two gallons off one tree!

We had ten taps and so we tapped 7 trees.  Two of our big trees, we used two taps.  If you can’t reach around your maple, then you can use two or even three taps.  I think for next year we will add about 5 more taps and use 5 gallon pails to make it super easy.

Now, before you get all excited…  be warned.  It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make ONE gallon of syrup!  But hey, when a little 6 ounce jug in the store costs $9…  a gallon of sap for free is like the coolest thing out of your yard!!!

You boil the sap either over a big fire outside or a hot plate in your garage or screen porch.  Or you can do it in the house.  But be forewarned…   boiling sap lets off a LOT of steam!  We did it inside, but eventually we had the wall behind our stove get very steamy and slightly sticky!!!  We had to do a good cleaning after but it was time for it.  Don’t boil inside if you have wallpaper!!!  Just saying!

To boil, it’s best to start with about a half gallon at a time.  Get that boiling good and when it’s reduced in half, add another half gallon.  It seems to work better that way.  It will take several hours!

We found that you don’t have to stir it that often when it’s all sap.  We would stir every 15 minutes or so, when we added more sap.  Now, when you get down to the end, you DO need to stir very often.  It’s when it’s hitting the syrup stage that you can burn it.

We would lift a spoonful of the boiling mixture up and slowly pour it back into the pot and watch it.  At first, it will be like water.  But as you start to get down to the syrup stage it will be thicker and thicker.  And will start to turn a lovely light honey brown color.

Once you get it down to the thickness that you want, you simply ladle it off into waiting clean hot jars.   The syrup is SUPER hot, so be very careful!  We warmed out jar under some very hot water to make sure the hot syrup didn’t crack the jars.  Our first batch we cooked a little too long and it got super thick almost like honey and crystalized a bit in the bottom in the jar!  We made maple sugar!  Remember, when it’s hot, it will be thinner than the end, cooled product.  Our second batch I didn’t heat as long and left it a little thinner.  This worked out much better.  Once cooled, it was the perfect viscosity!

Now, you can also filter the syrup as you will get a little layer of grainy bits at the bottom.  We didn’t, because it didn’t really bother us.  It’s just sugar crystals and perhaps a bit of tree.  (hahaha)  We just don’t dig down to that settled layer when we use it.  And boy, oh boy… you will use it!  I think we overloaded on pancakes the first week of making our syrup!!!  It’s just so good….

 

So far, we’ve harvested close to 50 gallons of sap.  And the trees are still producing.  This recent cold weather has extended the sugar run considerably!  You can collect sap until the trees start to bud.  I think we have another week or so before that happens.  Since it’s SNOWING right now… I think we’re safe for another 30 or 40 gallons!

We’ve given away about 20 gallons of sap to friends and made almost a full gallon for ourselves.  It keeps well, you can even freeze the stuff.  We have ours in the frig at the moment and I hear that it will last that way easily for 6 months or more.  I also have read that you can water bath process the syrup in clean, hot jars with new lids.  I think I will do that with our second big batch.

I scored this cool set of heavy duty professional cake pans at a thrift store for $5…  yes, $5!  I think I want to try and do the second batch of syrup outside, over a fire!  A heavy metal flat pan works great because there is more surface area to boil off the water.  I’m going to keep my eye out for a heavy banquet pan, as I hear those are perfect.  I think that these pans, at least the two bigger ones, will work well. (If not, they are pretty cool as cake pans!)   I set up a little grill in our fire pit and am just waiting for the right day to do it.  Perhaps towards the end of the week when the weather gets a little more enjoyable.  If you do the work outside, you can expect a good full day of boiling!!!  Should be interesting.  Give this a try!  It’s really pretty fun… if you live in an area that you get winters like ours, you should be able to harvest enough syrup for the average family’s use!  And it’s just so, so, Little House!   Pa and Ma would approve!

 

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