Who makes or has made maple syrup and sugar?

[freemotion]

I've been looking at all the buckets and taps on the trees this spring, and took a closer look at my property, and found at least 5 trees that are over a foot in diameter, one is huge! So now I want to make maple syrup next year.

Me&thegals posted on the canning thread about canning maple syrup, I wanna know more! But thought it should be a new thread.

How many taps and buckets for how many gallons of sap/syrup (on average) and how do you can it and how long does it last if canned?

How long does it take to boil it down? How long does it take to gather enough sap....how long is the sap "season?" I know there are variables, but I am clueless, even though I live in New England!

On the other hand, I rarely eat sugar of any kind, so what am I thinking? Maybe I am thinking to make maple sugar to use on the rare occasion when I do bake something....

 

[me&thegals]

Hi Freemotion--Maybe it's just the fun of making something all on your own Even if you don't use it, many people enjoy it for a gift. I have to protect my stash from my family

Yes, there are huge variables. I am not an expert, but we have been doing this about 5 years now. Most of the variables depend on the weather. Freezing temps at night with warm temps during the day cause the sap to go out to the leaf buds and back down the tree. Some of this sap is diverted to your bucket.

We put 1- to 5-gallon buckets on each tap. Large trees have 2 taps, smaller trees 1 tap. They vary tremendously in production. On a really great day, we might get a couple gallons from 1 tap.

Sap to syrup ratio is 40:1. Yikes! I've been boiling ours down for about 1 1/2 weeks now, and today is the day it will all be ready to can.

Some people use hydrometers to get that "just-right" thickness. I just go by my own tastes. When it tastes and feels good, I can it. I will just put mine in canning jars and steam can them. Sometimes, we boil the sap, put it in really hot jars, invert the jars 5 mins, turn them back upright and let them seal themselves.

Don't know how long it could last. Ours never seems to make it beyond 4 months without being eaten

Good luck! I'm assuming the season is too late for you this year, but if you do it next year have fun. The taps are cheap and it's a fun way to get back outside slopping around in the spring mud

 

[freemotion]

When you say boiling for 1.5 weeks....do you mean all day, every day? Inside the house, with 39 gallons of steam on your walls? Do you just use a big stock pot and keep adding sap as it boils down? Keeping track of the gallons added?

It may not fit in with my life right now, but I do like to try new things! Can I just buy taps and use plastic buckets? The ones I see around here are metal buckets with hinged lids that hang on metal taps. I don't really want to invest much into a project I may not continue with. The serious maple syrup people use lines to tanks.

I'm not that serious! But new skills are always good to have, and in really tough times, like post WWII, sugar was rationed and knowing how to make maple syrup may give me a great bartering tool one day. Or just another involved project to make my dh sigh....then brag about it behind my back!

 

[me&thegals]

I tell you what makes me jealous: Reading Farmer Boy. They would go into huge sugar maple groves and set up a nonstop syruping operation for days. A huge cauldron, wood fire, etc. Then, each night, mother would boil pots of the syrup to a certain temp/humidity, then let them set all night until they were huge cakes of maple sugar by morning. I was drooling!

Yes, we boil ours on the woodstove nonstop, day and night. We simply keep adding sap as the pot boils down. During the winter, it gets so dry here that we always have a huge kettle of water on the stove and line dry clothes in the basement, so our house can handle the humidity. Some springs it is warmer than now while we are syruping, and so we need to open up the house a bit to get the temperature down and yet maintain enough woodstove fire to get it to boil down.

We use metal taps, open wooden buckets, and then huge 20-gallon lidded plastic water buckets to store any excess. Everything goes through a funnel strainer anytime it is dumped into a new container. So, it is funneled from tree to outside storage pail, funneled from storage pail to stove, funneled from bigger pot on stove to smaller, more condensed syrup pot on stove, etc.

That's funny about your husband. That is EXACTLY the way mine is In fact, the guy is one who suggested turkeys this year! I'll think he thinks I'm a nut until I hear him telling someone all about something I've done.

ETA: We have a woodflooring good friend. He and my husband have always thought our house would be outrageously over humidified due to my clothes drying and syrup making. So, he brought his humidity tester last year and our humidity is just right. We boil down about 3-5 gallons of water or sap/day all winter long.

Growing up, I had cracked skin and nosebleeds all winter. These days, our skin condition barely changes in winter unless we're at someone else's house for more than 2 days

 

[Henrietta23]

We've been boiling on the kitchen stove as long as we're home/awake. We do the same thing, keep adding sap until we're ready to be done for the day then let it boil down till it's good and dark then put it in canning jars. We're getting much more than we though we would so I need to know what to do with it all now. Do I need to can it so it will last?
Farmer Boy made me really envious too!

 

[modern_pioneer]

I have never made syrup, yet. We're headed to Jennings Enviromental education center this morning to learn how to make syrup. It's a family event and the kids are excited as we are.

http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateParks/parks/jennings.aspx

Maybe you can finds somewhere like the above link in your area.

Of course I have some pictures of the syrup Mark made this year and gave to me. I used your thread background so you can see the color. I also used a six inch scale so you could see that he boiled the jars to make them seal.

I plan to take some photos today, I will share them with you on my journal.

 

[freemotion]

Oooo, that looks like the darker, stronger stuff that I really like!

French toast, baby, French toast!!!

 

[hoosier girl]

Yes, we boil ours on the woodstove nonstop, day and night. We simply keep adding sap as the pot boils down. During the winter, it gets so dry here that we always have a huge kettle of water on the stove and line dry clothes in the basement, so our house can handle the humidity. Some springs it is warmer than now while we are syruping, and so we need to open up the house a bit to get the temperature down and yet maintain enough woodstove fire to get it to boil down.

I do the same thing...keep adding to my 48 qt stock pot cooking it down on the wood stove. I end up with the same problem every season...more sap than I have room for on the wood stove. I keep a pot cooking down on Dad's wood stove as well as a pot on my uncle's stove, but still end up with excess sap by a couple weeks into the season. By the time the sap quits running, it's warm enough here that we don't keep the wood stove going on a daily basis. I could cook it down a lot qicker on our gas cook stove, but then there's the cost factor of using the extra propane. I'm not industrious enough to build an outdoor wood cooker. My question is...Can I freeze the extra sap until we fire up the wood stove the following winter to cook it down before the sap starts running again.

 

[me&thegals]

I've wondered that, too. Well, actually, I've wondered if it could just be stored outside for weeks on end or if the flavor starts to change...

 

[freemotion]

One of the sites I was reading said to boil within three days of collecting. But it sounds like you guys don't follow that rule strictly and still get good results.....it is sugary water, and I imagine it would sour in warm weather...???