As of tonight, my bucket list is a tad lighter. Ive always wanted to try my hand at making maple syrup, and decided that now was the time. I intended to experiment on a small scale, just to see if it was something I enjoyed, before committing to a larger endeavour.

To that end, I tapped four maple trees last Sunday. Every night after work, the boys and I would make the rounds and collect the sap, combining it and storing it in two refrigerators. We ended up with almost 10 gallons of sap, which is comprised of around 98% water, dependent upon the sugar concentration from tree to tree.

I figured that amount of sap might yield a quart of finished syrup, and early this morning I set in to find out. I lit both fires in my homemade stoves at 8:00am...it was 13 degrees...my breakfast tea froze in the cup after just 45 minutes. Not that I had time to drink it anyway, at least at first. After six hours cooking time, I had approx 1/2 gallon of reduction left, which I took to the house to finish on the stove....better heat control that way. The finished product, Pure Maple syrup, came out to be 34 ozs.

Collecting the sap.


Five gallons of sap, 1/2 the total amount to be reduced.


The view wasn't bad...our pond #3, starting to boil.



My threw together stoves...semi truck rims stacked together, with a door and stovepipe added.


Now we're cookin'...


It was a family effort at times..


Starting to show some color.


And the finished product. Since we're not storing it, we just repurposed some jars...pancake breakfast for a few folks next Sunday morning....


It was an amazing day. We enjoyed every minute of it, and the syrup itself, while delicious, pales in comparison to the satisfaction gained from a day spent tending the fires and skimming the pans. I feel truly content, and very fortunate to have experienced this.

Next year....look out. It's on big time.

Really Cool. Bring on the pancakes!!!

A neighbor makes syrup. I think he is collectig sap now. Thanks for sharing with pictures. The syrup is also good on vanilla ice cream!

Maple Syrup, the real stuff, is good on everything!!!

Wow cool stuff...............can you post some info on the tap?I am assuming you made them.

Actually Robert, I purchased the taps, or spiles, as they are referred to as. My father, an old sugar hand from way back, thought I should burn the center out of a whittled piece of sumac, like he did as a boy. But these plastic spiles are just too inexpensive to fool with making my own, AND...I didn't want to hang a bucket or bag on the spile like they did in dad's time. I ran tubing from the spile to a milk jug, with a hole drilled in its cap just the right size to be a tight sliding fit. No bugs, bark, or rain gets into the sap that way.

Sp, a wonderful job. If you don't mind post a few pictures of your stoves. I haven't welded much since I quit teaching but would love to make one of those.

Sparky, I envy you.

This - is - too - dang - cool! I too spent 5 hours today playing with fire on another lump batch - I felt the fireforce today was strong, must have been you over there.

Did you have to add any sugar or other ingredients or does it naturally end up tasting sweet?

Did it taste like Maple Syrup? Like, Aunt Jamima syrup taste?

If you canned it [with pressure cooker] do you think it would keep 6 - 12 mos?

I dig your stove setup, really well done.

Your pond there looks nice - what's the story with that particular fishery?

What cultivar of Maple did you use for the syrup? Sugar Maple?

Sorry for all the questions!

Anyone heard the funny story out of Illinois recently.. DEA kicked a door in on a suspected meth lab only to find out they were cooking Maple syrup been all over the news around here for the last few days..

Grasshopper, if you have to ask that question, you've never tasted REAL Maple syrup! The 2 aren't anywhere close to being the same.

I made some a few years ago, but I purchased aluminum taps and used the bags. LOTS of boiling to get a little syrup. I didn't "can" mine, I boiled the jars and lids, and filled them when the syrup was hot. It stored in the fridge for over a year.

I take the easy way out now and pre-order mine a year in advance from one of the Amish families. Every year someone else wants some, so the order seems to increase for every following year. I'm up to 4 gallons this year.

Sprkplug, that's a great set-up! You done good.

That really cool, I have always wanted to do that, but never had sugar maples big enough to tap. It looks like your family had fun too!

www.maplemadness.com for supplies! I have been using the 3-gallon bags and bag-holders. They work great when it is cold out as you can toss out the ice for higher sugar to start.

Have been doing it for a few years, tap 10-11 trees for a few years up to 2 years ago. Then we had a bumper year and couldn't keep up! 3 gallons of sap at the end of it for a 1-man operation using a wood-burning stove. It was wearisome.

If I still didn't have 1/2 gallon left from that year, I would have more drive to do it again, but so busy that something has to give. I may tap just a few, and ordering supplies today.

TJ, there is nothing added...no ingredient other than maple sap. And the finished syrup is sweeter than the artificial stuff, a little thinner,(unless you keep it in the fridge), and has a strong maple flavor.

I have no doubt it would keep if canned properly. We bottled ours at 185 degrees, flipped the jars over to sterilize the lid and neck, then set them upright. They formed a vacuum and pulled the lids down just fine, although ours will be eaten shortly...as in next weekend.

I did tap sugar maples, although any of the maple varieties around here will make good syrup, and the commercial operators do not discriminate, they tap em' all. My father helped out at a large Amish family who were making syrup last weekend, and they were processing 3200 gallons of sap that day, of all maple varieties.

The stoves were a last minute idea, born of desperation. Since our property was once a campground, there are dozens of these rims laying around. I didn't even weld the two rims together, just stacked them up. I cut out a section of rim on the bandsaw, then removed the top and bottom flanges from the cut-out section, and welded those back into the rims, leaving a curved, rectangular opening. I welded a hinge on the removed section, and once fit back into the rim I welded the hinge to the rim also. Instant door. I used a U-bolt as a handle, and made a tool that hooked into the U-bolt so I could open and close it without getting burned.

In the back of the rim there is a slot where the valve stem protruded. I laid out half circles on each side of the slot, cut them out, and had a 4" round hole for an elbow and stovepipe. They worked great if I do say so myself.



Liquidsquid I hear you on tossing out the ice...a definite drawback to using milk jugs as collection devices!

SP, how do you attach the stove pipe or do you just stick it in there. As high as scrap got,it looks like someone would have relieved you of the rims. They make good fire pits. Thanks for posting.

sprkplug,
That "real" maple syrup must be awesome!

Is it a easy operation getting the spike to the correct depth into the tree?

Maple syrup stores in the freezer well. I have kept it in the freezer for several years with no change in flavor that I could recognize. I now pay around $54-$68/gal. As noted, making it is fairly labor intensive.

It's no problem at all driving in the spile. I used plastic spiles that required a 5/16" hole. Supposedly they are more friendly towards the tree than the older, 1/2" taps, although they were used for decades with no ill effects apparently noticed. I drilled into the tree for a depth of about 2.5"

Ken, I slit the pipe elbow all the way around, inserted it through the rim, and bent the sections back flat...not pretty, but locked into place.

Very nice Tony, I have to make me one of those.

Ken if you do, try and locate the grill out of an old, round Weber charcoal grill....they were a perfect fit to sit inside the flange of the semi rim. I THINK it measured 23" in diameter? If you round up everything with that in mind, it fits like a glove.

And since a lot of campers apparently knew that also, I had no problem finding the grills along with the rims....most simply packed up their campers and left, leaving coleman lanterns, outdoor cooking appliances, and even two perfectly good aluminum jonboats. When I added those to the ones I already own, I have a boat left on shore at each of our five ponds!

Since we rent homes for a living, we have 5 or 6 weber grills that have been left by tenants. Most of them are like new. We also get lots of garden hoses,trash cans and cleaning supplies as they usually decide cleaning is not their forte.Did you rent out the campground or buy it from someone that got tired of it.

Awsome project Sparkplug! If you have kids, I'm sure it will teach them the value of hard work. Nothing like reaping the benefits of mother nature!

We bought it Ken. Well actually we bought half the total property, and the old campground was on our half.

I can certainly understand why you bought it, what a beautiful place.

I love the homemade maple syrup ~ every Feb/March I wind up in NE Ohio to visit John Wilson's company, AQUA DOC ~ while there I stock up on maple syrup and candy for the kids. It is so cool to see the taps in all the maple trees. Wilson actually made his own one year. They do recomend that you store it in the freezer. Sparkplug, if you made enough of it, you can buy little jars, have your own labels made, and give them as gifts or donate for Pond Boss silent auction items!

I have a couple of rent houses but don't find anything but trash left behind. Some even take the light bulbs.

Dave,you learn early in your career to keep toliet paper and light bulbs in the truck. Most of the stuff is junk but sometimes they do leave something worthwhile but we have had over 500 tenants in 32 years.

During the last 15 years of its operation, the campground had been lease site only. Since there were no weekenders allowed, several campers built on covered porches, added outbuildings, etc. When it finally closed, many of the residents were older folks, and they just walked away and left everything...trailers and all. Even gave up the titles. I've scrapped two, but there's still three more left.

I pulled the four taps and containers tonight...dumped nearly four gallons of fresh sap out on the ground, as today was warmer and the sap was running quite well.

Next year we're ramping up production.....Sue, my wife has the same idea as you. Homemade syrup as gifts.

Tony,the fire dept. here is to strict but in some places you can eliminate problems one match at a time.

Sparkplug,you have lightened your bucket list while adding another thing to mine.Thanks for sharing this.I honestly never would have thought to do this and I truly love maple syrup.This seems like a really good thing to get the family out of hibernation mode and ready for spring.With a little luck I could see myself getting close to a years worth of syrup(1 gal) and never have to hear my wife say you know what that stuff costs during sunday breakfast again

Ken, I've never figured out why people so often take the toilet paper and light bulbs. And, these are really nice houses.

When a new tenant comes in, everything works and everything is clean. There are fresh rolls of TP, a new roll of paper towels, all light bulbs work and the lawn is freshly mowed and edged. I have started deducting the cost of TP and bulbs from deposits when people move out. If it needs mowing and edging, I also deduct that.

When they move in, we do a walk through and I note every potential issue. I even open the oven to show that it is clean. I tell them that I deduct cleaning expenses, if needed, from their deposit when they move. Want a cat or dog? Put up an extra $1,000 pet deposit per animal. I have learned the hard way.

Most of the renters that I have dealt with are living "hand to mouth". When they lose their job, I try to work with them. I do not enjoy conflict and I understand that these things happen.

However, when somebody tells me that their Grandmother in North Carolina died and they had to use the rent $ to go to the funeral, I go from zero to sixty in a heckuva hurry. That's when they find a new place to live or come up with the rent in 3 days. I've heard that story too many times.

And, then there is this story: The Great Canadian Syrup Heist.

Somebody's got some 'splaining to do.

Tony, that is all really interesting. Thanks for sharing.

I got a "Page cannot be displayed". However, I had heard about the theft. Seems that a huge amount was stolen but not sure who did it or when it happened.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-02/the-great-canadian-maple-syrup-heist

Between 9,000 and 10,000 barrels.........

Black market maple syrup..... unsavory characters selling it on the street...

"Yeah I got the good stuff right here....grade A dark amber....67% sugar content..uncut. How much you need? Pint? Quart? Hittin' the club this weekend? Better take a gallon......"

SP, thanks for the reminder of my youth. I can almost taste the syrup... Great story. Best of luck next year!!

And great quick wood burning stove!!

DD1, I have to buy my own toilet paper and light bulbs for my apt. No tp when I got here and recently changed all the bulbs to the energy efficient ones. 14 @ 6-7 bucks each. I'll leave the bulbs when I move out. Maybe a courtesy roll of tp to boot!

650.00 security deposit and 300 bucks for end of lease cleaning. About 20.00/mo extra for a cat, no dogs. I was going to do an apt RAS, but that added a big chunk to my renters insurance. Nothing heavier than a CA King waterbed tho. Besides, the VFD's would probably freak out the neighbors old CRT TV.

Must be nice to lease someplace where the LL buy's your tp!

Only the first roll JKB.

I don't do an end of lease cleaning deposit. I generally have to clean it myself and take a couple of hundred bucks for that. Before move in, I do a walk through inspection with the new tenant. I get them to stand on a little step stool and insure that even the ceiling fans are dust free. Very few people clean to my standards.

I figure that I make about $5 per hour on cleaning.

Things seem a little slow around the forum these days, so I thought I might share my maple syrup adventures, 2014 style.

Last year was my first attempt as a sugarmaker, and I was hooked from the get go. I vowed to go bigger on my next attempt, so to follow through, I tapped 25 trees this morning....up from the 4 I did last year!

No sap running yet, but the forecast looks good later on this week.

You can see parts of two snow covered ponds in the background. A watched spile never drips:


Buckets with covers:


In anticipation of increased production, I decided to move the boiling operation indoors. I built a new evaporator out of a used fuel oil drum, lined it with firebrick, and installed a custom stainless boiling pan. I finally broke down and purchased the pan, having no reasonable way to work the stainless sheet myself. It nearly broke my heart, (as well as my wallet) having to buy it:

Looking good Spark. I know what you mean about having to buy something that you should be able to make yourself. But sometimes its just faster and easier to buy vs. build. Good luck this year.

Very nice looking evaporator. Classy construction.

Thanks Bill. Sap started dripping this afternoon.

Tony,

Looks great, please keep sharing your story. I can imaging the smells already!!

I read this thread last year and loved it. You have taken it to the next level with that cooker, and I am jealous.

And If I have any evidence to get rid of, I know where to bring it.

Nice work! I cut down a Sugar Maple this afternoon and it was dry as a bone.

First sap collection of 2014...25 taps yielded almost 14 gallons! I'm well pleased with that for the first warm day, and the start of a run. Forecast looks great for the next few days also.

I need 40 gallons of sap in storage before I light the fire.....keeping my fingers crossed for the weekend boil!

I'll bet you will have your 40 gallons no later than noon on Thursday, possibly tomorrow evening.

Not doing it this year, too much going on with leading Scouts.

18 gallons tonight. Some trees are really getting into the spirit of the thing......



Tradition....drinking from a sap bucket.

OK Tony, I'm officially jealous now.

Was it the full bucket photo, or drinking from the bucket, that finally did it?

I've got pretty good boys Al....they would gladly share their bucket with you.

14+18=32 gallons so far. I may have overestimated the noon time on Thursday thing.....

Yeah, I'm pretty confident that I'll be firing as hard as I can go this weekend.

Temps up here next week are only supposed to get up to the mid 20's.

It was the boys sharing that legacy moment with you that did it. I like hanging around kids that enjoy the outdoors.

Only 7 gallons this evening....didn't get cold enough last night. No matter though, as I have enough sap to process.

Several hours of boiling and tending the fire this weekend. Can't wait!

I don't even like syrup but if you need help tending the fire that is something I love to do!!!

Boiling away....smells good!

12 ounces of real Maple syrup has 891.3 calories. A bottle of Peroni (12.2 ounces) has 150 calories.

You probably wouldn't drink 12 ounces of Maple syrup at once nor would you put a bottle of Peroni on your pancakes. Wait, Sunil, have you tried Peroni on ........

We have one Maple tree large enough to tap. Poor planning.

I really like Maple Syrup!

It's ranked high with bacon, butter, bleu cheese for me, but can't fix oatmeal! I know the Quaker dude from my youth. That's all we had every morning, but I suppose it got a few brain cells to stick in place.

That Cream of Wheat stuff brought things to a new low, but would probably work with Bacon mixed in.

This is a serious post!

Boiled down 44 gallons of sap today, with an evaporation rate around 6-7 gallons per hour. I was very pleased with that, especially on a homemade rig.

Steaming away.


Skimming off some foam.


What was left after the boil.....about 1/2" in the pan, which is cutting it close. Very easy to scorch when it gets that low. Nice carmel color, but it's not syrup yet...it needs a further reduction, which I will do over propane as it's easier to control the heat when things come down to the wire.
This is simply referred to as "sweet". As in: "I've got a half inch of sweet in the pan"

Looking good!!!

When I have help people in the past it has always been the open fire kettle method..

Your set up looks a lot nicer.. What is the purpose of the upper pan? Preheater so you don't lose your boil in the larger bottom pan?

The open fire is traditional, but this way you don't add smoke flavoring to your syrup. Or ashes for that matter.

Yeah, the back pan is the preheater to keep from killing the boil.

That's what I was figuring.. As for smoke and ashes, don't eat the stuff so it has never really mattered to me... lol

People do get mad at me when I take it and add it to turkey brine though.. They always say to buy the cheap stuff and give them the real deal.. Usual response is get off your lazy bum and make your own.. Kinda the same response when I make up venison jerky or find a boat load of morels in the spring..

The only maple syrup I have ever tasted is the store bought stuff...and I am sure it pales in comparison. Being from the south I hope one day I will be able to taste some real deal syrup from up north but I will say it looks delicious and the process to produce your own looks like a blast. Plus the memories with the kids you cant put a price on that. Im officially jealous as well.

Hey Spark, just curious. 44 gallons of sap will make approximately how many gallons of syrup? Is there a basic formula that to make one gallon of syrup, it takes about "X" amount of sap?

Not to step on Tonys toes and he can correct me if I am wrong, but from memory the average ratio is 40 to 1... It is a lot of time and work to produce good maple syrup.. I have helped friends do it in the past just for the comradery, well that an a reason to drink beer..

Reading this makes me want to take my boys out and tap a few trees and make some up so they have the appreciation of what it takes..

Thanks for the info. I guess if it were easy, everyone would be doing it!

40:1 is a pretty good average, although it varies some with the sugar content of the sap.....which also varies according to time of year, and the variety of maple you have tapped. 2.5-3% sugar content is considered great, and some producers will check this with a refractometer. The higher the sugar content, the less time spent boiling.

I just tap the trees and boil...I have plenty of firewood for fuel!

A trick to reduce the ratio before boiling is removing the ice, as the sugars will tend to not freeze into the ice. On very cold mornings I have gotten it down to 20:1 or so. I'm sure some sugar is trapped in the ice, but not much.

I used 3-gallon plastic (surgical) bags on holders, which allows draining the remaining unfrozen sap into buckets, and then tossing out the ice. Usually a hole remains in the ice on the tree-side of the bag. It saves quite a bit of boiling in the right conditions!

I am missing it this spring, but I am over-booked with Scouts.

“A sap-run is the sweet good-bye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.”
~John Burroughs, "Signs and Seasons", 1886

Equal mariage huh? Not this eve, at least not in my sugarbush.

I was wondering about that when I was outside today. I was also wondering if trees that are tapped on the South side of the trunk will flow on days where the temps are below freezing vs. the North side of the trunk.

How old are those taps?

Wed is supposed to have a high of 8 above, Thurs and Fri around 12-15 above. Nights at or below zero....

I saw one of the Amish guys using a hydrometer to check the boiled syrup instead of a refractometer.

Esshup, I do my best to try and tap only on the south side of the trees...and it does make a difference. The tap in the photo has been in for 8 days now.

I also use a hydrometer to check syrup.....but not sap.

The taps look like they're wrought iron and OLD!

My signature in another forum I used to frequent is a John Burroughs quote..

"I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order."

John Burroughs

Oh,how I wish I would have paid more attention to what my mother and father did. I'm glad somebody still knows how to do it. Thanks for starting and continuing this thread.

I haven't been involved in maple syrup since the early 1960s. But, it seems like this would be a great year for lots of production. For the last several weeks our temps have been going between the single digits and into the mid-30s/lower-40s nearly every day. It sometimes varies as much as 10 degrees either way. With these temperature swings, I'm sure the maples are moving a lot of sap. It has also been two very wet years for us, so there is a lot of moisture in the root systems.

We used a team of Belgian horses to collect the buckets, using what my family called "sledges" -- not sleds! My dad and my uncles put boards where logs were usually loaded on the sledges, and they put large sap "boxes" on top of those. The "boxes" were the size of the top of our sap stove. When there was lots of sap running, they hung smaller (3-4 gallon??) buckets above the boxes.

We sold most. We split the rest with the family.

My mother and aunts would cook around the clock over a big wood fired flat top stove that my uncle welded from steel plates. It was in our smokehouse -- as the bacon and hams were done by syrup season. It was definitely a labor of love.

It sure all looks delicious,and sure brings back a lot of memories.

Dang Sparkplug, the frozen sap is very interesting but IN ground with no snow just plain baffles me.

No snow here Bob, been gone for a few days. Now I'm finding flooded roadsways to be my biggest travel impediment.

Note to self: Before NEXT tapping season, design, fabricate, and install a steam hood.....it's monsoon season in the sugar shack today.

Ya mean you don't have a huge cupola on top to let the steam out?

Sparky, does it get warn enough in there to keep that steam from freezing? I know absolutely nothing about this process.

No cupola, but I do have a ventilation fan right above the evaporator. It's hard to see in the photo, but the floor in the building is split level, and correspondingly so is the roof. The fan blows through the short "end" wall onto the lower section of roof. It works, but it just can't keep up. These things make a lot of steam.

Dave, there's no freezing fog inside the building.. It's not like a wood fire in the stove, this thing is wide open all the time. No damper in the pipe, and the draft control cranked open. The flames start at one end of the barrel, and are pulled all the way to the stovepipe on the other end, a distance of about five feet.

It roars pretty good, and keeps me toasty.

Never mind that puny cup, my sap bucket runneth over.... During the last five days I have managed to collect another 50 gallons of sap, enough to boil again this weekend.

Then tonight, I gathered an additional 52 gallons just in a 24 hr period.

Going to be a long weekend of boiling.

You'll have to start checking the buckets more often. The sap will really be running now! Good weather for it, and moisture in the ground.

It'll be raining in the sugar shack with all the steam!!!!!

How much syrup does a gallon of sap make?

It depends upon the sugar content in the sap, which varies according to different times of the season, which species of maple you have tapped, and even from tree to tree within the same area.

Last season in Indiana, the AVERAGE amount of sap needed to make 1 gallon of syrup was 42 gallons.

With the warm temps down there (compared to here) any idea how many more days you'll be able to collect sap before it turns bitter?

You're going to go from making syrup to morel hunting!

Usually, you quit when the trees start to bud out. I don't think that time's very far off, either. Fortunately, we intend to boil next Sat and Sun and then we'll be all done. We boiled 14 hours this weekend, and reduced a total of 107 gallons of sap.

As of right now we have made almost 3 gallons of syrup, with another 4 gallons of sweet ready for final reduction. That should put us up around 5 gallons total. If we get another 2-3 gallons of syrup next weekend, that will do it.....already beyond what I intended to produce.

Checking the finished product with the hydrometer. Notice the red line just above the liquid's surface... this batch might be a little heavy, but we'll blend it with what we produced earlier and should be fine.



Finished product....bottled sunshine.

That looks great! Now who's going to design the labels for the jars?

Tony,
That looks great, well done sir, well done!!! Now if you had 2000 pancakes, you would be set!!

Well done...this makes 8 hr lump charcoal burns seem more like a trip to the Quik Shop! Impressive, and great documentation...

How long will it keep? Do you freeze it for use throughout the year?

Tony, very cool thread. I really like more of the old school homesteading stuff on the forum. I doubt most of us have a pond in an urban backyard, so branching out to various agricultural/gardening/horticultural stuff makes a lot of sense. Our ponds are just a part of the total package. A big part, but just a part nonetheless.

Seems like maple syrup is a bargain at almost any price.

I hope you teach this craft to a younger generation to keep the torch burning (pun intended). Good job continuing this process.

+100

All done....pulled the taps this evening, and will wash the buckets and put them away. I'm glad to be finished, but it did sting a little to dump that 35 gallons of sap tonight.

My goal was to make 2-3 gallons of syrup, just to have some for us and be able to give the rest away....well, after boiling down 280 gallons of sap, we ended up with around six gallons. Already planning to increase production yet again next year.

It's bittersweet. One one hand it's good to be done, but on the other it's kinda' sad.

My wife, skimming foam:



My family, with the ash door open on the evaporator so they could make smores: (Boil got so violent with door open it worried me)



Sunset on syrup:

Strong work Tony! Great thread from tap to bottle.

Congrats on your work, a great write-up and a successful season! The sap here just started running less than a week ago.

Well done, Uncle Jamima! PM for my home address, I'll whip up some flapjacks this weekend. Appreciate your thoughtfulness and generosity in advance.

Tony, that has to be a very proud feeling for you and your family, well done indeed!!

Somehow just saw this thread... Very cool! We have a handful of sugar maples on our hunting property in PA. Only a couple are probably large enough to be worth tapping. We have a few more larger red maples, but I don't think they have a high enough sugar content to make it worth tapping. I could never get into using the fake stuff on my pancakes and waffles.

Thanks everyone. I know it wasn't the least bit related to ponds, but things were a little slow on the forum so I thought I would share the experience. I appreciate everyone's patience and encouragement.

Tony,
I disagree, the Higher Cause and Spirit you demonstrated is exactly what PondBoss is to me. You took the time to honor the past and teach traditional values to your family and you were kind enough to let us be part of that. So much of today is fast paced, prepackaged, or on some little screen. What you did was to remind us all about the gift of creating something and being able to appreciate true craftsmanship. Thank you for sharing and reminding me to slow down a bit and enjoy the process.

Maple syrup thread was entertaining and informative. Nice job and well done.

I enjoyed it, you made me want to go start tapping birch since there no maple around.

This is a project on your property so it is very much deserving to be in the "Property Projects & Construction" forum. I've certainly enjoyed the read.

Got a call yesterday, so I picked up mine today.

Nice looking containers. I have a half gallon coming when I get to northern Wisconsin in May. My relatives make over 200 gallons on a good winter. They use the my uncles old milk cooler to do the cooking in. If I get back there this year when I am up there I will take a picture of the setup. Over 600 trees tapped and hoses to collect it all with. No buckets use there.

Container wars.....maple syrup style.





My wife printed the labels on the computer just to get some idea of what we wanted to have made for next year. She took some to work with her to get some other opinions, and sold all the extra we had....apparently people love these for gift-giving. We did have a request to add "Freedom, IN." somewhere on the label, which we will do for next year. Never dreamed there was such a demand for this stuff.

Something tells me I will be ramping up production next year.

Dang Tony, I like it!

I'd put something on there for the people who have to to contact you if they so desire. Even a small white stick-on label on the back side with a phone number, e-mail addy or something like that. That's what the amish do that I buy from. They take orders a year in advance, and fill those orders first before selling any. That way they know how much they have to make at a minimum. You just can't show up at their house to buy some. Only after they get all their customers taken care of will they put out a "Maple syrup for sale" sign.

I love this thread!!! And if I had Maple trees, I'd try it .

I didn't make any this year, and now I gained 4 pounds this March! Haven't been getting enough exercise. Normally busting my hump lugging sleds, wood, and buckets. *sigh*

Was it Jimmy Dean that said/sang "sugar is sweet and so's maple surple"?

You're close Dave.

"They say roses are red, violets are purple:
sugar is sweet and so is maple syruple.

I'm the seventh, out of seven sons:
my pappy was a pistol I'm a son-of-a-gun."

"Dang Me", by Roger Miller.

Yep, "They oughta take a rope and hang me".

Tony, Scott and I were wondering about the weight of a gallon of sap. I guess the sugar content would make it vary, but what would you guess?

To be legally called syrup, a gallon should weigh 11.3 lbs. That's at 66 brix.

If anyone would like to trade a small amount of their maple syrup for my homemade passion fruit jelly, just let me know.

Got it. Now, what's brix?

Brix refers to the sugar content of a liquid. One degree of brix equals 1 gram of sugar in 100 grams of liquid.

New cupola on sugarhouse. A door on each side, hinged at the bottom. Spring loaded to break open initially, and then gravity takes over. A system of ropes and pulleys inside the sugarhouse allows one to open and close the doors in increments. Hoping it's a big improvement over last year.

That looks much better than having to wear a rainsuit indoors!!

Because of the steam during the cooking process?

Very nice work Tony.

Yes. I think it's something like 30-50 gallons of sap to one gallon of syrup. I think it all depends on the sugar content of the sap.

I made syrup one year just to see how hard it was, and lets just say that if you aren't going to make a bunch of it and sell it, it's cheaper to go buy it. I didn't have to worry about running the humidifier for a while, even with the range hood venting outside from over the stove.

Al, the next time you talk to Dave, ask him how real maple syrup compares to store bought stuff. I sent him a sample last year, and I also sent a sample out to Hawaii to roadwarriorsvt.

I upped my standing order for this year to 5 or 6 gallons with the Amish family that I get mine from. They have a huge tank on a wagon that is pulled by 4 draft horses to collect the sap. They've been making syrup since the early 1970's. Last year was the latest they've ever made syrup. Their record keeping system was interesting to see - they just wrote on the inside wall of the sugar shack when they started for the year, how many gallons they made per day, and when they stopped making syrup that year.

I betcha DD1's hunting this weekend, but I'll talk to him this week.

Scott is right. Put a little bit of the real stuff on your forehead and your tongue will beat your brains out trying to get to it.

Been studying the long range forecast, and decided to go all in. The family and I will be putting taps in tomorrow....hopefully ice fishing in the morning while it's coldest, then hit the woods as the temps rise into the low 50's.

Things are changing quickly right now, weather wise.

According to the weather up here, you have a week before the bottom falls out of the thermometer. Get the tubing and the vaccum pump fired up!

Tapped in today. We shall see what mother nature has in store.

Hope all goes well for ya. A friend made some for the first time last yr but I wasn't fortunate to sample it.
Did the ice hold up overnight?

Thanks Bob. Ice was good this morning, not so good by evening. Hopefully will tighten back up.

Thanks for the quick response. Since you're much farther So than my place, I'd have guessed the ice to have melted down pretty bad.

Did she cooperate? I always enjoy this thread.

She did indeed, Al. We tapped in with 55 maples and 10 black walnuts, and collected 35 gallons maple sap and 6 gallons walnut sap this morning. Not a big run by any means, but just right to test out the changes we made over the summer. It was nice smelling the sap cooking and listening to the boil.

My wife along with our oldest, tapping in.


Gage, dumping sap from a bucket into the collection tank.


Offloading sap from the collection tank into the storage tanks inside the building.


Our boys, filling the tanks. So much nicer than carrying 5 gallon buckets.


Steam rising up into our new cupola. No more rain in the sugar house.

Trade you some Datil pepper jelly for some????

You're on!

Sprkplug,

I have never heard of collecting Black Walnut sap for syrup. Do you mix the maple and walnut together or make a different syrup from the Walnut?

Tony, outstanding. Keep the pics coming. I never see a picture of your boys where their not smiling, and that says a lot about the value of family activities.

Thanks Al, I'm never sure if this is appropriate content, not having to do with ponds and fish at all.

Bill, the walnut is something new for us also. Time will tell.

I have a friend over in your area that makes syrup from everything.. He posted some smoked salmon pics awhile back that he brined in his hickory syrup that looked delicious.. He also makes a vanilla bourbon I would like to try..

It's absolutely appropriate. I've never seen a pond in a bank's asphalt parking lot.

Ponds, wildlife, property activities. They all tie in together.

Oh, man, Tony, I look forward to this thread every year! Please post more pics of the process as it continues

Cool, we just need to make a big batch now.
If you haven't had Datils here is the story of them.not real common outside St augustine area... However recently I have seen popularity expanding around florida and the south east.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datil_pepper

I'll need to make my own thread I guess.. lol

Geez, I wonder if anyone travels back and forth from In to Fl.

Walnut syrup may take some effort. Refractometer indicates 1.25% sugar content in the sap. That equates roughly to 70 gallons of sap per 1 gallon of syrup, IF, the sugar content holds and doesn't drop as the season progresses.

Yikes, that's a lot of sap per gallon. Doesn't the sugar content normally decrease as the season progresses in Maple trees?

I know where plenty of black walnuts are that you can tap.. Only a 2.5 hour drive north west..

Sprkplug this post is great!!!

You got me googling today after you mentioned walnut syrup. We have tons of box elder trees on our property. When we first bought this property I was going to cut them down as trash trees. Now I see they make a very good syrup as well as producing an abundance of huge tasty mushrooms in the fall. Now I consider them a productive asset!

Yep, box elders are often considered members of the maple family, and make great syrup. Are you thinking about tapping this year, Bill?

Thanks for the offer Sean, but that's a long way to haul sap, and an even longer distance to hang tubing!

Scott you are correct. The first sap of the season is usually highest in sugar, and often makes the lightest grade of syrup. That's one reason we tapped in so early this year.

That, and the fact that I'm trying to get things wrapped up before a certain weekend in Feb.

Not this year. Travel commits for work will have me away from home. Definitely on my list for next year. One site I was looking at said 40 gallons of box elder sap per gallon of syrup. Before I put a lot of effort into it I would like to make just a quart or so the first year to see if we like it. About how many trees do you think I would need to tap to get 10 gallons of sap? My trees are 1.5 to 2.5 feet in diameter.

Well, there's usually another part to the equation: elapsed time. Weather plays the biggest role in determining how much sap will run over a 24 hour period, AND there's a huge difference in the trees themselves.

As an example, we gathered 48 gallons of sap this evening from 55 taps. But, some trees gave up just a cup or so, while others yielded almost 2 gallons. Learning which trees are heavy producers overall is part of being a good sugarmaster.

The other, and arguably more important factor, is learning which trees give the highest quality sap....that with the highest sugar content. Just like ponds, trees are highly variable, and...you guessed it, "it depends".

Roadside trees with huge crowns are favored as being good sap producers....which is one reason you often see big maples along roadways. They very well may have been placed there purposefully, years ago when the road was first established....roadside sap pickup is much easier than trudging through a foot of snow in the sugarbush.

More to point, if you allow a week to collect sap, and boil on the following weekend, under favorable weather conditions, I would say 4-5 trees would be plenty. As the saying goes, "better to have extra than not enough....you can always dump excess sap".

This is one of the most interesting threads on the forum.

You guys are making me hungry for pancakes, sausage, and scrambled eggs!

Sugarmaster; never heard of that one.

I'll have to talk to the Amish family that makes the syrup that I buy. They might have it done before I leave for the conference. Even if they don't I still have some I can bring down for someone to sample if they haven't ever had the real thing.

Is the real thing different from that sold at Wal-Mart?

You can get 100% REAL Maple Syrup in stores, and Walmart carries their own brand, plus sells some stuff from Vermont. Haven't tried any from there.

Only ever had the 100% stuff from MI and NY, and this ain't no artificially flavored fructose corn syrup, with 20 other ingredients to fill bottle space.

It depends on the taste you like tho, and that depends on whose minding the process, and how well they are working it.

I guess you can classify really good Maple Syrup, in the same ranks as really good Bacon, Honey and Butter that makes everything taste so darn good!

Tony,

What kind of GBS do you have to go thru to actually sell this to someone else?

I've seen real maple syrup at Walmart, along with the artificial stuff. As far as it being as good, well it depends. A lot of variables can influence the finished product, such as time of year, (early or late season), production method, (batch or continuous), blended or not, age of sap before being processed, etc.

The retail market usually wants light colored syrup. Individuals tend to prefer a darker, stronger flavored product. Syrup is graded by color. Type A or B, light, medium, or dark amber for table syrup, and heavier, darker types and grades suitable for cooking, or further processing.

That's why bottling in glass is the ultimate show off for a sugarmaker...the product has to be perfect. Glass won't hide anything, while plastic will. You won't see the niter,(sugarsand), or cloudy syrup in a plastic bottle, but it's readily apparent in glass.

Of course plastic is often cheaper and more practical for bottling larger quantities, such as gallon containers, so just because your syrup comes in plastic doesn't mean it's inferior. But then again, how would you know if it was?

Indiana isn't too bad, with the guidelines making note that syrup is produced in the woods, and the regs reflect that.

You can find a link to the guidelines (Indiana) here: http://www.indianamaplesyrup.org/news/finalguide.html

Illinois just passed a new law allowing people to make and sell stuff prepared in their home kitchens. The news report said the product must clearly state it is Homemade and you can't have sales exceeding $1000 per month.

Got up this morning and made a last second decision not to open the shop, but spent the day in the woods instead. Definitely the right choice.

View at the sugarhouse, looking east.



Steam rising from the cupola, framed against the dawn sky.

Just got back from Wally World in Grand Haven, MI with glass 12.5oz of their house blend grade A Amber, and the same from the place in VT. A buck difference in price, with the VT stuff being more, but what a difference in flavor!

I guess I wasted money on one of them

So okay JKB I'll bite, which one tasted better to you?

I often read threads like this and wonder to myself why can't people like Tony live closer to me.. Then I return to normal thinking and thank God for his sake he doesn't...

Well Bill, we all know that taste is subjective to the taster. The stuff from VT had a richer maple flavor, while the other stuff tasted more like eating a teaspoon of sugar that was slightly flavored.

Personally, I really didn't like either one, but one was much better than the other.

I'm sure Tony's stuff rocks!, so if you can find a small producer like him that puts the passion and care that they do, that will be the best stuff.

My BIL use to get his from a neighbor he grew up with in NY, and that was really good.

Someone ought to start a pickle thread this season. I know, I know, everyone makes the best

Well done......thanks for the story!!!

Spark is really no different from anyone else that enjoys life.

I've seen photos of your place Sean. Why on earth would you want a maple syrup making, chainsaw revving, ginseng growing, HBG loving, outrageous contraption building, ice fishing maniac moving into such a nice neighborhood? Think of the property values man. Some areas of the country are just now starting to recover after the most recent housing fiasco.

Come to think of it though, I believe I've seen you running a warmed over saw? Maybe there IS room for me in Illinois. Unfortunately, I promised Yolk Sac that were I ever to depart Indiana longterm, I would make every effort to secure property in his immediate vicinity. Sorry man.

Maple syrup, REAL maple syrup, is somewhat of an acquired taste. If you are used to Mrs. Butterworth's on your pancakes, you may be surprised by the taste. My own sister doesn't care for the real stuff. Silly girl. Fortunately many, most perhaps, try it and never go back to flavored corn syrup.

Sometimes I feel I might be chasing something that is not real. Living the dream , they say!!!

Nice material things are not living the dream.. Getting back to nature is what I consider living the dream.. Wish I had more time not tied to a paycheck to get out and teach my boys things they can take with them for life.. Don't get me wrong, I am very fortunate and we have nice things that are all payed for.. We don't live outside our means and I do take my boys with me every chance I get to the woods.. But sometimes we loose track of what is really important and get lazy... Pulling the oh we'll do it next year turns into, wow, where did time go?..

Now back to syrup, don't eat any of it.. The last batch I helped collect and make years ago I used to brine a turkey we smoked at deer camp.. My wife and boys on the other hand could eat pancakes and waffles every morning..

I know exactly what you mean. In 74 I left the farm to go to college to be an engineer. I have traveled the world. I have been to and lived in alot of those places they write about in the magazines in the dentist's office waiting room. I have worked with lasers, electron beams and other really cool stuff. I spent weeks working on the first B-2 bombers out in CA. I ate White Castle hamburgers on a picnic table under the wing of the first F-15E fighter....But still something was missing.

Finally! I married a farm girl from Thailand and brought her back to the US. Bought a small little chunk of land and built a small little puddle of a pond. Great wife and two great boys. Life is now good!

Unfortunately still have to get a paycheck. Heading for Singapore in February for a few weeks. My wife is very understanding about me having to travel. She just says "Your job puts rice in our rice bowls!"

Dang life is good!

The first steak I ate in Australia tasted very different than the steak here stateside. Welcome to the factory farming of USA wherein it is pork 'em out ASAP, and separately, FAT is king here. The steak in Australia I ate was so lean it was vastly different in taste.

Your post regarding syrup reminded me of food differences.

Both Dave Davidson and roadwarriorsvt have tasted the real stuff. Maybe they'll weigh in on how it tasted.

Yep, it's in a class all by itself. I thought of the honey from my own bees many years ago.

Yep, I traded esshup some of my homemade jelly for some of his maple syrup. I think I got the better deal! The grandkids stuck with the imitation store bought stuff, because that is all they're been exposed to, which meant for real stuff for me! The genuine maple syrup wasn't as thick as the imitation stuff, which was fine by me, but it had a genuine true flavor.

Processed a small batch into syrup today, the first of our 2015 season. Very light, which is typical of early in the season.

Very nice! You've upgraded the facilities and procedures, so what's next? Are you happy with the whole process, or will there be something new next year?

Tony,

Did you make any of the walnut syrup yet? If so, is it good?

Already planning next year's improvements, most notably in the filter dept. We upgraded this year to a dedicated filter tank with synthetic filters and prefilters, and it was better/faster than last season, but I'm still not satisfied. The big boys have water jacketed filter/bottler units, or even gear driven pumps forcing the syrup through filter banks, but the small scale producer's choices are limited.

I have some ideas, so I will try to build something for next season.

No walnut yet, Bill....still trying to gather enough sap to be able to boil it down. Not much sugar in that stuff, so it will take approx. twice as much sap to make a gallon of black walnut syrup as it does maple.

Tony, does the lighter colored syrup have a "lighter" taste?

When I was a bee keeper, I found that very light colored honey didn't have a taste that was as sweet, or maybe as strong, as the stuff with a little bit darker color. We sometimes mixed it to get more sweetness.

Yes Dave it does. Not as much maple flavor, but still extremely sweet. In the northeast, this light stuff is what the producers want to make, as there is a big market for it. Never understood that, as most who taste it prefer the richer maple flavor found in darker syrup. At least around here anyway.

A little known factoid is that the large honey companies mix all of the honey to get a taste that is somewhat consistent. And, depending on what the bees 'collect', some is inedible, or even poison until mixed. It all depends on what blooms around the bees.

Sadly enough, due to Colony Collapse Disorder, honey could soon become a thing of the past. And, with that, goes a good sized segment of the global agriculture.

Poison? Wow!

Maple producers do the same thing, blending batches for a uniform taste and appearance. I understand this, but I think something may be lost during the process. In my opinion, this is where the small scale producer has an opportunity to actually celebrate, embrace, and promote the distinctiveness of small batches...much the same way as small wineries do with their product.

We actually have a couple customers who specified early syrup if possible....these folks know and understand the intricacies and inconsistencies involved in the process, and are looking for a particular element, whether it be taste, color, whatever.

The darker stuff is my preference. I seriously doubt this stuff I got at Walmart, both house and VT blend will go any further than the taste test. Just ain't right!

Pushed just over 100 gallons of sap in 11 hours through the evaporator yesterday, which is a laughably small amount to a real sugar operation. But we were pleased with those numbers, and thought it was pretty good for a 2'x3' flat pan on a homemade, natural draft arch.

Got pretty toasty standing next to it though. I think my jeans got so hot it melted the hair on my legs, and I'm now convinced that a zipper makes a passable substitute for a branding iron, especially when applied to sensitive parts of the anatomy. Need fire resistant chaps, or something along those lines.

You need SFI 3/2A-5 spec protection?

http://www.deist.com/driving-suits-2piece-driving-suits-c-8_10.html

They are saying (up here at least) that the month of Feb will be cold.

Are you any closer on making a decision on whether to hit the conference?

The conference looks doubtful for me. This cold weather has shut the trees down, and we still have a long way to go in order to hit our goal. At this point in time I'm just hoping to get things wrapped up before the spring rush explodes into the shop.

Have you tried the walnut syrup yet?

Intending to boil walnut sap tomorrow, for the first time. I don't plan to take it all the way to syrup just yet, only to concentrate it for easier storage until we gather more.

Up here it's only supposed to barely get above freezing twice in the next 10 days.

That reminds me. I need to tell the amish family that makes syrup that I'll be out of town for a while.

That is a terrible assignment of priorities!!! I can only imagine an intelligent man such as yourself, Sparky, has succumb to the telepathic thoughts emanating from your resident GSF, fearing you will learn the truth of their evil doings under your water and have therefore convinced you that frozen sap will somehow thaw, keeping you home to work....

Walk away from the glistening green and yellow scales keeping you in a mental haze, and join us at the conference!!

Rainman, you haven't by any chance delivered any fish to a certain, sunny side up pondmeister in Tennessee recently, have you?

I would love to attend the conference, see some familiar faces and make some new acquaintances. I won't know for sure until right at the last minute, but it appears highly unlikely right now.

Tony, hope you can make it. I'd like to meet you in person.

The feeling's mutual, Dave.

Tony, I can't disclose any water changing locations or locks and gate codes get changed.

I can tell you one thing, that pondmeister has trees that jump out and knock the snot out of trucks now and then!

Reduced approx. 30 gallons of walnut sap down to 3 gallons of concentrate today. Odd smell while boiling, and the taste is a little awkward too. It is getting sweet however, so I'll carry on as soon as mother nature permits.

Tony,

Is there a book or some other resource you would recommend on making your own syrup? Looking for recommendations on equipment, boiling, pretty much the whole process. Sounds like a cool thing to do.

Bill D., better build a sugar shack or buy a good rain suit!

This is an easy $10 investment:

Backyard Sugarin' A Complete How-To Guide
http://www.amazon.com/Backyard-Sugarin-C...ackyard+sugarin


It is not targeted to commercial processing, but the home do it yourselfer with shallow pockets but a desire to make syrup. I don't think you can go wrong reading and referencing this book.

Thanks! Think I will get a copy.

.....does it cover recommendations on rain gear and/or sugar shacks?

I have that same book. It's a little dated, but most of the info is still applicable and relevant. One of the biggest changes is removal of lead, such as used in galvanized collecting buckets, and in the solder used to fabricate the pans.

If it were just me wanting to try my hand at making syrup, I probably wouldn't worry as much about the lead. But if you intend to sell or give the finished product away, then that's another story.

If you want the "bible" of syrup production, this is what you're looking for: http://www.massmaple.org/manual.php

I've given this maple syrup thing quite a lot of thought over the past couple weeks, and figured I might share a little of what it means to me to be a small, part time sugarmaker.

It means getting up earlier on the weekends than I would during a weekday, and heading over to the cabin, in the dark, to build a fire in the woodstove. My parents drive 50 miles one way just because they want to be a part of the process, but they cannot endure the cold like they once could. So I get the fire started early, so the cabin is warm when they arrive. They'll typically stay over a couple nights, helping in the sugarhouse during the day.

It means getting an early start on the fire in the evaporator, so the sugarhouse will be warm enough for their comfort also.

It means getting several cases of glass syrup bottles for Christmas, and being honestly thrilled with that gift. It means watching my 73 year old mother skim foam off the boiling sap, (and finding out she has ordered a custom, stainless skimmer just for that purpose), while watching my 75 year old father swing open the firebox door and pitch in some wood.

It means celebrating my youngest son's 12th birthday in the sugarhouse, complete with cake and candles, surrounded by family members singing "happy birthday"....and wondering if he is OK with that. It means watching my 14 year old son back the Mule around the trees, collection tank full of sap, and hook up the discharge hoses and begin offloading sap into the storage tanks, all without any input from me. And observing my father, who watched the whole thing through the window, smile and nod.

It means watching my wife bottling 200 degree syrup one moment, filling the preheater the next, running and emptying buckets, and bringing home a new journal today, just so we can record such details as gallons made, sap collected, and who was there that day to help celebrate a birthday.

It means knowing you're committed to either reaching your production goal, or running until the season ends, whichever comes first. It also carries the unfortunate realization that neither scenario is under your control.

It means being cold and wet, and tucking your pants legs down into your boots....when the trees thaw enough to run, the ground thaws also, and it's mud everywhere.

It means hanging a note on the office door, apologizing for being in the woods instead of the shop, and asking that if you drop something off to please include a note with your name and number. Then returning only to find that every note includes something along the lines of "How's the sap running?", or "would you mind if I came over and just watched?", or even "I remember doing that as a boy...good for you!"

Bottled another 2.5 gallons this weekend, getting there, one drip at a time.

Now that sir is called Livin the Good Life and having your priorities set right! Congrats!

Tony, enjoy it. Things always change.

How does a guy go about buying some of this from you? Or is it even for sale?

Tony:

The Amish family that I get mine from writes their daily production on the sliding door of the sugar shack, and now it has migrated to the wall with a black magic marker. It's grouped by year, then a column by month/date and gallons of sap processed and gallons of syrup produced. It's a record that is going back into the early 1970's, and is always at their fingertips. Last year was only the 2nd or 3rd year that they were collecting sap in April. They had to close the sliding door all the way to see all the records.

The records can't be lost or destroyed unless the shack burns down. Not saying that the leger is not the way to go, but having that many years of history right behind them as they are tending the evaporator is kinda neat.

I believe you are starting a legacy that your kids will continue to keep going, although there may be some interrupted years once they discover girls.

You're right Scott; things change. Parents don't live forever and the children grow up to get busy with their own lives.

The Beatles said it best in Puff the Magic Dragon. Dragons live forever but not so little boys. All of these things make way for other toys.

Treasure these times Tony.

Dave, I'm kinda thinking that Peter, Paul & Mary talked about Puff.

Good good good, clarifies some things for me. Keep it up, Spark.

Spark,

You should donate a bottle of that to the Auction at the Conference. I can see that going for a pretty penny. Money goes to a good cause as well.

I'd bid on it if they'll take bids oveer the phone!

Tony:

If you do consider having a bottle bid on, and are wondering how you will get it to Dallas, I will be in Jasonville, IN on Monday afternoon doing a pond consult.

Scott

Jasonville?? Be careful out there....Yolk thinks my fish are mutants, but he's never fished out in the wilds of strip mine country, Jasonville!

Anyone know the policy on food-type items up for auction? Is it permissible?

Production is slow thanks to the weather, so chances are I won't make the conference. We're too far behind on where we should be, but the forecast is improving so I foresee some long nights boiling in my near future.

However, this entire venture is meant to be enjoyable and pleasing to the soul. And we can think of no better way to accomplish that, than to make a donation to a worthy endeavor. So if it is not objectionable, we would be honored to offer up some syrup for the cause.

Tony, just be glad that you aren't up here. Friday they are calling for a high of 4°F.

Little better down here. High of 16 tomorrow, with single digits for lows a few nights.

No sap for me.

I would say that if you are legal in "all respects" to sell to the general public, then go for it.

Auctions are strange animals, and a "buyer beware" scenario, but this would be one for a fund raiser, and not a real auction.

If it's a donation to a fund raiser, liability could reflect back.

Last Saturday was my youngest son's B-day, spent it in the sugarhouse...today was Valentines day, spent it in the sugarhouse also. No worries, both events were celebrated while the sap sizzled.

Lit the fire in the evaporator at 7 am this morning, got back to the house about 45 minutes ago. Almost 15 straight hours of boiling.

Got the OK from Mr. Lusk regarding maple syrup for the auction at the upcoming conference, so step up for a great cause!

Where could you find a hand crafted masterpiece tied by a PondBoss legend like George, right next to a sticky, fingerprint coated bottle of pancake dressing donated by some nut job who's eyebrows have been singed off?

PondBoss Conference and Expo, where else??

Gosh Dangit! Any progess on allowing on-line bids!!

Tony, once again, your annual maple syrup thread is one of my favorites.

I know you've streamlined the process, and plan to continue doing so, but 15 hours of tending boiling sap really puts the commitment in perspective.

What a kind way to put that, Al. At this stage, I might have substituted "obsession" in place of "commitment".

Nah, obsession never crossed my mind. We spent a lot of hours over a hot stove canning stuff out of the garden last year, and it all tastes better to us. It may just be our perspective, but it's something we taught ourselves to do, and we can't wait to get started again early this summer.

This shot illustrates how syrup can appear very different from batch to batch. Big producers may blend their product to assure uniformity in taste and appearance, but the small scale operation can choose to showcase each batch, and celebrate its distinctiveness.

The bottle on the left is from our first run, and is light amber. The bottle on the far right is dark amber, bottled today. There's a couple bottles of medium in between.

Light coloration usually gives you a very sweet taste, with a subtle maple flavor. The darker the syrup, the more pronounced the maple flavoring becomes, but it's not quite as sweet. Usually, anyway.

Nature holds most of the cards where color and sweetness are concerned, but there are subtle tweaks a sugarmaker can do to try and tip the balance one way or the other. Aging the sap, to allow the yeast to consume more of the sugars will usually yield darker syrup, as will an extended cooking process.

The syrup market out east prefers a light amber product, and darker syrup is frowned upon for that reason. But many who try maple syrup, REAL maple syrup, enjoy the taste of the darker stuff. Me included.

A quality medium grade, offers a fair compromise.

I am guessing that if you donate a dark bottle to the Conference auction it will bring more than a light syrup.

That would be my guess. No comparison. The full bodied dark stuff is a whole lot better, at least from my perspective. I'm not a big fan of Mary Poppins.

Good going on the thumbs up!

Sparky, it looks like you've become quite the "sugar daddy" !!!

Thanks guys. These four bottles are scheduled for arrival in Dallas, provided I can hook up with esshup sometime today. He's got his hands full.....pulling a loaded trailer, headed to Southern Indiana which is getting pounded with snow right now, and as of last night his internet was still down so he's unsure of his route.

We're trying to meet up somewhere along the way.



edit: This is what the trailer looked like after the first day on the road.

Be safe Sprk & Esshup. I hear we got 5" on our pond last night and more snow coming. Skies were clear when I left late afternoon... Just a dusting in Indy so far.

I don't know what sprkplug is sending to the auction, but if the box is correct it's BS engine parts. (Briggs & Stratton)

I think he posted a ways back that he uses old motor oil as a thickening agent. Now I am not trying to discourage other bidders mind ya!

Do you know what they want for disposal fees of used motor oil? Solved that problem!

Mmmm 30 wt. syrup I gotta bid on that!!

Sparkie,

Any update on the walnut syrup?

Boiled the last of our walnut sap today. Our hope is to combine it with the reduction from our last attempt, and finally have enough to take all the way to syrup. Need to wrap this up, as the temps are too warm to store sap, and the shop is due to explode with work any day. Actually, I'm betting that day will be tomorrow.

Grass is greening up FAST..


Did turn out another 65 bottles of maple, today.

Tony does Walnut syrup taste similar to Maple? Sorry if you've already covered this...I'm lazy, and want immediate gratification via information.

I wish I knew what it tasted like, TJ. As of right now, we haven't gathered enough walnut sap to enable us to make syrup. Walnut trees are apparently very stingy.

Sorry...

Tony - is it possible that walnut trees move sap at a different period than maples; similar to fish spawn periods?

I guess I'm curious what makes a tree a good candidate for syrup. Can one make syrup from other trees than Maple and Walnut I wonder? Cherry, persimmon, mulberry?

I just researched and found that unripe mulberries are mildly hallucinogenic!

I've been looking into that some. If time permits, I will be tapping my Box Elder trees next spring. Apparently, they make a very good syrup. .....Box Elder is a species of maple though

A good candidate is a tree with a full canopy, or crown. That gives the tree more "storage" for sap. Trees growing in the woods are usually surrounded for other trees, and they compete for sunlight...making them tall, but not much crown. Maples spaced out along main street in town, or out in the open somewhere, usually have much larger crowns and are coveted by sugarmakers. Trees further up in elevation tend to receive more sunlight over a given period, and this may increase their output also.

Serious efforts thin the woods (known as a sugarbush), aggressively to allow for greater growth of desirable trees.

And yes, different species produce sap, or run, at different times. We've found that the black walnuts begin earlier, temperature wise, than the maples, but do not give as much sap. It makes sense to me, since walnuts are the last trees in our area to bud out in spring, and the first to lose their leaves come fall.

You can tap a few different species of trees and make good syrup. Obviously maple is the most well known, with Birch probably coming in second. Walnut is gaining interest on the maple forum I frequent, (yes, there really is such a place), but that may be just because I won't shut up about it. Sugar maples have the highest sugar content when compared to silver or red maples, but we don't differentiate in our woods, we tap em' all. Box elders make great syrup, and they are considered a member of the maple family.

I wonder if the hallucinogenic quality carries through into the syrup? Now THAT would probably be a good mover.

Pancakes on Sunday morning, trippin' on the couch in the afternoon....I could totally sell that.

Unripe mulberries apparently are the ticket according to what I read - so while syrup might not a an option, trippy jam may be! Apparently the tea from unripe red and white mulberries is very popular in Japan.

So I drive by my neighbors house this afternoon and see they have two plastic milk cartons sitting on the ground around each of 6 or 8 maples in their yard with tubing running out of the trees. I guess I always thought you put one tap per tree. Is there some rule of thumb of how many taps based on tree diameter? These trees are probably 1.5 to 2 feet in diameter.

Edit: I could see thru the jugs and looked like each was about half full.

This probably explains why they cut down the mulberry tree at my old elementary school. Some do-gooder probably thought we were getting high, but I swear we only ever pelted people with the ripe ones and stained their clothes...

What I go by:

10-18" diameter, one tap.
18-24" diameter, two taps. We never go over two taps per tree.

Milk jugs make good, low cost sap buckets. Especially of you're using tubing and can set the jug on the ground. Drill a tight fitting hole in the lid, and rainwater and bugs won't be an issue. HOWEVER....honest-to-goodness sap buckets are tapered for a reason. Ice. When tapping in colder weather, sap will freeze, and the taper allows you to dump the ice while retaining the small amount of liquid that didn't freeze. Freezing concentrates the sugar, so dumping the ice saves you a lot of boiling time...the concentrated sap will not freeze as readily. Milk jugs freeze and there's no way to get the ice out until it thaws.

Except for one more crack at the walnut, we're all done. The flow has almost stopped, and the buds are swelling on the trees. Really screwy season. If anyone is interested, our end of season tally looks like this:

maple sap boiled...625 gallons.
maple syrup produced...14 gallons.
Average yield....44:1 (approx.)

Walnut....God only knows.

Pulling taps this weekend.

Sparkie,

Trying to learn here so I appreciate yer patience...Do you plug the holes from the taps with something when you pull them?

No Bill, the tree will heal on it's own, provided it was healthy to begin with. Older spiles (taps) were 7/16" diameter, while the newer ones are 5/16" diameter, in order to expedite the healing process. Nature begins to heal the wound as soon as you finish drilling the hole, and the sap will run less and less as time goes on. By six weeks or so the taps begin to dry out, as the tree closes off the wound.

I'll see if I can remember to grab a photo of a healed-over tap hole from last year.

Tony, this just went through my head:

Roses are red
Violets are purple
Sugar is sweet and so is maple surple

Roger Miller or?

I envy you being in an area where you can create that with all of the family involvements.

While you are talking tap holes, the tap does create a permanent mark inside the tree which discolors and creates a character mark in the wood(boards) when cut later. Some woodworkers like this, and others don't. Often when a mill is purchasing maple trees on a property they will ask whether or not the trees have been tapped. Value may go up or down depending.

Roger Miller indeed.

Shoot...just realized I forgot to grab a photo of a healed over taphole.

Last weekend's formation: A batch of dark on the left, medium on the right. That's all she wrote, except for the walnut. We had enough to fill last year's pre-orders, with a few bottles to spare. Should wrap things up in the next few days.

Hey Spark, have you ever come across info that eludes to Walnut syrup being problematic to some people. My thought is that the Tannins in the wood might be in the syrup too. Some folks are kind of "allergic" to walnut dust and such.

Yep. That's why many cringe at the thought of tapping walnuts...perceived loss of timber revenue. We just tapped em' short, close to the ground, below the log.

However I have a customer who has a sawmill, and he sawed the flooring for his home from logs cut out of his grandfather's sugarbush from years ago. The tap holes show up very plain in the flooring, and it's beautiful. He had lumber left over, and it fetched a premium price for flooring in a couple of other homes as well.

I suppose it's all in the eye of the beholder.

We recognize the possibility, and take great pains to try and separate the walnut from the maple. Separate storage tanks for the sap, dedicated filters, etc. We do boil in the same stainless pans, but they are cleaned thoroughly in between batches.

Nevertheless, we tell everyone who wants maple syrup that it was processed in a facility that also processed walnut syrup, and with it being a tree nut....better safe than sorry.

I don't know about the tannins, but the walnut contains a pectin that makes filtering a huge pain. We're getting there with it, one more reduction and filtering and we will bottle in 1.7 oz bottles. Just enough for folks to get a taste of the stuff.

Wow. As a kid, our family boiled down maple sap. Between our family farms, we had about a 1000 acres in Northern Wisconsin. One of my uncles did most of the collecting with the family's team of Belgian horses and a big sled. My dad did our 80 farm (about 40 acres of woodland) with our Farmall H. I can remember my mother and my aunts boiling day and night.

I have no idea how much sap we collected, and I have no idea how much syrup we produced. It was enough for our family, my dad's seven brother's families, and some extended family.

It was all done on a big wood stove in copper tubs. The stove sure burned a lot of wood because it was in an uninsulated 3-sided run-in barn, when it was still getting well below freezing at night.

I'm surprised anybody can still afford to make maple syrup.

Ken you should be dictating this on MP3s so you can write a memoir someday. These memories will be lost unless you old timers record it so we can pass it along to future generations. Those sound like simple, hard working but enjoyable days to me.

Behold.....Black Walnut syrup! Bottled it in 1.7 oz nip bottles, still have to label and dip in wax. It's good...sweet, yet it has a hint of the walnut bitterness?? I know that sounds contradictory, but it's the best I can explain it.

Spark are you selling any of it or is it private stock?

At this point in time, we aren't sure what we're going to do with it. Ended up with 29 bottles, which (depending on the formula you use), equates out to either 90 or 104 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup.

And we thought maple was a lot of work.

Yer opinion Sparkie, which do you like better, the maple or the walnut? Will you make the walnut again?

Curious, how do you know when you have reduced the sap far enough? You got a gizmo that you use to test it that tells you?

I prefer the maple, but the walnut is very good also. As far as making it again, it depends on the feedback we get. If it goes over well, we probably will.

Yes, the density is checked using a syrup hydrometer that is calibrated for the correct sugar content, which is 66 brix. Somewhere in this thread there's a photo that shows it in use....not sure where it's at.

Here:

Never had real maple syrup before bet it's good!

It's actually very healthy as well.

Please tell me it's just the lighting, and that's not a hint of green I see at the bottom of the bottle.

Reflections off of post - I hope LOL

Shhhh...

I'm in awe. That is beautiful. That's all I can say.

Tony, outstanding. This is still one of my favorite threads.

So, how much clean up after all that boiling, and sap moving?

Lots of cleanup, Al. All of the stainless pans that were exposed to the fire get all the soot removed via fine sandpaper, while the "sap" side gets a thorough scrubbing with a scotchbrite pad and hot water.

The storage tanks are all scrubbed down inside with hot water and bleach, then rinsed thoroughly. Same with the sap buckets themselves, all 60 of them. The spiles, or taps, get cleaned with a spile brush, them more boiling water and bleach.

The stainless finish containers, like the filter tank, receive no heavy scrubbing as scratches tend to accumulate debris...just lots of hot water. All of the transfer hoses as well as the pump get broken down, and cleaned with bleach and hot water....more heavy duty rinsing. Approx 30 plastic buckets of all sizes are cleaned and disinfected. Then everything gets dried thoroughly, and put away in the sugarhouse for next year.

We're all finished with cleanup, and the gear is all stowed. Good feeling.

Our season is in full gear right now, freezing nights, 40-ish days. Cannot keep up with only 10 trees!

Have a new Bayou Cooker and 64qt pot that can double for brewing to boil it down.

One thing that has helped is tossing out the ice from the bags before boiling. It takes the 40:1 ratio down to ~30:1. I loose some sugar in removing the ice, but it saves a lot of energy on the tail end of my process so it is worth some loss.

I have about 1 gallon produced so far, and another 2 gallon batch in the works. Just having trouble with wind and the cooker where the wind keeps pushing the flame out making it very inefficient. I have no shelter in which to keep the wind off. So it sits on the porch waiting for a quieter day to boil down.

I really wish an RO system was a bit more affordable to get me closer to syrup with little energy input.

The RO's are nice, and I wouldn't rule a homebuilt system out of the picture for us sometime in the future, but I still struggle with the concept....I know studies have indicated that there is no difference in taste between RO'd syrup and traditional, but right now our niche is "heirloom" syrup, produced the way our grandfathers did it.

I understand the draw, however. Anything that cuts the boiling time is a welcome addition to most sugarhouses.

I think we may dabble in tubing collection next year, and if I can make it work to my satisfaction, then a major upgrade may be in the works. May have to revisit the RO question in a couple years.

Congrats on the production LS! Love the ice trick, we do that also....a poor man's RO! Can you set up a windbreak around the burners to improve efficiency?

The maple sap collecting season was short around here - barely 3 weeks long. I picked up my syrup on Saturday. They said that they don't have enough to fill the existing pre-orders.

Man Sparky your description of the clean up reminded me of how complicated it was for me ta get ready for bowhuntin. The night before openin day I'd have ta dig all my clothes out from behind the seat of the truck. Take em all in to the dryer and put in a couple of fabric softner sheets ta take out the mold. Scroung around and find a clean pair of underwear. Get both my broadheads out and knock off the clay from last yrs misses and run em through the knife sharpner on the can opener and still be in bed by 1:30 or 2. Just a good thing I was dedicated.

Bob-O
You should have been a writer- the picture u paint with your words is , well makes me LMBO





Pat

Indiana's large-scale producers, the ones who count on the income from maple products, were hurt this year. The season was about three weeks short, due to frigid temps in Feb.

Bob-O, I admire your steadfast devotion and attention to detail. That kind of dedication is hard to come by.

You got it it right guys. I can picture Bob walking around his place saying,"Now where do I keep that clean pair of underwear!"

Looks like sycamore syrup may be on the agenda for next year also.

Sycamore. Isn't that in the maple family? Should be very cool!

Sycamore? We got that stuff down here

A majestic tree in my opinion. They can reach incredible size. I planted a bunch of saplings. Maybe my great great great grand children will enjoy the giants after I am long gone. I planted sweet gum mixed in with them for the same reason.

Bill got to draw the line there- sweet gum? That is a worthless tree down here. And them gumballs, hard on the bare feet

Where I planted the sweet gum at my place can flood so I was looking for a tree that can take standing water that won't kick the bucket.

Well..... Ok you're off the hook

She's saying "hurry up and let me put this thing down!!"

Cool shot!

Esshup, you teach that dog to collect full sap buckets off the trees and bring them to the sugarhouse, and I've got a business proposition for you.....

Is that Kate?

Yep, that's Kate.

Here's the progression:

Tony, she's getting there. Kate delivered our Indiana Maple Syrup yesterday. She must have done it, because the wrapping was too good for esshup to have done it.

Our syrup season was short too, A little over 3 weeks. It started off very weak also. I still managed to crank out 2.5 gallons though since it flowed like crazy for a few days on the weekend.

Sort of glad its over, I forgot how much work it was, and almost burned the house down when I forgot a pot on the stove and went to the movies. Thank God for neighbors! I have since moved outdoors until the last stage of finishing.

Whoa! Now that's scary. Glad everything worked out ok LS.

Remember those carbon "snakes" you could light as a firework? That was the pot on the stove. Stunk something awful. Took a LOT of elbow grease to clean the pot back out.

sprkplug and I did a little trade out and he sent me some his syrup.

I must say it is thicker and richer than the store bought pure maple syrup. It truley is quality stuff and the taste is outstanding!

He sent me a sample bottle of the Black Walnut syrup too. I have been instructed from my wife Emily to secure some more syrup, she is totally hooked on it.

The datil pepper jelly/sauce that I traded Bobby for is out of this world. My oldest just sits down with the jar and a spoon! Delicious!

Thanks again Bobby!

So Cool

After I get settled, again, I'm getting another dog.

Good seeing you today, err, yesterday Tony!!

Agreed Scott, I enjoyed your visit! Thanks for everything.

Some of my family are here visiting so I finally had the special occasion I've been waiting for to open my bottle of Sparkie's maple magic. What can I say.....AWESOME! The syrup was a huge hit and enjoyed by all.....I quickly capped the bottle and hid it in the fridge for my future private enjoyment!

....I am waiting for a cold winter morning to try the walnut on my wife's signature french toast. Never thought I would look forward to winter!!

I've been keeping my syrup hidden away waiting for the first brisk Fall day of 2015 to enjoy. Couldn't wait any longer, enjoyed some flapjacks yesterday morning. Simply amazing Tony - very grateful - thank you!

Glad you guys liked it. Starting to think about next February already.

I probably should open that box the gals from PB office sent me. It's still sitting on the wood stove

At least do it before you fire up the stove this fall!

put me on the list, Ill have emily make some more Datil Pepper Jelly if you truely liked it. The Black walnut was a big hit with her.

Done. Hopefully, we'll have more walnut this upcoming season.

Spent the afternoon in the woods, running some tubing. This will be our first attempt at sap collection using anything other than buckets, so it is very much a work in progress and learn as we go.

Tubing has been used in sugarbushes for several decades, in a few different configurations. The first attempts relied on gravity to simply carry the sap to a central collection point....less time emptying buckets is always a good thing. Soon after, someone decide to adapt an unused suction pump from a dairy, in order to try and extract sap rather than simply letting it drip out of the tree. And it worked. Today, you can still find gravity setups but most larger producers have switched to vacuum pumps, both electric and gasoline powered, to ramp up production.

What we are trying is a kind of hybrid setup. It's a fairly recent development, and it's gathering converts rapidly in the maple community. It's not suited to every sugarbush, as it needs a slope with a decent fall in order to function properly.

It starts by replacing the standard maple tubing of 5/16"ID with a smaller, 3/16"ID product. Basically you begin at the top of the slope or hill, and string the tubing from maple to maple all the while maintaining that all important downward slope. The more fall the better. The idea is to gather enough sap to completely fill the tubing, with no air space....that's the reason for switching to a smaller ID, as the larger 5/16 seldom if ever filled completely. With the smaller stuff, it will easily fill the tubing with no air gap, creating a "plug" of maple sap. Now is where gravity helps us out...as gravity pulls that solid, tube full of sap down the slope, a natural vacuum develops behind it, (or further up the hill). This natural vacuum works at the taps, and actually pulls the sap into the lines.

Almost a siphon of sorts, similar to what happens when a pond is drained. The weight of the falling water(sap) keeps pulling additional water(sap) from the pond(trees). Slick. Obviously the trees furthest up on the slope will have the greatest vacuum, but they claim a benefit to all trees on the line.

The beginning. This will be a tall tap, as we try for all the fall we can get. This first tree is actually on level ground, on top of the hill. Ambitious I know. The loop has one end connected with a three way fitting, and the other end is tucked into a sleeve made on the same fitting. It's called a drop. This keeps the end clean until it's time to tap, when the loose end will connect to the spile(tap). The long extra tube will connect to a vacuum gauge. Hopefully we will get a reading.



Another shot of the drop, with the sleeve pointing down and the line tucked up inside.



Zigzagging down the hill, maple to maple, always running down.




Runs a long, back and forth pattern.

Looks great and great concept. My relatives in N WI use a vacuum pump. Just one question, is it too soon to be putting it out? I would be afraid that the deer would mess with it especially that high off the ground. Did I miss something?

Cool setup. Is there a limit to how many trees can be on one line?

Tony, I told you I'd be back for maple syrup time.

And one of my favorite threads begins again.

My first thought was the same....what happens when a deer trashes such a nice, taut setup?

Lassig, you are correct in thinking it's too soon for syrup production, but the weather is right for installing the tubing now, vs. trying to do it with snow on the ground and 15 degrees. The tubing will stay up year-round, and yes limbs take it down, deer mess with it, and what I hear is worst of all....squirrels chew it. When syrup season is finished, the spiles are removed from the trees and the tubing is left in place for next season.

From what I have been told, 25 taps on each run of 3/16" is about max. We have 15 on this run.

We're slowly gearing up Al. I start the new job in January, so will not be able to take off and cook like I have in years' past....will definitely miss that part! Still, we're going to give it our best effort and see what happens. We've upped the maple tap count to 70, and doubled the Black Walnut also.

You climb up and splice it back together!

I sure would like some more of your syrup,

I would be glad to trade out again or just buy a little from you...
let me know if you have enough to share again this year.

^^^ +1 ^^^

Tony, amazing. I love this thread.

My father, my self, and my three boys have built a sugar shack this summer and ordered up a stainless evaporator pan. Last year the boys hauled all the sap up with four wheelers and it was alot of work. This year we're going to cook back there. Woods there its win win.

I would be interested in more detail about the tubing. We built the shack in the lowest point of the bush. We can tap 100 trees if we are ambitious enough.

Cheers Don.

P.S. we tapped only hard maples and the syrup was very light in colour but very sweet.

Bobby, I have you on the list and would love to trade. Hopefully mother nature and the new job will team up to allow for a good season.

Don that is awesome! How about some pics of the shack and your setup?? We're new to this tubing stuff ourselves, but I will provide all the detail I can if you let me know what you're interested in. Good luck!

Few pictures of the cooker last year. It was really a big pan and we did it in batches. Had it running over at my dads place or Grandpa so he could feed the fire and keep an eye on it.

The shack is made up from what the boys salvaged from our old home that we just finished the demo on. There was a lean too on the side of the house that was our hot tub room built on a heavy 2X6 deck. The windows and door are from the old house.

The side with the chimney is where we will put the cooker this year.

Cheers Don.

Looks great Don! Looks like you are good to go whatever Ma Nature throws you for weather. I really like your repurposing of the old materials. So many folks throw stuff like that in a burn pile and then have to go buy new when they need it.

It does look good! Will the evaporator sit outside the shack, under roof? Also, I see in the first photo you have rigged up what looks like a hand held blower, for an air under fire (AUF) setup? How did that work out, did it increase your GPH boil rate?

Discretionary afterthought....being north of the border, are you required to notify the federation of your efforts? Not meaning to stir anything, simply curious.

Finished up the tubing run today, by terminating the sap line into a barrel located just outside of the sugarhouse. If everything works like we hope it will, I will move the barrel inside next season, giving us a 450' run with 15 trees piped directly into the shack. No buckets, no trudging through the mud and snow. Just pump right from the barrel into the evaporator.

There is no need for a permit when building a sugar shack in Ontario Canada.

Yes the evaporator will sit out side un insulated. We are putting steel around that side so block the wind and will have it open to the bush side where the wood pile is. You can see we started strapping it for steel on the bottom.

Yes that is a hair dryer hooked to a aluminum tube forcing air into the fire. It doubled our heat and helped get the boil not just at the front but back closer to the smoke stack. If you look that is a bottom off an old oil tank that we welded on some L channel to the top cut edge and added a fire place door.

We learned too that putting sand in the bottom of the tank banking it up at the back then sloping to down to the front. Then laying the fire brick on top of the sand we got a much better boil at the back too. The more surface area you can get to boil the better.

The new one will have a float, temp gauge, and fins on the bottom for more surface area in the heat.

Oh ya for a hobby that doesn't pay any bills you need to use old used things. The only new stuff in this adventure is the bottles and the evaporator pan. We even got the spile's and buckets from another sugar bush that went to piping. The shingles are left over lumber yard miss fits for $10's. The siding is from the old house. Everything is from the old house other then the screws and some left over 2X6 from the new house.

Cheers Don.

I hear you on re-purposing stuff. Our evaporator is an old oil tank also, although I did weld up an arch inside to force heat up closer to the pan. The firebrick helped a lot also. I'm considering AUF, but the stack temps already push 1000 degrees at times on natural draft, so we boil pretty hard the way it is. Sounds like you are getting a drop flue pan. Watch your sap levels....drop flues can be unforgiving. Wise choice on the float box with that configuration.

I wasn't sure if Ontario was under the same strict policies as Quebec is. The Federation doesn't play around. I hear they will post guards at your property to enforce the regs.

Making Christmas candy tonight, to pass out to friends. On the menu: Maple nuts.

Heat maple syrup WAY past the point it became syrup. 240 degrees in this case.


Pour molten syrup over dry roasted peanuts.

Stir until you think your arm might fall off. Suddenly, there will be a slight crackling sound as the syrup goes to sugar...keep stirring until the sheen is replaced by a dull coating.

Spread the maple nuts out to dry, and hope you've made enough. You haven't, because you can't stop eating them yourself. You realize you will not have enough to give out. Decide to make another batch. Eat other batch also. Repeat next year.

Looks great!

So walnut syrup nuts next year as well? Hmmmmm....Might need to use walnuts.

It begins, 2016.

Wow! I would have thought it's way too early. Do you know what triggers the rise of the sap?

Yes I do, Bill. Trees contain a fair amount of carbon dioxide, which is acted upon by temperature. When it's warm, the CO2 expands and creates pressure, which will cause the tree to "bleed" through a wound, or taphole. Colder temps will cause the CO2 to contract, which creates a vacuum and draws water through the roots and up into the crown.

So, the warmer daytime temps expand the CO2 and the resulting pressure increase, (along with gravity), cause the sap to run back down from the crown, creating the flow that sugarmakers harvest. At night when the temps drop, water is pulled back up the tree, replenishing the reservoir. To get a sap run, we need nighttime temps below freezing, (mid 20's), and daytime temps above freezing. (low to mid 40's).

I'll try and post a vid from earlier today, showing the CO2 bubbles in our first run of tubing.

Thanks Tony! You should consider writing an article (in your spare time ) for PBM on Sugaring. I see articles all the time that are not strictly pond related but tend more towards land/wildlife management and I suspect they are popular with subscribers.

Vids showing our first attempt at using tubing for sap collection.

SWEET !!! No pun intended. Hope to get some good dirt on ya someday so I can blackmail ya out of a pint or so. I know....it's a very long list. If ya had a way ta keep em warm, I'd smuggle some Tilapia to ya on my way home in April.

Very cool Tony. I'm glad the plan's working well.

Tony this is great - always pushing the envelope. Only thing missing is a sasquatch walking through the frame in the background.

What do you know it actually works. Almost 18" of vacuum generated by gravity, no mechanical assistance. And that's with a leak that is substantial enough I heard it hissing as I walked up.

Cool!!, but is that a RoHS compliant coupling?, and the brass?

It's a powerful thing going on right now with a deadline.

It's plumbed on it's own line, and never contacts the sap. But you're correct, things are tightening up, and rightfully so, where food grade items are concerned.

Nice!!!

It's actually everything

Almost maxed out.

How much sap are you collecting in a 24 hr period now?

What are the lines and fittings rated for vacuum wise?

We broke down and hung a few buckets this morning. Life is so hectic right now, that we had almost convinced ourselves to take a year off from syrup production and concentrate on the new job and the new home. But, the allure was too strong. Plus, our experimental tubing is working very well, so we needed to decide if we were going to dump sap, or try and boil.

In the end we're going with a limited run. 15 maples on tubing, 18 maples on buckets, 17 walnuts on buckets. It hurts seeing all those maples without spiles, but we're stretched pretty thin. Probably need to take tomorrow off and boil sap, as it's running very well right now.

It's very nice that you have instilled in your family how wonderful nature is and how to enjoy and benefit from it. Keep up the good work.

I hope that with this warm few days that it doesn't get bitter. It looks like cooler weather for Feb though.

First traces of steam for the 2016 season:



And then there was an incident....a weld cracked, allowing the sides to pull away from the pan support rail....blowtorch up the side of the pan, and the added source of O2 turned the pan rail cherry in just a few seconds. Full shutdown.



The repair is simple, once the firebox cools. But to be honest, my heart just isn't in it this year. We have so much going on right now, that my wife and I have made the decision to suspend operations for the season. It sucks, as we are going to pull taps and buckets that we just hung yesterday, but this is an endeavor that you need to commit yourself fully too, for 4-5 weeks. And right now our focus is to get the remodel project done, and get moved in. We're disappointed, and will undoubtedly disappoint others who were looking forward to getting syrup, but with the new job, apprenticeship obligations, and the house ordeal, something has to give.

Hopefully we will be moved in, and ready to hit it hard next season.

Sparky do ya have any friends/neighbors that ya can trust that might supply the labor for a percentage? I know it's hard ta let anyone use your property and or equipment. It's a shame to not utilize all of the tubing collecting already up and going.

Sorry Spark. I can sense your disappointment.

Everything will fall into place and the syrup will be even more appreciated next year.

Cmm

Bob, I don't know of anyone who would be willing to put in the time and effort. I agree though, it's a shame.

Thanks CMM...we're pinning our hopes on next year also.

A long time ago when I read how many gallons of sap it took to make 1 gallon of syrup I knew I'd never do it. I can understand there being so few folks that would put in the effort.
Next yr will be here all too soon.

Tony,
I think you have this a little backwards. YOU tried and simply were overwhelmed by events. That is not a failure, it was a great try!! So you did not hit it out of the park AGAIN. You will, and when you do, it will be even sweeter.

For me, I would rather try and fail this time then to never try at all. YOU will be back when your obligations subside some. That much I know.

Just so you know, it is because of people like you that we are learning about bees. I am looking forward to having several hives on the property this year. Hope we do as well as you do with your syrup.

Thanks for the inspiration!!

Any tips on running the line? I just sent you a PM Sprkplug.

Wondering if the line needs to be vented and how to go about it.

Cheers Don.

Well we are boiling now in Ontario. Few pictures of grandpa adding more sap.

This old hair dryer is the blower to really get her to boil good.

We estimate to have about 9 gallons in the first batch.

100 trees total with 45 on buckets still the rest on lines. Everything runs into the bottom tote then pumped into the second tote on top when we have more then the bottom tote can hold. Then gravity into cooking pan. With the cool nights lately no need for the second tote yet so just pumping into the evaporator pan.

Cheers Don.

Very cool pics! About how much syrup do you guesstimate you can make from the sap of that many trees?

Outstanding!!!! Nice family effort....it's addictive isn't it!

Here the estimate if we get a normal season with out out of the ordinary warm snaps we can get one gallon of syrup per tree tapped. These trees are all good sugar maples and no soft maples.

Soft maples are closer to 50-1 then 35/40-1. Because of the more sap needed from the soft maples the syrup tends to be more brown in colour. Nothing wrong with it just more tannin's.




Yes and the best parts is the boys are really into it. They are not spending every waking hour on the wifi. They are building all summer for this month and splitting wood. Spending time in the bush learning. That is the most rewarding part of it all. If the money spent don't break even I really don't care. Memory's with grandpa are worth every penny.

Our boys are 19,16, and 14. Grandpa is turning 69 this summer but is a kid at hart with these boys. He loves coming over to our pond and just sitting with the boys. Last summer I gave dad a fishing rod with a barb-less hook. Didn't tell him it was barb-less. Oh good times.

Cheers Don.

Dono, sounds like ya got yer ducks all in a row. Congrats on havin yer boys and pop like to be together. Times and learning those boys will have when they are 69.

Bob thanks. We are very blessed here for sure. I don't see life getting any better then it is.

Did I read in this thread about some one taping walnut trees? I would like to learn more about it and if its walnut syrup that is made.

Cheers Don.

Talk ta Sparky.

We made some Black Walnut syrup last year, I think there's a little info in this thread, matter-of-fact.

Be warned, it takes about 90 gallons of sap to make a gal. of syrup, and the walnuts are pretty stingy with it....You might look into some type of cold storage for the sap, until you accumulate enough for a boil. We filled plastic freezer containers with sap, froze em', and used them as giant ice cubes in the storage tank. Worked pretty well.

Filtering is another hassle. As it reduces it creates a pectin, which plugs the filters right NOW. Have extras standing by, especially pre-filters.

It's a pretty syrup, fairly dark, very sweet, with a distinctive taste. We had planned to try and produce more this season, but circumstances overcame us and we shelved syrup production this year.

One more thing....unsure of what you plan on doing with the walnut syrup, but info is hard to come by. There is a school of thought that considers the possibility of nut allergen with walnut products. We kept all our walnut separate throughput the entire process, and were careful to notify all who wanted to try it that it was processed from a nut tree. Just a thought.

Well folks the season is over for us here. We have pulled all the taps and washed everything up.

The grand total here was 15.5 gallons with 100 trees. 55 on lines and 45 on buckets. It was a short poor year this year but kids had lots of fun.

From left to right is the three batches. First early batch is lighter in colour and maple flavor but very high in sweetness 4 gallons. The next is starting to get darker with more maple flavor still good and sweet 8 gallons. The third is the latest and darkest with the most maple. This dark is the best for cooking 3.5 gallons.

Cheers Don.

Beautiful! Nice job all the way around!

I've seen a lot of trees around here this year with a bag or two strapped to them. I have never noticed this before. Apparently, a number of people around here enjoy this as much as you guy's do.

Nice work!

My wife decided to give it a try this year too. We had about 12 buckets going and had 2 boil down days separated by about 2 weeks. We are very much beginners but we have about 8 pints of maple syrup to show for it. We cheated and used a commercial stove that our family uses for our big fall applesauce making shindig. I hated to see that beautiful 6 burner behemoth sit there the rest of the year in the basement so doing syrup on it was the logical way to make it work at least once in the spring and once in the fall. Keeping an even boil was easy with the stove. I can't even imagine keeping an even boil on a wood stove out in the woods

I think ours is a bit runny, probably we could have gone a little more but we didn't want maple candy instead of maple syrup.

Yours looks great DonoBBD and thanks for showing/teaching that the syrup can darken as the season extends. That may explain why our first batch which is the only jar we broke into and tasted was a bit on the light side without much sweetness.

We do some nice glass jars for the family and keep one of each of the batches. Then we mark all the bottles with a batch number. If bottled with warm they will seal perfect and keep for a long long time like canning.

True maple syrup is a little runny compared to store bought corn syrup based. Keep it in the refrigerator and it will thicken some.

I use the maple syrup to make my fire and ice BBQ sauce for my ribs. It is the perfect thickening agent for the sauce and gives you a bit of sweet with the heat.

Cheers Don.

Dono, thanks for the tip on the fridge storage. We did the hot water preserving with hot jars and hot syrup and they sealed just like canning and are in the pantry. Others have said it makes a great topping for pork ribs or other roast glazes. Mmmm...

My wife added some when she made a pumpkin pie a couple weeks back. Tasted just like butterscotch and was fantastic!

Hooo ho now were talking. Going to try that for sure. Thanks.

Made a maple syrup pie a few weeks back, outstanding!

Also, maple syrup will keep in the freezer nearly indefinitely. IF..... It's truly syrup. If it hasn't actually made syrup, it will freeze.

Tony, this winter looking any better? I hope things have finally settled down for you and your family.

I'm looking to buy some 'boiling off' pans. Stainless flat trays really is all I need. I'm using some big turkey pans which work OK but would like even more surface area. I have a commercial gas stove (big 6 burner kind) I'd love to get a stainless tray with low sides that would span two burners at once. That would really speed up the boil. Would it be hard for someone to fabricate some crude pans? Just need like a 12x32 or 12x36 flat plate steel bottom then could weld some 3" sides all the way around and then, of course, be sure the welds don't let loose....

Stainless steel, not regular steel......

maple syrup pans

Thanks Al, if all goes as we hope it will, we will be in the woods this upcoming maple season. Still need to clear the tubing lanes and cut brush, but I think I can make it happen. Really looking forward to it!

Ideally you want a pan with high sides, especially if you intend to boil hard and fast. A violent boil will splash sticky concentrated sap all over everything....not fun. The pans we use came from the link Esshup posted, and we have been pleased with their performance.

Sparkie,

You doing walnut syrup again?

To all Syrup guys,

Please post pics and your experiences. I love to see/read them and I'm sure a lot of other folks do too!

I still hope to at least try the syruping sport, even if I just make a little boxelder syrup to see what it's like.

Bill D.

Bill, it depends upon whether or not our old place sells before syrup season or not. The walnut trees are over there.

Walked the tubing in the rain, yesterday afternoon. After a year up in the woods, it only had one spot where a limb had come down on it. And even then it didn't break it, just pushed it to the ground. A little tightening and it looked good as new. Pleasantly surprised at how well it held up.

It's great it's doing so well for you, Tony! Have any idea how much loss there may be in the tubing, or does the central collection more than make up for sap loss?

this thread is making me hungry!

Not sure I follow you Rex, what losses are you asking about?

Hi All, been lurking around for the past few months but just saw this thread yesterday and it's taken me a day and a half to read it all.

I'm a huge real maple syrup fan and consumer (we go through about a half gallon every few months) and as an owner of a little chunk of land with a lot of trees it's been fascinating to read through your adventures, thinking I may have to give it a try.

I almost cried (at work nonetheless) as I read your little story about the whole family getting together to help out.

It's been a long time since I've participated in any forums but it's great to see there are still good ones with, seemingly, good people still around.

Welcome Aighead, glad you posted! Stick around and let us know more about you.

Thanks TJ, I just added an Introduction post in that area, you'll all be sick of me before you know it.

Spent the morning and part of the afternoon cleaning up the sugarhouse. Also repaired the damage to the evaporator that contributed to our non-start season last year. Just need to cut brush and clear out around the maples, purchase bottles, and we're good to go.

Welcome Aighead. We are cutting wood for 2018 in the bush now that it is cold. We have all our 2017 wood inside now and good an dry. Boys want to tap another 40 trees this year so that would bring us up to 120ish.

We had a big ash hanger that we had to hook a come along to and puller her down. Nothing good can come of cutting a hanger like this one.

Cheers Don.

Hey Guys,

Do folks ever mix sap from say walnut and maple to make syrup? I've never seen a "blend" on the market. Just curious.

I suppose you could, and in fact we originally considered doing just that when we set out to tap Black Walnut trees. That was before we found out just how much more work walnut syrup is, when compared to maple. We're still undecided about tapping walnuts this season.

I encourage you to give it a try. There's just something very satisfying about the entire process that's hard to explain. Our family truly enjoys it, even though it can mean hard work and long hours.

Thanks Sparkie,

I know you said it takes way more walnut sap than maple so was curious if mixing would form a homogeneous sap mixture with a longer boil time than maple or if boiling long enough to reduce the walnut part of the solution would damage the maple part. Obviously, I have way over thought this and need to spend more time fishing!

After a couple false starts due to changing forecasts, we decided today was the day. Felt a little strange, as the boys weren't on hand to help like they have been in years' past. They're spending the weekend at my mother's place, for the first time since we lost dad several months ago. Before he died this was a pretty regular occurrence, and since she asked to see them, and they both wanted to go, my wife and I both felt like it was best for everyone. It's been really tough for her, and she still has bad days now and then but I think she's doing much better.

So it was just the two of us, 25 degrees and bundled up from head to toe. In spite of the cold and the absent kids, it still felt good to be back in the woods. The quietness, the simplicity, even the cold itself, it all just felt right. I've missed that. I drilled the holes and set the spiles, and she hung the buckets and fastened the lids. Guess we still make a pretty good team, even after 28 years together, as we knocked it out in 2.5 hours.

We ended up with 60 buckets, and another 15 on 3/16 tubing. Too cold for sap to run today, but it looks promising shortly. Then the boys will get their turn, as it will be all hands on deck. Hopefully.

The tubing was left up all year, and it came through beautifully. We swapped out the old spiles for new, lengthened a couple drop lines, but found the lateral still up and tight. Never had to splice one time. No walnut this year, as we have sold our old property where the majority of those trees were located. I have a suspicion we will have additional walnut syrup in upcoming seasons, however. And I tapped a Sycamore today also. Lots of those here.

Hoping for 20 gallons finished syrup this year, but will of course be grateful for whatever nature provides. To the other sugarmakers on the forum, Good luck, and good runs!

Great post! I've been meaning to ask... Last weekend we had a warm spell and day time temps I think hit 60. How do the trees not start pumping sap on those warm spells? How do they know the weather has to be warm but also the season has to be far along that we don't get another cold snap?

We used PVC spiles our first attempt last year and they worked fine but left a bigger hole than necessary in the tree. Sap sure poured out of them though! We used 5 quart ice cream pails as that was what we had and had to watch them close to empty before they got too heavy. We also need to device a lid system, even if we use some aluminum foil to save on the bugs falling in.

We only did about a dozen trees and all on our lot so it was easy to keep an eye on them.

So much yet to learn though...

They may well run on a warm day, irregardless of what the calendar says. The trick is to time the process so that you catch a run, not just a warm day. Once you drill that hole, the timer starts. Drill too early to catch a brief warm spell, and the hole may dry up before the real season begins.

Glad to see you back doing what you love.

Yes like stated. If you tap then get a prolonged cold snap the hole will start to heal and dry up. It is best not to re tap a tree from last year that the hole has not healed up. It is best to tap on the south side of the tree. We find the south side of the tree runs the best when it dos run. Large trees in wet holes run the best as well. Last year we had the sap run at night twice where it ran better at night than it did during the day.

We are trying for 70 on line and 45 on buckets this year. It would have run last week but we are back into the cold again and feel for us up here its too soon. If you wait to long you can miss it as well if the season is short. Happy taping.

An acknowledged maple authority recently stated that tapholes on buckets will offer greatly diminished yields after a month. Being open to the air leads to microbial contamination, as does re-using spiles, or at least not disinfecting them properly between seasons.

Tapholes on vacuum, not being open to the air, can produce well for a couple months apparently.

I try to tap on the south side, but also recognize that there are trees which have been tapped continuously for decades....and since you need to move the tap around each season, those trees have undoubtedly been tapped on their north side many times. I purposefully tapped a few on the north face this season, just to see for myself. I'll report back with what we see.

Sap ran a little last night. It's coming.

I had a big run on maple staircases. We import all our hardwood from Pennsylvania USA. We had quite a few spile holes in 10,000 board feet of brown maple. Not just the hole but the spile will stain the wood in a line above and below the hole dark.

In Quebec many are taping holes now who have over 10,000 taps. They use a product that is against the law to use but they are so big it is cost effective to pay the fine than stop using the product. If they don't start drilling now they will not get them all tapped.

Fine needs to be much bigger for them to stop. This is why it is best to make your own. In the process they get tested but just cut it with clean product to lower the part per million.

They used to use formaldehyde to delay the taphole drying up. Very illegal as well as unethical.

We had our first boil of the 2017 season today. Reduced 80 gallons of sap down to approx. 3 gallons, will probably finish it off to syrup tomorrow.

Hope things pick up, sap is coming slow.

Couple pics from today:





And this one...been trying to get this shot for a couple seasons, and my wife nailed it this morning. This is a shot through the eyepiece of a sugar refractometer, showing the sugar content of the sap. pretty cool.

As always, very cool.

Sitting in the sugarhouse tonight, just tending the evaporator. We've got 150 gallons of sap in storage from this past week, and the warm temps mean it needs to be processed right now. So, it will be a late night. Possibly an early morning, even.

Our sugarhouse is back in the woods, no neighbors, no house lights, no sound except the hiss of steam, and the sizzle of the occasional drop of condensate from the preheater.

The night sky is beautiful this evening. A full, or almost full moon, framed by a slight haze of fog. Through the trees I can see its reflection in a pond's surface. Stunning.

So I'm struck by a curious thought..my education, that my parents worked so hard to provide for me, allows me to understand the how's and the why's of these things. I know why the moon looks as it does, just like I can calculate the volume of steam that rises from the pan, or explain the process whereby sap is caused to migrate through the tree. The logical, practical side of me understands it pretty well. It's just physics, math, and principle. Easy, right?

Or it would be, if it weren't for my lifelong country boy side, who smiles at the notion that it can all be explained, classified, and categorized, with little to no regard for the substance of the thing.

Sure, the math works. The same as it always has. But these days, the math isn't enough.

Wish you guys were here, to enjoy it with me.

Tony, we are there in spirit. Isn't there supposed to be an eclipse and a comet also showing up tonight/tomorrow?

First bottle of the season.

Now that is Nature at it's finest!

Are you doing walnut this year?

Working on our first boil right now. We had 180 gallons the first day and only 100 gallons today. Just heading back now to stoke up the cooker and top up the sap for the night. Just starting to run up here in Ontario. Hope it keeps up like this.

One picture of my youngest son chilling in the camp while we cooked.

Cheers Don.

Good luck Don, hope your season plays out well. Ours may well be over, without really getting started. As of now, we've processed 310 gallons of sap and just have 5.25 gallons of syrup to show for it. A fourth of what we hoped for. The temps are just way too warm, and the sugar content in the sap, when we get a little sap, just isn't there.

Seventy degrees today, warm this evening with spring peepers chirping, and feeding the fish in a couple ponds. Everyone around the area I know who makes syrup, is greatly disappointed. Warm temps all this week, wouldn't be too surprised to see the trees bud. We brought all the buckets in, but left the taps out, in hopes for colder weather in a week or so. Not looking good.

Same here sparkie, we scrambled to put our taps in when we had freezing nights and warm days. The day we tapped we had gushers in most trees. Had to empty twice a day for a day or two.

Seems way to early to be putting taps in. Then warm day and night the last 3 days (not quite 70, but low 60s) Not much above a trickle. Supposed to have warm all week but chilly at night, just not freezing or below freezing. Then next week back to more typical daytime highs in 30s and below freezing at night.

Do we keep the taps in and hope that they slow down during the cold weather and then they start back up again when it warms up during day again? Or do we remove them and redrill new holes at the next warm spell?

We have only about 40-50 gallons and may just have to boil it down if more isn't coming soon. We have no way of telling the sugar content.

Don't redrill, too hard on the tree. It takes 4 weeks or so for a taphole to dry up, I would wait and see.

I fully agree with sprkplug too. Leave the ones you have.


How far north are you in Michigan? We are just north of London ontario and its just starting to flow good. Have only been tapped since this past Thursday.

Dono, you are 42.98 latitude and we in Grand Rapids, MI are 42.96 latitude, so almost dead on in the N/S dimension.

Lake MI is a big heat sink and it has a considerable warming influence on us, plus the lake effect moisture. It can be 10 degrees warmer at our house than at the lake depending on the lake is cooling the air or warming the air (in winter).

We had the big heat wave over the weekend, last night was around 50 degrees, will get 65 this week during day, then by weekend go back to cold days and nights, snow, and below freezing a few nights next week.

We had a few days of cold nights and warm days and good flow. This weekend nothing to speak of and I doubt we get much today as it is steady warm, and a warm rain

I have a thin rim of ice left. We may have early ice out this week and then make some new ice/snow next week. I doubt the kids get to skate this year anymore but oh well, they had a few good weekends for that.

Very cool that your just about the same as us here. We are about 20 minutes to lake Huron so the climate is just about identical. Have to get you to hook me up with some golf destinations in Michigan.

We only seen about 30 gallons yesterday from 170 trees. Hoping that after this warm shot here it runs again. We are going to finish off what we did get and get ready for darker stuff next week.

Dono, you are really all in on this project with 170 trees! Wow! We used home made spiles last year, our first year. This year I bought spiles with 3' drop tubes and modified my collecting buckets to allow for a cover with a tight fit around the drop tube. This should help with the bugs/debris in the collecting buckets. We only tapped 20 trees and some are 'duds' I wonder what makes some trees that look like good mature sugar maples not produce much.

It is also weird that in some of our trees the 3" drywall screw that we screwed in the tree below the spile to hold up the handle of our collecting bucket is gushing syrup in a plume down the side of the tree and the spile doesn't seem to be...

My wife started boiling yesterday am to process what we have. Had to shut down the boil over night but hope to finish today. We boil on a commercial stove in the basement. We try to ventilate but the house gets hot. We try to direct steam out basement windows. It is wild to be boiling sap when it is 60 degrees outside!

The sap will run both directions in the tree up and down in one day cycle. The screw can let pressure off the vein your in and slow the sap production.

We finish with a propane turkey cooker or deep fryer. It is best to fill bottles with the syrup warm 180 ish then put the bottle on its top right away to clean or sterilize the cap. The cap will seal like caning and will keep mold free for very long time. Once open we keep it in the fridge because it is thicker when cold.

We have a stainless steel flask and a hydrometer to get the sugar content right. If you use a ladle you can get the feel for it how it runs off when pouring it out of the ladle. The size of the bubbles too is an indicator your close.

We have about 60 buckets and the rest on line. Its alot less work.

I second the tubing. It's a LOT less work. It does lack the romantic aspect of the buckets, however. We intend to up our tubing count next season.

Man I think we are done here now too. Only got one batch and the sap has started to look cloudy and the white moths showed up. Leaving the taps in with the hopes it runs next week with some cooler nights.

Last night with my window open I could hear the toads thrilling. Thats not good for the sap run.

Sorry to hear that Don. Our taps are still in, and it looks like there might be another run, but the damage is done. Trees are trying to bud, and that means the end is here. There was a piece in our local paper about it, and the sugar maker interviewed is claiming this to be the worst maple season in years.

Seems like the spring weather is becoming more unsettled all the time down here.

Hats off to my wife and kids who faithfully emptied the buckets and stored the sap till past weekend. The warm weather stopped the flow so we decided to boil what we had. This was our output. Seems like a tiny bit for how many totes of sap we boiled off

It looks darker than I remembered the first batch of the season being last year. I don't have a sugar percent meter but we watched temperature and 'sheeting' and I think we hit it pretty good on this batch.

Taps are still in but crazy cold on Sat and Sun, warm again today. We are supposed to have a few consecutive days of below freezing at night and in 40s during day so hopefully we will get a few more buckets to empty.

Way to go, canyon!

Well done. Our first batch was darker too this year.

bringing this thread up on the Autumnal Equinox of 2017, although it is going to be 95 degrees today and not in anyway fall weather. However we are seeing red leaves and leaves are falling...

I have a 6 burner commercial stove in the basement to boil sap and do very small runs maybe making a few gallons of final product a year for personal use and to give away.

My goal this year is to have better pans to boil down in. We were using metal roasting pans which worked OK but limited the future use of those pans for sure... I would like to make some custom stainless pans with pipe and valve piped in the front for easy draining.

The dimensions of my cooktop is 31x36. I have 2 options I'm weighing out.

I can make 1 stainless pan, 4" sides (would you go 6"?) 30x36 and cover all 6 burners at once. This is cheapest in terms of fabricating time and cost but would be a little heavy/bulky to ship.

Or I could make smaller pans that would fit over one set of burners (front and back) at 12" x 30" and do 2 or even 3 of them side by side. If I did 3 then figuring in width of the sides I would probably have to do 11 or 11.5" x 30" so they all fit side by side. Cost per small pan is about $150 plus maybe $20 shipping. If I make 3 of them group shipping might be $30.

rough cost for the single large pan is about $275 shipped.

(for those who understand these numbers this would be 18 gauge stainless steel of the 304 variety)

We aren't in any race to boil fast, we tend to just start it in the morning and tend it all day. If it isn't done we have been known to turn it off let it sit overnight and start again the next day although having confessed that, I hope I don't expose our extreme ignorance on the chemistry of boiling sap and not ruining a batch..

Should I consider thicker gauge steel?

Thanks for your advice in advance

One other dumb question. We had a really tough time getting one of our taps out of the tree this spring without cracking it off (plastic barb fitting) I tried with a few tools but didn't want to crack it off. I forgot about it and now just realized it is still in the tree. Will it start running again this coming spring? If I have to crack it off to get it out, will it fill in even if the part of the plastic part is stuck in the tree? I can drill out the remaining plastic I suspect but not sure of best timing to do that now.

I do notice that some of the holes we tapped 2 years ago are not filled in yet.

If I do have to crack it off and drill it out then I would want to use a new hole on a different side of that same tree for this year's sap run rather than crack it off in the winter, drill it out, put a fresh tap in the freshly drilled hole?

I know nothing about make syrup but a large pan make warp with heat, may want thicker bottom on pan.

I don't think I would go any thicker. Stainless is a poor conductor of heat, and if you're using wood for fuel then a few extra sticks won't really matter, but propane is another story. A lot of commercial pans are 22 gage.

I see an appeal for multiple, smaller pans vs one larger pan for those times when you're only boiling a small amount....no need to accumulate "x" amount of sap before lighting the fire. And, if you have enough sap to use all three, then you can simply add the contents of one pan to another as it reduces. This would allow a safe level of sap, and keep you boiling on less propane. How many trees are you planning on tapping? Also, consider a 6" height on the pans unless you keep a very small boil.

I would leave the broken tap alone. The tree will heal around it. Re-tapping the same hole will likely lead to greatly reduced sap yield. The tree closes off the wound internally, so even opening up the old hole will not be as good as a fresh tap, moved 6" or so horizontally.

Thanks sprkplug! I see the value of having a few smaller pans. I use natural gas so supply and cost isn't an issue. We have a very small time operation and usually can finish the complete season boil in 2-3 days. I'll for sure go for the 6" sides.

Last season we tapped I think 18-20 trees. Some were duds and barely produced, others gushed even if we had 2 or 3 buckets per tree. Funny how you can't judge a sugar maple by its cover...

In fact I had some maple syrup and pancakes this am. The maple syrup in that jar must have gone a bit long as it was so thick it was stringy/tacky and had a very earthy/woodsy after taste. Most of our other batches is watery and just a hint of sweetness compared to the 'store stuff'.

I'm thinking of having a nice SS evaporator pan built up also. I was using a large 15 gallon + brewers pot on a raging hot fire pit, but when I got it to a good boil, the sap would splash up on the sides and caramelize to get rinsed back in again. It isn't a nasty flavor, but it just isn't right for syrup.

Not to mention the "fun" of cleaning the pot back off. It took a lot of stove cleaner!

I have seen a pan that had ridges across the inside to help with strength and another with a dam that could be pulled where a section is used for the new sap, and another is used for finishing in the same pan. That looked pretty "sweet" as it had a finishing area with a spigot in a lower area for draining the almost finished sap to be taken to a stove for completion.

A simpler version of this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/322676329620?chn=ps&dispItem=1

-Mark

Found the guy who fabricates for a fair/affordable price on CL and he can ship most anywhere.

Scheduled to have near 60 degree days and cold nights. The sap should be flowing heavy this week. Anyone else have their taps out yet?

We aren't doing any this year, we still have a couple gallons left over from last year. Thanks.

Bryan

So a long time coming, but back in 2015 sprkplug was generous to share some of his Black Walnut Syrup. To prove that sometimes the turtle does indeed cross the finish line, this evening I opened the vintage March 2015 Black Walnut Syrup.

DELICIOUS!

I don't know if sprkplug sells their Black Walnut Syrup but if they do I strongly recommend it. Good stuff indeed.

sprkplug again thank you for the bottle and I apologize for taking SO insanely long to break the wax seal and enjoy your Black Walnut Syrup.

Hello.

Comparison between tapped and untapped maples.

https://www-lessucriers-com.transla...tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp
A+

Wow, technology is awesome!

azteca, I just clicked on your link. The forum discussion came up in French. I started scrolling to see if any replies were in English, when suddenly my screen flashed and everything switched over to English.

The translations DID NOT appear clumsy to me. Somehow the forum determined that I was English speaking (by location inference, or by determining my OS was English?), and flipped to apparently well done machine translations!

Do you know if that forum is French only (in the original), or in Quebec do you encounter lots of dual-language online publications?

Hello.

I transfer the site to Google and I transfer it to P.B.
A+

Ha! I reckon running a tubing system must be akin to a tree catheter?

We pulled all our spiles yesterday. Still need to finish off the last of the sweet and sanitize the lines. It was a good season for us, added two new flavors of infused syrup and tried our hand at making maple sugar. Feeling content.

Tony, how big is the sugar shack now?

The building is 24 x 48, but aside from firewood storage we only
Use half the space. So I suppose the sugar house is 24x 24.

Wow Sparkplug! How did your sap run so much earlier than ours?
We had 60 degrees on Sunday and the sap was really running, but then cold front came through and snow overnight so everything stopped. We really had only 2 days of collection and have about 75 gallons of sap waiting to boil. I'm surprised you are finished with your sap run already?

We have a new divided pan with prepan above so hoping we can be more efficient with keeping the boiling going by preheating above it. A little bigger surface area to try to cut down on how many hours we have to tend a fire outside!

Great to hear you are making custom flavors too!

Hello.

I am a hobbyist.

What about boiling maple sap with a hot water tank heater?

They put the tank heater directly in the maple sap.
A+

Tony is a bit further South than you are. The Amish around here have pulled their collection systems already - the Maple trees have started to bud and the sap turns bitter. I'm 30 miles South of the Michigan border, he's another 150 miles South of me (as the crow flies).

Tony was it a good season? 2 weeks or so of collecting?

Canyon, it was a good season. We tapped our trees back on the 8th of January, had our first boil a few days after that. Without venturing down a slippery slope, the truth is our winters are changing here.. it's getting warmer, sooner, generally speaking. Accordingly, we have adopted the strategy of tapping early and running a longer season. Having tubing and check valve spiles (taps) helps ensure that we keep our tap holes as sanitary as possible, leading to them staying open longer than what is possible when they are exposed to the air, such as what happens with bucket collection systems. We got almost 8 weeks this season, and we're thrilled with that. Its a crap shoot.... tap too early and miss the big Spring runs, or wait for the big runs and lose it all due to an early Spring.... that's farming for you.

I don't know enough to say if a heating element in the sap would work or not. Certain it would get hot and boil, but would be concerned that sugar would coalesce on the element and burn?

Tony, I think you are correct about the sugar coalescing. Only way it wouldn't would be if you could keep a current in the sap, constantly moving cooler sap around the heating element.