Maple Tapping

I am so excited we were able to tap our sugar maples this year and make our own syrup for the first time! It was easier than I thought it was going to be although we only made a tiny bit this go around to see how it went. All you have to do is boil the sap down and you get syrup! It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup. The first time we boiled about 2 gallons of sap and got about 6 ounces, the second was about 7 gallons and we got about 26 ounces. We followed this blog post at The Art of Doing Stuff for step by step directions.

First, we drilled holes, inserted spiles, and using plastic jugs we collected the sap when it started running, which started about the third week of February and lasted until about mid April. Day temperatures need to be above freezing and night temps below freezing for the sap to run. Next year we will invest in better collection containers now that we know how much fun this is.

Once collected, we brought it inside to boil for hours. We initially were going to boil it outside in our fire pit, but realized we would have to buy a lot of seasoned firewood and it was cold outside. Since a lot of steam is released during the boiling, we were worried the kitchen would be covered with sticky sap everywhere, but using a fan and opening the windows worked just fine for the small amount we were doing.

We started with a big pan and eventually transferred to smaller pots as the liquid reduced, filtering each time. When it was almost done we used a thermometer to check when it turned into sap.

It's supposed to be when it hits 7 degrees over the boiling point of water, so we waited until it hit 219°F. However, we found that this wasn't the case and had to wait until around 223°F or so. You can find out if it is definitely sap using a hydrotherm. It's not so imperative getting this right if you're going to eat it within a month or so, but since we were giving some away to friends and family, we wanted to make sure.

Then finally, you strain and bottle!

Our first batch, took about 3 hours total.

Making a mess with our second batch, 9 hours total.

Finished product!

Next year we hope to make about a gallon of syrup so we can have some available for the entire year!