Adventures in Making Maple Syrup: Part 2

So, to this date we have collected over 86 gallons of Maple sap! It's seriously getting out of hand! We had to clean out one of my husband  "storage" garbage cans (these hold his tree climbing and cutting gear for his business, not garbage!) to store the sap because we were running out of containers! We have probably boiled down about 30 gallons so far and our syrup is dark brown and sweet! 

First I'm going to explain how we tapped our trees. You can purchase spigots from places such as this, but they are kind of expensive if you are doing a small scale operation like we are, yes 90 gallons is small, remember it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup! Plus we are cheap frugal around this house and wanted to spend as little money as possible. We decided to go with this suggestion and use plastic tubing and paraffin wax to make our spigots. 

My wonderful husband drilled the holes, we used about 1/2 inch tubing, so 1/2 inch holes. Then he drilled a screw right above the hole to hand the jugs on. We used Paraffin Wax (check the canning aisle) to seal around the tubing. Some sap will still seep down the tree but the majority of it will go through the tubing and into the jugs.  In order to seal the holes with the wax you will need to soften it first. I used and old tin can and placed the wax in the can then the can in a pot of warm water until it melted. Once it started to solidify again then it was the right consistency to rub on the holes. 

This is what our syrup looks like right now. We've strained it one and will do a final strain with some cheese cloth once we're done. 

So far we've just been boiling it on our wood stove in the house, but it's been getting warm outside and some days we don't put a fire on. We'll have to think of something a little more creative (as faster) in the near future! I don' want to be making syrup in July! :)

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Adventures in Making Maple Syrup! Part 1

I'm Canadian, but I live in the US midwest. My neighbors think our family is crazy sometimes. We like playing outside in the snow, we made an ice rink in our back yard, and this winter we are going to try and make maple syrup!

This isn't totally foreign to me, but I did have to do a little research. Last spring we had the pleasure of going to a sugar bush and seeing the process of making maple syrup. I've been before, but my kids hadn't and they thought it was great! Their favorite part was the four wheeler ride into the bush!  These pictures are from our experience last year:

They had the whole set up, an actual syrup boiler inside their little sleep camp! They make syrup for their whole family. Our set up is definitely not as fancy, but here is what we used to get started!

SUPPLIES:

• jugs or buckets to collect the syrup (one for each tree or tap).
• Paraffin Wax (look in the canning aisle)
• 1/2 inch clear plastic tubing
• Drill
• Screws
• rope
• large pail to collect the sap.   

You can purchase syrup making materials like spigots, but we did everything ourselves DIY style! Sugar Maple trees make the sweetest sap, but any type of maple can be tapped! Each tree should give about 5 gallons of sap (some more some less). Trees should be about 14 inches in diameter to be tapped. You need 40 gallons of sap to boil down to 1 gallon of syrup!

Watch for Part 2 for instructions on the how to!!

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