One of the best things God gave this planet was a liquid from a tree that can turn into a sweet sauce to pour over, well… really, anything. God is so good y’all!
We love maple syrup and well you’re a bit of an odd ball if you don’t. My husband started tapping trees and making maple syrup several years ago. He would tap any sugar maple trees he could get his hands on, because well 5 gallons of sap only makes about 1 jar of syrup…WHAT!? Yeah…it’s a little sad, but it’s so worth it! And now you know why true maple syrup is so expensive!
Cleaning Your Equipment
You want to make sure your buckets, taps, and hoses are as clean as can be!
We use food safe buckets and wash them all with dish soap and steaming hot water to kill off as many germs as possible! Once they are clean, let them air dry in a clean environment until completely dry. You don’t want any added moisture to your sap.
Tapping The Trees
To start the process we tap the trees.
1. Pick a drill bit that is marked with a piece of tape at the length you want to go into the tree AND that is the thickness of your tap nozzle.
2. Pick a good vein! Uhhhh what does that mean, trees don’t have veins? You’ll want to pick a good branch that has matured and follow it down the tree and that’s where you’ll want to drill your hole. You don’t want to go too far up the tree when drilling your holes, let gravity help!
3. We hook the hose into the side of a 5 gallon bucket so that it is not open for any bugs, dirt, or other critters to get inside. To do this you’ll drill a hole in the side of your bucket about 2-3″ from the top that is just big enough for your hose to fit in-don’t make it any bigger so that no critters can get in!
4. Make sure your lids are on tight so that if the wind knocks them over it doesn’t spill your precious sap out. We also use bungee cords to strap the bucket to the tree because it gets very windy on our property.
Collecting The Sap
When your buckets are full you can either freeze the sap until you’re ready to cook down, or you can start cooking it down right away. Sometimes if it freezes at night and depending on when you go to collect, you’ll collect frozen sap instead of liquid sap! You’ll want to try to collect during the day when it’s not frozen. You can combine the different buckets into one bucket if it makes it easier for you space wise.
When you transfer from the buckets to the pans or pots that you’re cooking the sap in you need to filter! We do a multi step filter process starting with a clean plain white t-shirt over the buckets when pouring from the bucket to the pan. We then use these filters and this filter stand when transferring from the larger pans to a smaller pot.
Sap to Syrup
When cooking down your sap, be prepared for this to take a very long time. We have learned over the years how long it takes to cook down just a small pot of sap on the stove.
We have tried the portable stove top cookers that can plug in outside, but the amount of electricity it uses is outstanding. My husband had the bright idea to start cooking it down using natural resources…a wood burning stove! Duh!
So he built a wood burning stove and welded metal plates to the top for the pans to sit on, and WA-LA! We had a way to cook down the sap without using electricity! We use these pans.
When you’re cooking down the sap in large quantities, you just want to keep in at a medium heat at a very slow boil.
Now you just wait…Once it has cooked down to the point that it can fit in a small sauce pan on your stove, then you can transfer. You want to keep this on low/medium heat just at a simmer until it cooks down more. You’ll notice the color starts to darken as the sap cooks down…this is good!
Using a hydrometer you’ll need to test your syrup to see if it is at the right moisture level for canning and eating. A hydrometer for maple syrup will tell you where your moisture level is at with in the sap that you’re cooking down…sap is around 90% water, that is what you’re cooking out!
You’re going to have all kinds of different colors of syrup and that’s ok! Once the syrup is cooked the way you want, use a funnel and filter to pour into your bottles or jars.
Canning Your Syrup
Pour the hot syrup (180-200 F) into clean jars, wipe the rims, and place a clean lid on top. Tighten the ring of the ball jar lid gently and the syrup should can itself.
I know what you’re thinking -“I don’t need to actually can this in anyway?” Nope! because of the syrup’s high sugar content, it acts as a natural preservative killing any bacteria, as long as it is hot enough when you pour it into your clean jars and it seals properly (meaning putting the lid on when it’s hot and allowing it to cool at room temp to create a vacuum seal).
