Does anyone out there tap their maple trees? Because if so, I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask you.
We have two giant maple trees in our yard. One in the front and one in the back and if I had to guess, I’d say the trees were cut down at some point a long, long time ago and what grew out out of the stumps were a bunch of side shoots, which is what we have growing in our yard now.
The base of these trees are massive! And mature maple trees = maple syrup.
And I want some. 🙂
So yesterday I had the HH clear the area around the giant maple tree in our backyard so come next spring, we’ll be able to tap our trees.
I say we, because even though the HH thinks I’m a total nut for wanting to tap our own trees {can’t you BUY maple syrup in the store!!} I know that I am going to need an assistant to do this and since he’s the resident handyman around here,
Now I don’t know a lot {okay, hardly anything} about tapping trees, but I do know:
- It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup.
- Basically all you need to do is boil the syrup down.
- A tree needs to have a diameter of 10″ to tap it .
- It’s common to harvest 10-20 gallons per tap.
- Sugaring season lasts an average of 4-6 weeks
- Hussey’s sells everything I’ll need {buckets, taps, cute glass jars}.
- We have red maples.
I mean, if the Indians could figure this stuff out without the help of books or the internet, I should be able to do this, right?
Here’s a photo I found on the South Dakota State extension page. The tree is similar to ours in that it’s multi-stemmed.
So if I go by the 1 tap per 10″ diameter tree rule, that means I would be able to get at least 3 taps on the front tree, and 4 taps in the back. So 7 taps at a minimum yield of 10 gallons per tap would be 70 gallons. When boiled down that should give us close to 2 gallons of syrup.
That’s a lot of syrup!
How exciting!!!
Am I missing anything? Producing your own maple syrup can’t be that hard, right? Have you done this before? Are there any books you can recommend? Any tips or tricks you can share?
I don’t know about you, but I think this is going to be a great way to get some “gardening” time in come early spring when it will still be too cold to plant anything.
Yee-Haw!
~Mavis
Teresa says
I’m with you on this one. Go for it! Mavis Butterfield’s old-fashioned Maple Syrup coming right up!
Lesley says
Love this latest adventure and always appreciate you sharing. I know nothing but am along for the happy ride! If anyone can do it, Mavis can.
Jamie says
I looked into this a few springs ago too but decided it was too much equipment & all that boiling down time seemed too tedious…… but I look forward to seeing if you are successful!
Robin in WI says
Hi, Mavis — look up blue sap bags as one collection option. The woods around my in-laws’ lake home are full of those every spring. My father-in-law made syrup years ago but he has Alzheimer’s now. There are some old full jars in the basement that no one wants to touch.
Barbara Patterson says
Don’t want to touch because you don’t want to use it up? Or because you fear it might have gone bad? Maple syrup lasts a very long time. Even if when you open a jar it appears moldy on top, it is still good for consumption. Just pour into a pan and bring it to a boil. Skim off the foam that collects on the top and the rest is ready to enjoy! My family has been making maple syrup some I was a kid (and that’s a lot of years)!
Robin says
Thank you! 🙂
Dawn says
We started out as “backyard boilers” twenty odd years ago and decided to go commercial a few years ago. I warn you, it is addictive. Not only the syrup, but the process. A few things i can think of–red maples usually yield a bit less syrup than sugar maples, so your ratio of sap to syrup may be a bit higher than 40:1. Even that varies from year to year. We tap 500 or so trees now, mostly sugar maples with some red as well. Our ratio last year was more like 50:1. It was the same for everyone. For 20 years we boiled our sap down in the dooryard in a stainless steel pan we had made special for the purpose on a barrel stove we made. When it rained, we had an improvised cover we set over it. We kept adding sap to the pan and boiling it down until we had enough to bottle up in Mason jars. We started out making maybe 10 gallons a year. I can’t remember how many taps we had out then. We split the syrup and the work with my in-laws who live next door. Tips I have would be–keep your sap as cold as you can. The quicker you can start boiling it down the better, it can turn “off” quickly sitting around, especially if the weather is warm. Don’t let it scorch as you are cooking it down. That will make your syrup really dark. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you might have. Maple syrup producers love to share their passion with others! There are pictures and tidbits of info on our website. Google Schanz Family Maple if you want to check that out. I’m excited you are thinking about trying this. And again, i caution you, it is addicting!
Allyson says
I am so excited to see you try this and see the results!!!
Sharon says
I remember my mother talking about this process she witnessed close to 100 years ago. The tapping isn’t the hard part – the boiling of the syrup is. The fire has to be closely controlled so it doesn’t cause the sap to burn, and if it’s done the old fashioned way(outside, in a sugaring shed), it takes days. There’s a reason why the good stuff is so expensive!
Jennifer says
All I know about maple syrup is that it makes great candy! I tried some years ago and I think it was literally maple syrup and sugar. So good.
ElderGranny says
I am Native, and this is very much still done in my area. Sugaring is a community event. Traditionally going to the sugar bush camp was the spring social event after winter ended.
The difficult part is boiling the sap. The fire must not be too hot to scorch the sap. It takes patience and is very slow. 80 gallons of sap is a lot!
Miigwech
Nancy says
We tap about 24 maple trees on our property up here in Ontario, Canada. It’s a wonderful way to welcome in spring! Neighbours come and visit our sugar shack and we catch up while we take days and days boiling down our sap. We have maple syrup in our tea and coffee, make maple cookies and indulge in maple butter tarts; basically do all the things maple. 🙂 Techniques range from boiling your sap down over an open fire to using a large propane evaporator kit. For your amount of sap I would suggest using an outdoor camp stove … maybe one of those run on propane. I’ve seen some that can run on a 20 lb propane tank. You will go through a lot of propane but it is easier to control than an outdoor fire. And DEFINITELY don’t be tempted to boil it down inside!!!! You will have sticky sap steam all over your kitchen!
A couple of things to buy would be a thermometer, as regulating temperature is important, and maybe some filters. Maple syrup develops something called sugar sand if the temperature goes too high and sometimes “just because”. There’s nothing wrong with it – it just clouds the syrup.
I’m so glad you are trying to make maple syrup! We’ve been doing it for about 7 years now and we learning something new and refine our technique every year.
Julie says
My husband’s been doing maple sugaring for about a decade just with the trees that were already in our yard. It’s really not that much work until you get to the boiling stage. Some advice we received that helps with all the storage: treat the maple sap like you would treat milk as far as keeping it cold.
You can also freeze the sap until you’re ready to boil it. If you do freeze it, you can throw away the chunk of ice that forms; it’s the water part that you would eventually boil away.
Start collecting gallon jugs now to store the syrup until you’re ready to boil it.
The boiling takes a long time. We like to use a turkey fryer.
Good luck.
Ruth says
Freezing sounds like it would save a lot of energy in the process. Does it effect the quality? I wonder if the commercial producers use this technique.
Pauline in Upstate NY says
Hi Mavis, Quick comment for now… My husband & I have made syrup from our sugar maples several times in the past. As I recall, the first time we did it, I commented that “the stuff is worth $25 per gallon!” (Yes, that first time was a long time ago…) The point being that it is a LOT of work. Fun and worth it, but also messy and time-consuming. Everything you said is true, but let me add a bit of fine-tuning… Red maples produce sap, but the sap will not be as sweet as that of sugar maples, so it will take MORE than 40 gallons of sap to produce a gallon of syrup. I can’t tell you how much more, as the concentration of sugar in the sap varies not only from one kind of maple to another, but even from tree to tree and season to season depending on a whole bunch of variables that you can’t control. Making syrup is time critical. The sap has to be collected every day, and then you can hold it until you have enough to boil down, but you have to keep the sap cold and in a way that bugs won’t wander into it. If you boil it outside, it takes a LOT of wood to cook the sap down, and you & all of your clothes will smell like woodsmoke (not necessarily a bad thing!) and likely muddy. If you boil it inside, you either need a really good way to vent all of the steam that will be produced (i.e. 39 of that 40 gallons need to boil away…) or you need to make peace with the idea that your kitchen will be coated in moisture. When the season is over, it’s over, and if you try to push it, you’ll end up with ruined syrup because the sap changes. Lastly, while you do not have to babysit the boiling pot outside every minute, you cannot walk away when it is almost done, or you risk looking out your kitchen window to see flames coming from INSIDE the pot of (burning) sap. (Ask me how I know this…) And lastly, it is a grand adventure and a serious kid magnet and a wonderful way to welcome spring. If nothing else, you will have a new appreciation for the work of nearby sugar makers! So much for a quick comment??
Terri says
Watched someone on a vlog process (a lot) of maple syrup from their trees. Was enough for me to say, “Nope.” Of course, I’m not a big fan of maple syrup, either.
Leslie Moss says
As far as jars, yes collect now. I canned about 20 + gallons of grape juice from my own grapes last month. I was calling all the neighbors at some point to bring any vessel they had because I ran out of 1/2 gallon jars and quart jars. I had bowls all over my kitchen full of juice. It really was hilarious; neighbors bringing by pitchers and I would fill them up so they could take home and drink right away! In my area, ACE hardware had loads of 1/2 gallon jars, no name brand. They were the only place in our area that had anything. Thank goodness they did!
Daria says
Looks like you have red maples (Acer rubrum) there – the leaves are a bit smoother than those of sugar maples (Acer saccharum). You can still tap them, but it will take more sap as the sugar maples have a higher concentration of sugar in the sap. My parents did this when I was a kid – they cooked it down indoors and our kitchen ceiling fell in! So, you want to cook it down outside, and keep a balance between letting sap boil off and letting stuff (bugs, rain, etc.) fall in. I’m sure you can do it! It will be time consuming and it takes a lot of sap to make a little syrup, but it is fun.
hp says
I’m in Florida, so no maple syrup season here, but we do make cane syrup. Lots of sap=little syrup. The boiling is an all day process and you have to take care to keep it at the right temperature. We also spend a fair amount of time of skimming impurities (I don’t know that maple sap has as much as sugarcane, but it would make sense). Overall, it is a nice family event and we enjoy it. (Plus, since we do cane syrup on our own, I don’t feel bad about buying maple syrup for me. We are a house divided…part cane, part maple, and a kid who likes Mrs. Butterworth’s).
Laura says
I made syrup this year from two trees in my yard. It was fun but I did it in my kitchen, which was rough as I had to open all the windows! This year I plan to do it outside. I had to refridgerate my sap that I collected all week and boil every saturday. Once you tap a tree you are committed because the sap will continue to run! I only got three mason jars of syrup but oh boy was it good. I plan on doing it again this year as I’ll be more organized.
Joyce says
I am what you would call a “hobby tapper” and I learned by doing….I have 10 taps and generally do my cooking off inside on my wood stove until it gets not quite syrup. I use a couple of large pots and keep adding sap….then I transfer it to my large electric roaster and finish it. Just a warning the process can be addictive LOL. It’s like watching a science experiment.
I tap maples and a box elder. I don’t can-process mine, I jar it up and freeze it.
I had always strained mine thru cheesecloth but discovered last year that straining it thru washed wool fabric works better for me. Strain while hot.
You can save sap for boiling in food grade 5 gallon buckets but they are hard for me to maneuver.
I have been told there are 2 sugaring seasons, one in the late fall when temps are going down into the freezing stage overnight and then back above freezing in daytime. One in Spring…I have never tapped in the Fall as I am just too busy with leaves and prepping for Winter.
I would suggest placing your taps on the morning sunny side of the tree… it is amazing how much sap flows.
With 10 taps I usually get about 3 gallon of finished syrup a year. I think so much depends on your trees…3 gallons are plenty for us.
Get your waffles ready and enjoy!!!
J says
Box-elder syrup?!?! What is that like? Are there other trees that can be used? I can google it but since you have experience…
Ida says
We’ve been tapping trees for about five years on a smaller scale (15-20 taps) and have learned a few things along the way. First, don’t boil it off inside – you’ll have water dripping down the walls. Instead, boil most of it outside and only bring it inside for the final boil before you can it. Pay close attention to the pot, once the syrup start to bubble with tiny little bubbles it’s done and it will boil over real quick. Second, you can tap Norway maples and even black walnut too with great results. Three, if you have more sap than you can handle – freeze some of the half done stuff and move along to the rest of the sap before it gets cloudy.
All in all, it’s a super fun spring project and definitely worth the time!
Kathleen Schoenberg says
I tapped trees on our property in MA for the last few seasons. Here are a few tips:
1. Keep your sap cold. View it like milk – if it is not keep cold it will go bad. I used Homer’s buckets from Home Depot and packed snow around each bucket. I collected sap during the week and cooked it down on weekends.
2. Cook the sap outside on your propane burners. If not you will have a sticky kitchen ceiling. Use the biggest pot you have and keep adding more sap as it cooks down.
3. As you get towards the end of cooking you will need a candy thermometer so you don’t burn the syrup. As you get to the end of the cooking don’t walk away!
4. I double filtered the sap. I covered my cooking pot with an old cotton t-shirt and used that to filter the sap before cooking. After you are done cooking you must filter it again using a filter for this purpose (Amazon has them). This filters out the sugar sand.
5. I used to boil a bunch of the sap for about 30 minutes, let it cool and store it in the fridge. We drank “maple water” around my house and my son who played lacrosse swore by it!
Once I got the hang of this I enjoyed making it and eating fresh maple syrup for the rest of the year. Cheers!
Linda Sand says
You need to do this when nights are cold but days are warm as that is when the sap runs.
Wear insulated boots while boiling down. That ground is COLD!
(I liked moon boots as they keep your feet up off the ground.)
PSUCHIC06 says
I 2nd that! It is work! My parents would tap so many trees and we had to collect the buckets into milk cans….dump those into a long maybe 7 foot by 4 foot by 8 inch deep vat and boil it down outside in north central PA, over a fire…then stove top to reduce further. Best stuff you could ask for! Watch the weather! My parents who are in their mid 70s say really cold weather followed by a week of warm is ideal! Cannot wait to see your syrup Mavis!
Michelle says
Hello Mavis!
No practical advice, but I recently read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer which contained 2 wonderful essays on her and her family’s experience tapping Maples and boiling it down. It’s a great read!
Sue says
I did this for 2 years with my son’s 4th grade class. Boiling time coincided with school half-days, so I had 10-15 children in my house, whilst boiling the sap. First year, did it inside. Big mistake. Second year, used our propane grill. I filtered the sap twice, once before and once after boiling. We took the syrup made back to school and the class put on a pancake breakfast. Everyone also went home with a small jar of the syrup, too.
Barbara Benware says
Maple water is the best. If you get more sap than you can boil, chill it and drink it!
Mel says
I don’t have any useful advice on maple syrup, but the photos of the leaves make me think The Girl should make a watercolor label for all the jars (even if you don’t sell them).
LindaT says
We tapped our big sugar maples when I was a kid and my mom boiled it – in the kitchen. Not advisable. One thing I haven’t seen in the comments was that we poured some syrup into clean snow and ate it. Of course the atmosphere is much dirtier now, so I’m not sure I’d still try that. You’ll have fun doing this, but it will be the most expensive maple syrup you have ever had.
Cecile says
LOL Easy peasy! Not so much! You don’t necessarily get that much sap out of a tree. It all depends on the cold nights and bright sunny days. Boiling down the sap takes HOURS!! You won’t want to do this in the house due the amount of steam that it will create, unless of course you have more wallpaper to remove! lol The propane boiler you use for your dying would be perfect once you grab yourself a nice large stainless steel pot to to on it. My dad and my husband’s uncle had boiling sheds. Where they had wood burning stoves under vats of sap. Uncle’s system was much larger, a four trough system where once you’ve started boiling and it gets to a specific colour you drain it into the next vat until you get to the last vat which will be the beautiful amber or dark amber liquid gold! I grew up in a rather financially poor family but there wasn’t a day we didn’t have access to REAL maple syrup! Being of French Canadian decent we had Johnny Cake with maple syrup, pancakes with maple syrup, corn bread with maple syrup, buttered bread with maple syrup…you name it we ate it!
Jacqueline C says
We had an enormous sugar maple in our yard when we lived in CT, I tapped it in the spring for 2 years before we moved and I LOVED it! It takes a long time to boil it down but I just though it was so cool and exciting to get the sap and then come out with such a yummy end product.
John Stolwyk says
Check out mosyrup.com, great site for beginners
Jim Zimmerlin says
The reason those trees have multiple trunks might not be that they were chopped down once before. They might be Amur Maple trees, a type of maple with multiple trunks. I’m not saying that they are for sure, but it’s my theory.
Margery says
Speaking from experience do not boil it down in the house, learned why my uncle always did it outside when we were little. But it is fun to do.
Tracy says
Hi Mavis! Lots of good advice in these comments! We have been putting out taps and boiling syrup for about 10 years. If you would like a book to reference I recommend Backyard Sugarin’ by Rink Mann. We refer back to it all the time. It is a good book for small first timers.
Kristen says
We have silver maples that we have tapped for 2 years. We didn’t tap early enough the first year, and kept taking sap thru the “buddy” time, and the syrup tasted plasticy, and off. Look up buddy sap–it is late sap when the trees are close to budding.
We save sap until we get 5 gallons at a time. The first year we boiled on an LP burner we had outside–not cost effective. The second year we got a maple syrup pan and made a fire outside.
I will say our trees do not produce at the top range google says you can get each day. There might be a 3 day stretch with nice, warm weather that we get a good sap flow, but it is not consistent. I am not sure if it is because of the species of tree we tap, or the climate of our midwestern state??
I will also tell you our second year’s syrup was better than the first (because we avoided buddy sap), but it still wasn’t grade a, delicious maple syrup. Again, species of tree? Lack of skill on our part??
I agree: fun winter activity.
Ron says
The whole process is a labor of love,
My Tip : evaporate the sap OUTSIDE or build a little shed to dedicate to reducing your sugar away from other buildings, otherwise your house will fill with ants.
Bonnie says
Good for you. This is addictive and tons of work but so worth it in the end. You Tube videos was and still is my mentor. I am 65 and alone in this project so you can do this!
I use food grade 5 gallon buckets (Walmart) spiles and short tubes (Amazon) into drilled holes in the lid.
Then I use a sturdy high sided sled (eBay) to move the buckets to the homemade concrete brick
evaporator. I burn lots of old wood and use 3 pans 12 x 24. One foil pan to warm near the opening, one stainless steel in the middle
for higher heat and in the back stainless again to reach the amber color. Then it goes to the fridge until I can do the final boil. I can the syrup in tiny mason jars and give them away to friends. They return the jars for refills. Good luck!
Ashley Bananas says
When I was a child growing up in Connecticut, my next door neighbor tapped his trees. I was under ten at the time, but I loved to go help him in his yard. He would put old gallon jugs and hang them by the handles. He then had a metal wood burning stove he kept near his garden patch he used as an outdoor stove to boil it down. I was too young to remember the finer details. If you can find someone you can learn from maybe do that.
Michelle says
I’m a backyard sap collector. You can save some money by using gallon milk jugs instead of store bought buckets to collect sap. Or go to a food store like a dunkin donuts and see if they’ll give you their old food grade buckets. Use cheaper food grade tubing (sold with spiles) to connect spiles to buckets or jugs.
Also, reuse any glass jars to collect your syrup. Tomato sauce jars, salad dressing bottles, etc. But not plastic. It’ll melt if you jar it hot.
Use a coffee filter on still thin syrup instead of buying expensive syrup filters. Then finish boiling. You’ll still get a little bit of sugar sand, but it doesn’t affect flavor.
And you don’t need a hydrometer either. When you give your boiling syrup a stir and it foams up, and it takes a while for the foam to disappear, it’s ready. You only need to be exact in the sugar concentration (called brix) when selling syrup. Just do 5-10 gallons at a time.
When cool stick it in the freezer and it’ll last for years. I give mine as Christmas gifts but in NJ sugaring starts in January. So, the freezer keeps it clean enough for gifts.
Have fun!
Diana says
My brother and his Scout troop used to boil down the sap every year using an old hot water heater that they split in half. It was delish!.
There are a couple of YT channels that have a few videos about the process – Lumnah Acres and My Self Reliance. I’ve watched them both do it and while it isn’t difficult, it does take some time and some stainless steel containers, lol.
Good luck!
Shannon says
Hi Mavis,
Did you sent a timeframe for tapping? I’m in Zone 6b and I’m thinking right about now is the time to tap our two maple trees. I just got my taps and tubes in so I’m thinking of doing it this week
Mavis Butterfield says
This will be our first year so my plan is to start tapping as soon as I see other peoples buckets out and go from there.