Homemade Maple Syrup

This year we decided to attempt to make our own maple syrup from the Silver Maple trees in our yard. I live in a typical midwest suburban neighborhood. I do not live in a wooded area, forrest or out in the country by any standard. I say this so you can have a good mental picture. So yes our neighbors did ask us what the buckets hanging off our trees were and yes they probably do think we are crazy. But we are also the people who have chickens in our back yard, have gardens where we try to grow some of our own food, compost bins for our our food and garden waste and IBC totes for collecting rain water, so context here:) We probably are crazy but if anyone was interested in how we tapped our trees and harvested the sap to make our own syrup then here you go.

First things first:

We ordered a maple syrup kit from Tap My Trees. It came with 3 collection buckets, 3 spiles, cheese cloth for filtering and an instruction booklet.

Using at 7/16 drill bit, we drilled into our trees at an upward angle approximately 2-2.5 inches. The sap started running right away. Make sure to clear any sawdust from the hole.

Using a mallet we drove the spile into the hole. Do this gently because if you hit the spile too hard it will bend and then be misshapen.

We secured the buckets to the spiles with the provided hooks and put the lid on top. For some of the trees we tapped, it was actively dripping out like a leaky faucet.

After 6 days, we collected 2 L of sap which we decided to boil down and see what we would get.

It is generally recommended to do the first boil outside because there is so much water to evaporate from the sap, it will create too much steam for your kitchen. Also depending on how much sap you are boiling down, it can take a while so an outdoor set up like this is ideal. By using a wood burning stove or fire pit, we can maintain boiling for an extended time without going through gas or propane. We only had 2 L to boil so it did not take that long, but I still let it go for about an hour until the liquid was starting to turn amber and was reduced by half.

After reducing by half, we strained again into a sauce pot to boil again inside.

For the second boil, you want to use a candy thermometer. The liquid needs to come to 7 degrees F above water boiling. For us in the midwest water boils at 212 degrees F so I brought the temp up to 219 degrees F.

So much more water boiled off that we were left with about a 1/4 cup of maple syrup.

This is the finished product. Not much here but it was delicious. I will definitely make another batch but this time we are waiting till we have around 4 L or more of sap to boil.

Reflections:

The kit with the 3 spiles, hooks, collection buckets, guide and cheese cloth was around $130 dollars. So no, its not cost effective…yet… All these things other than the cheese cloth can be cleaned and used again so as we collect over the years, it may be come more cost effective. Some issues we ran into so far are that not all our trees were producing at the same rate. One reason could be we actually drilled a little more shallow into out trees than recommended. So we may not have been accessing the part of the tree we needed. A second issue is the weather. It is recommended to tap the trees in early February and collect for 4-6 weeks. The nights need to be below freezing and the days above freezing so that there is a flow of sap through the tree. If it is freezing during the day or above freezing both night and day the sap doesn’t flow up and down the tree. Once the tree starts to bud out, the sap isn’t usable for maple syrup anymore. Our winter this year has been so mild that we have had about half the days in February stay above freezing. This warm weather has then been starkly contrasted with a few days of 50 mph winds, freezing rain and cold conditions. So there were days at a time where none of our trees were making any sap. If we had opted to drill the trees mid January, we may have had better luck since our weather has been fairly mild this winter. I will put an update at the end of this blog when we are done collecting for the season to see how much more we were able to collect and boil overall. I am hoping to make at least an entire small jar of syrup this year.