Maple Sugaring

Most of March was consumed by Maple Sugaring this year. We set up a "sugar shack" in our backyard and boiled off several hundred gallons of maple sap. In the end we had lots of jars of yummy homemade syrup to share with family, friends, and co-workers. I'll try to take you through the process step by step with the next few photos.

This was the first year we tried maple sugaring and we certainly learned a lot. Jonathan did research online and surprisingly learned the most from several videos he found on youtube. He tried a few different methods for collecting the sap. Above you see his favorite: a 5 gallon bucket with a lid with a hole drilled in the top with a tube running straight from the hole tapped in the tree to the hole in the bucket lid. This was definitely efficient with almost no debris as long as you don't mind lugging 5 gallon buckets!

He also used some old coffee cans on some of the taps that were running slower. We tapped trees on Taft campus and at a friend's property down the road. All together I think we had about 40-50 trees that we were collecting from.

This is the classic set up used at Taft. The galvanized bucket is hung directly on a tap spout and covered so animals, falling leaves and branches don't get into the sap. These need to be checked once a day sometimes twice if the temperature change is just right and the sap is really flowing.

Here is nice shot of the sap flowing drip, drop. Fun fact: It takes 46,080 of these drops to equal 1 gallon of sap. It takes 40 gallons of sap to yield 1 gallon of syrup. Yikes! Do the math on that one and you can understand why the good stuff is so expensive. I've been told that a gallon of pure maple syrup up in WI often sells for $40-$50 a gallon.

It seems there is always a price to pay. We didn't get through the season injury free. No thumbs were harmed during maple sugaring, just an elbow. Jonathan slipped in the mud while carrying a bucket full of sap down a hill. He managed not to spill any sap but did hit his elbow on a fallen log and split it open. He got 10 stitches and nice infection from all the mud.

His whole hand and arm swelled up pretty bad, but he survived and has a nice scar and story to tell in the end.

Despite my thumb chopping experience earlier this year I decided to get back in the saddle and put myself in charge of splitting wood for the fire. Notice the use of thick leather gloves and a pioneer maul and fro. No more hatchets for me, thank you very much!

The sap went straight from the collection buckets to the pots on the fire. We would get several gallons collected and then do a big night of boiling it all off to a finished product. There were several nights spent boiling off - some lasted into the wee hours of the morning, but it was well worth it.

Once it started to thicken, and there was no more sap to add to the pots on the fire it was time to move things indoors. Because we boiled over an open flame there was some ash and smoke that got into the sap, but it just added to the smokey, homemade flavor. I poured the hot sap off the fire through a double felt filter to get it ready for the oven.


Here you can see two different batches going at once. One batch is from our friend DD's and the other is from Taft.

They boiled inside with the close monitoring of a candy thermometer. Once they started to foam and reached about 220 degrees it was done.

I poured it through a single felt filter to get rid of any sugar sand and remaining floaters.


It is officially syrup at this point and took awhile to drain through the filter.


This is the finished product ready to be poured into jars.

These are photos of some of our smaller first batches. Once we got the process down we started boiling off a lot more at once and would often fill this measuring pitcher twice at the end of a boiling session.

We put most of the syrup in half pint jars to share. I turned the jars upside down to cool, seal, and kill any bacteria that might be lurking on the lid.

Jonathan loved maple sugaring and has definitely found a new winter hobby. He said going to check the trees to see how much sap they had produced was like opening presents on Christmas morning every day.