Making Maple Syrup

Once upon a time, I thought that maple syrup just came from Trees as a thick delicious syrup. Then Wednesday when I was around 11 my dad took me to New Hampshire to visit some of his friends who had a maple syrup business. I got to help boil down some syrup, we made maple candy, I ate way too much, it was a blast. We came home with several bottles of maple syrup and we devoured it over the next two years. And then many decades went by before I ever truly considered making my own maple syrup. The home I currently live in has three gorgeous maple trees, I’d wager that both sugar maples are close to 100 years old and the trident maple is probably a little older. It’s on my bucket list to officially try and figure that out at some point, but not right now back to the story.

I’ve lived in my current home for almost 3 years now and this is my first year gathering maple sugar sap to boil down to make maple syrup. I’m really excited to share with everyone how this process has been and whether I would do it again… Of course I’ll do it again, but hopefully more efficient next time.

How is maple syrup made?

In the spring when the trees began to move again, a sugar stop flows freely when the daytime temperatures begin to get above 40° consistently. In order to make maple syrup, you would need to drill a hole into the tree use some sort of tubing or Spicket for the staff to drain out of into a bucket. Collect as much staff as you can possibly handle and then boil excessively for days. That’s the short of it.

I won’t go into too many details. There are many amazing YouTube videos out there with information on a visual process of boiling down. This reminded me a lot of when I make my apple core syrup in the fall after I’ve made applesauce. I take all my courses I put them in a pot. I cover it with water. I boil that for a while straining out the apple course add a whole lot of sugar and then boil until I have a syrup obviously the flavor is very different and maple syrup is one of a kind.

What equipment did we use to collect sap?

And the interest of full transparency, we did not purchase an expensive maple syrup collecting kits. For a few reasons one I had no idea if this was even gonna work. We had no idea where we were truly were in the season of maple syrup app collecting. And Three I had no idea if I would ever want to do this again. So we grabbed our ourselves a very cheap $34 kit off of Amazon check it out here. I don’t get any kickbacks from this link. It came the next day we got it hooked up and it worked wonderfully. For our first year, no complaints. In fact, I personally feel like it worked so well that I don’t see us upgrading at least in the next couple of years. If we decide to collect enough maple sap to sell syrup, I might look into a better system. But, at this point, that thought is very far off in the future.

How much did we make ?

In 73 hours, we collected 111 gallons of sugar sap, 36 of those gallons came from a friends tree while she was out of town, and the rest came from our three trees. After boiling down, and loosing 1 quart of syrup to overboiling, we got 4 gallons and 1 pint.

What was the hardest part of making maple syrup?

The initial boil is pretty easy and this is where you’re boiling off the water to be left with mostly sugar maple sugar specifically. Once you get to that point you then boil again and your temperature is need to reach 119°. I found this to be the most difficult part, especially with the equipment that I was working with. It was very difficult to get the maple syrup to a full 119°. Nonetheless, I persevered and was successful with doing it. It took a lot of diligence and it’s not something I could walk away from.

What was the best part about making my own maple syrup?

It’s a given that the maple syrup was the best part, however, I really enjoyed the educational process and learning how to do this. We love maple syrup in this house and I typically ration how much we can consume in a year and I stick to about a gallon per year. I was able to collect enough fat and make enough syrup to last us more than a year.

Making your own maple syrup from trees on your property, isn’t free

This may come as a surprise to some of you and not a surprise to others, but making your own maple syrup is in no way shape or form free. We spent a lot of money and resources in buckets to hold the maple sap and propane to boil the sugar sap and collection equipment. I have since learned about a process that can help you reduce the water content before you even get to boiling, next year I hope to do that. What are those options you ask?

Option one you let the syrup/water freeze overnight except that the syrup doesn’t really freeze in the temperatures that my area reaches adjust the water. In the morning you can pull out the chunk of ice that is purely water and then you’re left with more sugar syrup than water and the boiling down process will go faster. The other option I learned about someone on Facebook it’s called a sap reverse osmosis bucket. I had no idea what that was when I heard about it. You might not either, follow this link to learn more. I will definitely be doing this next year.

In the end this year without freezing much of the water out of that and without using a reverse osmosis bucket, we still came out on top by a good bit. After all said and done it was $30 a gallon. Next year, with a little more support from tools to help us boil down faster and more efficiently, we will definitely come out more on top. In my area, I can get a gallon of maple syrup after I drive an hour for $42 a gallon or I can get it without driving an hour for $69 a gallon. And while the cost of everything continues to rise, perhaps next year a gallon of maple syrup will be worth even more and this process will be even more worth it.

Would I do it again ?

Yes, it was a lot of work, as is any form of self food preparation, but I found it worth it in the end and despite it not saving us that much money it tastes way better than even locally source maple syrup. Perhaps it is a simple satisfaction of consuming maple syrup that I made myself. Perhaps it’s the Trees who knows, regardless I will be doing it again and hopefully next year I can collect more sap and preserve more maple Syrup.

• C. Shank