Adirondack Case Guy

Loren, my 12 year old son has been asking a lot of questions, researching, and badly wanting to do maple syrup next year. We live in Northwestern PA and have access to Maple trees on my parents farm. My thought is to just start with about 20 taps next spring. What would you recommend for someone just starting out on a small scale? I don't mind investing some money into this as he is really interested. Any advice appreciated.

Scroll down he just did a posting on closing up the operation for the season. This does not strike me as a hobby type thing.

Definitely not a hobby thing for some. Expecting a lot of work just to get a few gallons as a goal.

You will need ten gallons of sap to get a quart of syrup.

Yes, I am aware of that.

On the contrary, thousands of people do it as a hobby every year. You don't need a 50 grand RO setup to make perfectly acceptable syrup. Small-scale syrup making can easily be done using any pail available--gallon ice cream containers, 3.5 or 5-gallon plastic pails, or the newer-style plastic bags, plus of course any standard buckets are all commonly used. Spouts (spiles) are cheap and easy to come by, a 2-dollar garage-sale bit brace and a 7/16 drill bit will drill holes just as well as a gas-powered tapper, just slower. Boiling can easily be done on a kitchen stove, a wood heating stove, or an easily-constructed outdoor arch, using any available pan, with wider and shallower ones usually preferred as they evaporate faster. Obviously, they syrup produced may vary in color and flavor from mass-produced syrup, but that's part of the charm, and once you get some experience, it's quite possible to make syrup every bit as tasty as what you can buy from a commercial producer. In fact, many maple connoisseurs prefer small-batch syrup to commercial offerings for the same reason as small-batch whiskey--the process imparts flavor and aroma notes that the large commercial products often lack. As a rough guideline, 1 tap can be expected to produce around a quart of syrup per year, so 20 trees puts you in the neighborhood of 5 gallons of syrup--plenty for your own consumption and a much-appreciated gift to friends and helpers.

Aunt Jemima know how to make it from corn syrup.

She's more talented. Just want to do something new with my son that we can both learn from.

I really enjoy reading the posts on this site where people talk about how it was back when they were growing up on the farm, what they did, what their family did, etc. What kind of memories would you have if your dad would have indulged such desires when you were 12? What kind of stories would you be sharing with us now? If your son wants to do this, and it is feasible, how can you not afford to try?

When my kids were growing up we tapped about 30 trees we had some real sap buckets that a friend lent me and a few 5 gallon pails along with anything else we could find. cement blocks worked as an arch and I asked a tinnocker at work to make me a pan 18" x 20" there abouts with 3" sides. A few new trash cans worked well to store sap until the weekends and if it ran well we would boil at night during the week also. If we were lucky we would get about 1 quart or so each boil and then Finnish in the house where we had better control but we also had a log cabin with no wall paper and cathedral ceilings so the steam was no problem be careful of that or swmbo will let you here about it. the kids had a great time. Have a fun time it is also at a time of the year when your ready to get outside. Good luck.

Mark,That would be a great thing for you and your son to do together.Also he would learn good work ethics that it take some work to reap something that is good as maple syrup.

Tim pretty well covers it. If you are going to buy new spiles, get the 5/16 size instead of the 7/16 size. If you have a turkey fryer, that would work well to boil sap as you have infinite heat control and keep all of the work outside. A kitchen stove will work just as well for small hobby type syrup making, though. I would think a 55 gal drum stove with the top cut out for a flat pan would work well also. Hint: if you are going to boil with wood, make sure you have plenty of dry seasoned wood. I'd rather have my fingernails pulled off with a pair of pliers than try to make syrup with green fire wood.

Have fun with it and good luck.

No "she's" not. Any meathead can blend grade B blackstrap colored maple syrup with corn syrup and try to make you believe you have something special with enough advertising.

Making real maple syrup is a whole different ball game. Not that difficult, but the finishing process is as much an art form as science, especially when you do it the way we are talking about. Do it and have fun.

(quoted from post at 12:48:26 04/14/15) Loren, my 12 year old son has been asking a lot of questions, researching, and badly wanting to do maple syrup next year. We live in Northwestern PA and have access to Maple trees on my parents farm. My thought is to just start with about 20 taps next spring. What would you recommend for someone just starting out on a small scale? I don't mind investing some money into this as he is really interested. Any advice appreciated.

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Mark
We do a small scale syrup operation
I will share a few of the things we do that have worked for us for the past 5 years
Taps- you can but the plastic ones on-line for about a dollar each and they come with about 24 inches of hose on them already.
We bought ours from a syrup supply house in Ontario
Atkinson is the name of it , probably many others out there.
Local grocery store bakery usually has 2 gallon food grade plastic buckets that they get dough and icing in, we bought ours from them for 50 cents each with the lids.
Drill a hole in the lid for the hose and put one at the base of each tree and they will hold 2 days of sap when it is flowing good.
Cordless drill with a 7/16 flat bit will get you about 20 holes before the battery dies.
Drill in about 1 1/2 inch at a slightly upward angle low enough to the ground so that when the snow melts away under the bucket the hose dosent pull out
A light tap with a rubber mallet to install the tap and you are done
A couple of big rubbermaid tubs in the back of a pick-up or in a wagon behind a quad works well for gathering the sap
For cooking down the sap we built a wood fired cooker out of an old 2 foot x 4 foot stainless stock water bowl
it holds 35 gal comfortably and takes most of the day to cook down
wood is free for the cutting at our place so that is the way we went
If you are only doing a small amount then propane or electric could be used but it will probably cost you as much in fuel as the syrup would cost in the store
If you don't have all day to tend to it then bring it to a good boil to kill off the yuckys in it and it will keep longer until you have time to finish it
You don't want to keep sap around very long if it is warm out or it will turn into a thick ropy smelly mess
when down to the last 1-2 gal transfer to a stock pot and finish it on a hot plate outside or on the bbq side burner
Inside the house you will end up with a sticky humid mess on your walls and celings if you evaporate 40 gallons in a day
When you are finishing the syrup throw in a thermometer to check the boiling point for your altitude
Cook the syrup until you obtain 7 degree above the boiling point.
let it sit and cool overnight
next day pour it into another pot leaving the sand and sediment behind
Bring it back to a boil then pour it into steralized jars or bottles.

Let me tell you about my operation back in the 80s. A fella I worked with knew someone who built me a SS pan with a fitting in one corner for a valve. It was about 8 inches deep and 32" X 40". I laid an old 80 gallon water heater on it's side and cut out an opening that would just fit the pan and made a door on one end and a spot on the other end where I could fasten a 6" blower pipe for a smoke stack. Around the water heater I put concrete blocks and filled all the openings and the space between the blocks and the water heater with sand to hold the heat in. My sugar house was the back ends of two unloading wagons and some other used lumber and tin roofing. One side said Papec on it and the other said Gehl. Outside I had 2 new plastic garbage cans for sap storage and it was piped inside and I drilled a hole thru the blower pipe smokestack and ran the tube thru the pipe so it would drip into the pan. Seems like it was just below boiling when it hit the pan. I got the ends of Pine logs from where I was working and used that to boil the sap. Good Hot fire. Also had a light socket and a cord to a nearby building so I could read Louis L'Amour as I sat there. Used to make about 7 or 8 gallons a year.

We have not made syrup for a few years. We would tap about a hundred trees each year in a 10 acre woods. We use a pan about 3ftx 7ft about 8-10 inches deep. This is a small scale deal. We would get about 30-90 gallon depending on the year. We would boil in the woods till we had about 2 pans full down to on 5 gallon pail then finish it off on the stove in the kitchen. For finishing we would boil it down till it lost the sweet watery taste. I can taste the difference. Dad can not taste it to tell when it is done. We then pour it into a small tank like thing with a felt hat looking strainer. This gets most of the sand ash and general dirt out. We seal it in jars just like as if you are canning tomatoes or such. The jars are washed and in a shallow pan of boiling water for sterilization along with the lids. As the jars fill up we seal them with the lids and let them cool, anything that does not seal we keep up in the kitchen to eat. Should you have some of your stored syrup that gets a bit of mold on top, open the container without tipping, skim off the mold. If it has a sour smell dump it if not then just pour it in a clean pan and reboil this will kill the bacteria and be ready to eat afterwards. This process will bring back the good taste and freshen it up. We have been doing this for 3 generations this way nobody got sick or died from it yet.
We gather all the sap by hand with pails and carry it. The sap is stored in a 2x2x6 water tank and trickled in as it boils.

Thank you very much, just what I was asking!