Made our first attempt at making our own syrup this year. We have silver maples, supposedly low-yielding but figured we'd try them.
Rather than buying all the 'official' tapping gear, I jerry rigged it with 1/2" plastic plumbing line and splice fittings for the taps and tees to join 2 lines on the doubled trees. I used 2 gallon Ziplocs to collect the sap. Total cost per tree was about $3 for 2 taps, the line and most of the fittings are reuseable (I lost a couple of the connectors pulling them out). Worked fairly well until the sap really started to run, then it overwhelmed the bags during a work day. Next year I will just pipe it directly into 5 gal pails.
We need to find a more efficient boiling system. This year I boiled in a canning pot over a wood fire built in a brick hearth to block in most of the heat and allow enough draft for a hot burn. Used a lot of wood and was hard to keep a steady boil. I need an evaporator vessel with more surface area I think. Any tips in this area would be appreciated. When the sap was reduced to a slightly "sugary" boil it was taken inside to finish. We found it best to filter it at this stage through a boiled flour sack towel. This produced very clean mid amber syrup and the condensed sap still flowed much easier through the filter than finished hot syrup did. Actually yielded cleaner looking syrup than our first run where we filtered hot syrup after finishing. We got DEE#$%^ LICIOUS syrup when we were done, far better than even the store bought real stuff. Will def do this again next year.
Our silver maples were pleasantly surprising. We got an amazing yield of almost 30:1 which is better than I was told to expect even from sugar maples. Our trees are very limby open grown yard trees so I'm sure that helps.
Anyone else make their own syrup? Tips and advice for next year appreciated.
Rather than buying all the 'official' tapping gear, I jerry rigged it with 1/2" plastic plumbing line and splice fittings for the taps and tees to join 2 lines on the doubled trees. I used 2 gallon Ziplocs to collect the sap. Total cost per tree was about $3 for 2 taps, the line and most of the fittings are reuseable (I lost a couple of the connectors pulling them out). Worked fairly well until the sap really started to run, then it overwhelmed the bags during a work day. Next year I will just pipe it directly into 5 gal pails.
We need to find a more efficient boiling system. This year I boiled in a canning pot over a wood fire built in a brick hearth to block in most of the heat and allow enough draft for a hot burn. Used a lot of wood and was hard to keep a steady boil. I need an evaporator vessel with more surface area I think. Any tips in this area would be appreciated. When the sap was reduced to a slightly "sugary" boil it was taken inside to finish. We found it best to filter it at this stage through a boiled flour sack towel. This produced very clean mid amber syrup and the condensed sap still flowed much easier through the filter than finished hot syrup did. Actually yielded cleaner looking syrup than our first run where we filtered hot syrup after finishing. We got DEE#$%^ LICIOUS syrup when we were done, far better than even the store bought real stuff. Will def do this again next year.
Our silver maples were pleasantly surprising. We got an amazing yield of almost 30:1 which is better than I was told to expect even from sugar maples. Our trees are very limby open grown yard trees so I'm sure that helps.
Anyone else make their own syrup? Tips and advice for next year appreciated.
