Hey friends! It’s maple sugaring time here in the Northeast. So on Sunday, we went out into the woods and tapped six trees. We will do more in another week or so. Making maple syrup is a fun and close to home activity for the whole family. We have been doing it for a few years now, so I thought I would share a few of the lessons we’ve learned since we started.
Making Maple Syrup
Lesson One
It’s hard to tell one kind of tree from the others when the trees don’t have leaves. So, after our first year we learned, that we need to mark the trees in the summer. On our first winter out, we had try to identify the trees just by the bark. We did discover that sugar maples often have these bleached out marks in their bark. But we figured that out with some trial and error.
When all else fails, tap some trees. If you don’t get any sap, you can use the process of elimination to figure out which bark is that of the maple trees.
Lesson Two
The earlier you get your tree is tapped the more sap you will get. The ideal weather conditions are freezing nights and warmer days. Temperatures in the 40s during the day really encourage the trees to produce a lot of sap. Both this year and last, we have had these crazy February thaws which have also really brought the sap too. Truthfully though, my favorite syrup comes from the more concentrated, slower sap runs of March. Depending on where you live, the sap run could continue into April.
Lesson Three
You need to check your buckets every day. Some days you’re cup runneth over. Other days not so much. But, you don’t want to lose any of that precious sap when it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of pure maple syrup. The sap will run for six to eight weeks. Some of this will be dependent on the local weather conditions.
Lesson Four
The sap that runs early in the season will be thinner, lighter and more sweet. It will also produce more syrup. In the early part of the season, you will get 40:1.
Later in the season, the syrup is darker and less sweet, but has a more intense maple flavor. However, that darker, more robust flavor comes with a price: 60:1. The later in the season, the more sap you will need to produce syrup. The maple sugaring world identifies the early syrup as light and delicate and later season syrup is referred to as amber or dark and robust.
Lesson Five
Take advantage of the experts. Making maple syrup is a labor of love and most people who do it are more than willing to share what they know. For the last several seasons, we have gone to the Genesee Country Museum for their Maple Syrup Weekend. Each year, we glean new information about how and when and what to do to get better maple syrup results. Another sugar bush advertises tours and pancake breakfasts on the radio. If you live in an area that produces maple syrup, a quick Google search will produce free or inexpensive local sugar bush tours.
Lesson Six
You don’t need an expensive evaporator or a lot of special equipment to make maple syrup. We boil our sap on the stove in the kitchen and on a propane burner in the yard. It is merely a rumor that your kitchen will end up sticky.
You do need to boil the sap to 217-218° F. It takes a while to get the syrup to this temperature. But at the end, it goes very quickly. Right at the end, it will bubble up, so you need to be there when it happens. You need to pull the syrup at 218° F precisely or you will end up with something thicker than syrup. (True story.) Make sure that you have a good digital read food thermometer.
We currently have eight trees tapped. We purchased our buckets used from someone local through Craig’s List, but you can use 5 gallon food grade buckets with lids that you purchase at your local hardware or big box store. My father-in-law prefers these buckets because he doesn’t have to empty them as often. We also just replaced our spiles this season with metal ones. The plastic ones that came with our buckets seemed to be leaking down the tree. However, we have no idea how old these were since we got them used. They worked fine last year.
Other useful tools that we have are a funnel and a filter. We use a felt filter that we picked up at a local store. If you are unable to acquire one of these, you could easily use paper coffee filters. But, no matter what, you’ll want to filter out all the impurities which include bugs and dust and things of nature and sugar sands that form through the boiling process. A canning funnel like the Ball Canning Funnel is a perfect option and can be used to make jelly and jam later in the year.
Lastly, you will need storage jars. We just use ordinary canning jars. But you can purchase bottles that are specifically for maple syrup. Be sure to sterilize these in a hot water bath. Be sure to follow the manufacturer’s directions. We have also used wide mouth mason jars and simply froze the syrup.
Tapping the Trees and Making Maple Syrup
Our motto here at The Semiconservative Granola Girl is “Close to Home Living.” Along with making our our jams and jellies, harvesting sap and boiling it into syrup is just that. So, we hope you will join us in this Close to Home Living activity. Share it with your kids. I mean, who doesn’t love pancakes with pure maple syrup? Let us know if you have questions or other lessons from making maple syrup to share.
If you are looking for other ways to preserve the local harvest, check out my post on 7 Things to Preserve this Weekend. It’s really more of a July or August activity. But in the deep throes of winter, it is never too early to start thinking about summer!
Happy Maple Syrup Making!
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