A few years ago if someone told me I could make my own maple syrup at home, I'd had called them crazy! Everybody knows making maple syrup is a huge operation! You need acres of Sugar Maples, you need tractors or teams of Belgian horses, a huge cooking operation, bottling facilities; everyone knows that!
Luckily a friend of mine happens to run a small commercial "sugar bush" operation near here, with a couple hundred trees and a small outbuilding for a "sugar shack", and with her guidance, I learned that I, and you, could make wonderful maple syrup at home. I mean, after all, the Native Americans were making maple sugar long before the first Belgian horse stepped hoof on the continent!
First thing you'll need, obviously, are maple trees. Preferably more than one. But they don't need to be Sugar Maples. Any Maple tree can produce sap that can be cooked down into sweet syrup. It's just that the Sugar Maple has the highest sugar content, so less cooking time. I've made wonderful syrup from my Silver Maples right here in the back yard.
The trees should be at the least 10" in diameter. If you tap a younger tree, it'll become stressed and weakened over time and could eventually die. Larger, older trees, with diameters of 2 feet or more, can support multiple taps.
Some people have trouble telling what kind of tree it is in late winter, but if you're familiar enough with your yard or property to know where the maples are, you're all set. Don't be like me and try to tap what turned out to be an Elm tree! Even worse, it was a DEAD Elm tree! But in late winter, they do look alike! :) I'd wondered why I never got any sap from that one.
You do need to invest in some basic equipment. Bare bones would be a drill with a 1/4" bit, and Spiles, or taps. A cordless electric drill would be ideal, but lacking that, I personally use my father's old bit and brace from way back when. It works, and that's good enough for me!
You'll need something in which to collect the sap. I'd been using commercially-available plastic bags and bag holders, which you can obtain at farm stores (Tractor Supply Co. carries them starting mid-winter, or check local feed stores), mail order syrup supply companies, and sometimes at auctions. The metal parts run around $8 apiece, but they'll last forever, and pay for themselves in just a year if you consider a pint of maple syrup sells for around $8.00. But if you're not sure you want to invest, I also use plastic gallon milk jugs with a hole cut in the side near the top with the lids on to keep debris out. The main drawback is that it only holds less than a gallon, and when the trees really get going, they can overflow! Since I now have more taps than bags, I use the milk jugs on the trees closest to the back door where I can keep an eye on them!
You'd also need a large 5 gallon bucket to store the gathered sap in, or something similar. CLEAN and food-grade, by all means!
I gather the sap at least once a day, usually in the evening when the sap is done flowing. Sap actually flows UP in the morning, and then drops down to the roots in the evening when it gets cooler. When the days and nights are both warm, the sap goes up into the branches, and stays there 'til autumn. That's when syruping is over for the season.
Once gathered, the sap needs to be boiled down to a syrup. I believe the ratio is 50 gallons of sap to make on gallon of syrup. Ballpark. If I've got a lot of sap, like some wonderful years, I employ a large galvanized pan and my back-yard firepit for the main part of the cooking: Some people use an old stove in the garage, or an electric hot plate. Some have used a turkey fryer. If you've got the time and don't mind a lot of moisture in the house, you can use the kitchen stove. If I can, I prefer to use the firepit until it gets down quite a bit, then I'll move it inside to evaporate further on the wood stove overnight. And finally I will move it to the kitchen stove for a drastic boil down to lovely syrup. Granted after a week or so of this, my wallpaper is buckling and there's water running down the insides of the windows, but that's a small price to pay.
There are fancy meters and equipment you could buy to measure the sugar content of your syrup. If you'd had some experience in candy-making, you can tell by looking when it's down to a proper syrup consistency. When countless tiny bubbles appear, that's when I take it off the heat and pour it into quart canning jars for the time being. And there it sits 'til the Holidays, when I'll re-heat it and put it into cute bottles for Christmas gifts. If it lasts that long and doesn't end up in my coffee or in some oatmeal before then!
If you've got some maples in the yard, why not give it a try? Educational, fun, and boy, will you burst with pride with your end product! And impress anyone who'll listen when you tell them you did it yourself!
This photo shows the variations in syrup colors over a season. The early syrup is lighter and golden. As the temperatures warm, the syrup darkens as the sap has more minerals in it. The sediment at the bottom of the jars are those minerals, or "sand" as it's called. Unless you have a sophisticated filtering system, you'll have to live with it. I'm just careful when I pour it out so as to not disturb the sediment, and throw it away. The two jars on the right were just-filled, so the minerals hadn't settled to the bottom yet. But they will.
There are countless detailed web sites on the particulars of syrup production for the home owner or small scale hobbyist, I recommend checking them out for the particulars. But it's just so neat that anybody with a maple tree can pretty much make syrup!
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