DIY

It’s Sugaring Time! How to make your own maple syrup.

March 9th, 2011 |

Hi folks!

Call me sappy, but it’s true: One of my favorite signs of Spring is the sight of pewter-colored sap buckets hanging on the sides of old maple trees along a scenic muddy road in my native Vermont.

The photo above depicts an early American sugaring scene. Though many technical advancements have come into play, such as sap tubes, vacuum pumps, and reverse osmosis machines, key elements of this native scene are still prevalent in our modern sugaring experience.

The basics of sugaring are still the same:

Tapping maple trees (although other trees have sugar-laden sap, maples are the sweetest and the sappiest)
Hauling and collection of sap
Boiling sap in a metal vessel (or do like the Abenakis and hollow out a log and supply it with fire-hot rocks to boil off the sap; or let the sap evaporate in the air until only sugar remains. For more Native American sugaring lore and history click here!)
Maintaining a fire
Gathering of community around syrup making

Those things are all still true. Go to any sugar house and you will see family and neighbors gathered around a sweet-smelling steaming boiler, usually being maintained by a core group of sleep-deprived people!

Here are the basic how-to’s for DIY maple syrup:

Find a maple tree at least 10″ in diameter
Number of taps depends on the size of the tree: 10″=1 tap; 18″=2 taps; 28″=3 taps, etc
Drill hole 1.5″ or 2″ deep. Try to drill above a big root or below a big branch, about waist-height without snow
Tap on the SE- or SW-facing side of tree first
Angle the hole upward so the sap flows down
Collect the sap and boil it down until it thickens into syrup

By the numbers:

40 gallons of sap=1 gallon of syrup
Each tap can generally yield 5-15 gallons of sap
Maple syrup has a boiling point of 7 degrees F above the bp of water; Therefore the syrup is done at 219 degrees F