How to Tap and Make your own Maple Syrup

I just tried this yesterday. It is amazing! Most homebrewers already have more than enough equipment to pull this off.

I’m not sure what the legal ramifications are for heisting delicious Maple Syrup from city property, but I assure you that the taste ramifications are tremendous.



http://www.cameronbrown.ca/blog/2013/01/make-your-own-maple-syru/

Interesting. How do you know when to stop the boil?

SoonerDoc said:

Interesting. How do you know when to stop the boil?

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There is about a 40:1 ratio... (From what I've read) It takes about 10 gallons of sap to make a quart of syrup.
Also, the sap will boil at 219*F when the sugar content is right.

That all came from just a quick read of a few sites. I was really interested in this untill I noticed the 40:1 ratio!!!

Yea, commercial guys use reverse osmosis to get better efficiency during the evaporation process.

I love Maple syrup. Love it.

I drink it out of the bottle, and actually prefer the late season Grade B amber myself.

FATC1TY said:

I love Maple syrup. Love it.

I drink it out of the bottle, and actually prefer the late season Grade B amber myself.

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Ever tapped any maples or birch trees there in GA? There should be plenty of them around and right now might be a good time to do it... When I lived in Upstate SC for a while, I had a birch tree smack-up against my house. I had to trim the branches off the roof all the time. In the spring, the sap would just POUR out of the cuts! Wish I had known about being able to make syrup out of them... Ha!

It was just a little too late for me to tap my maple trees last year but this year I'm giving this a try
Maple beer

Huaco said:

Ever tapped any maples or birch trees there in GA? There should be plenty of them around and right now might be a good time to do it... When I lived in Upstate SC for a while, I had a birch tree smack-up against my house. I had to trim the branches off the roof all the time. In the spring, the sap would just POUR out of the cuts! Wish I had known about being able to make syrup out of them... Ha!

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Never thought to do that. I just bought a new home, and swear the big tree that sags into the driveway that needs pruned... is a river birch. Dunno if I can do anything with it.

Thanks so much for this thread! I'm up in Buffalo and am gonna try to find a tree to tap in the next week or two! A brass nipple from home depot and I'm ready!

Will silver maples work? I've got two giant ones in my back yard.

snaps10 said:

Will silver maples work? I've got two giant ones in my back yard.

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Yes, although it will produce about half of the volume of a sugar maple and the syrup will be darker and have a little less flavor

Will the sap run if its not consistently below freezing at night? We get days here and there where its in the 20's at night and warming to the 40s or 50s during the day. Next week for example it's supposed to be like that for 3 days. How long will it take to boil off? I don't want to spend a couple propane tanks for a cup and a half of syrup.

I did it 2 years in a row with silver maples in my yard in Wisconsin. The fact that I had large mature trees which are not crowded made up for the lower sugar content of silver maples vs. sugar/rock maples. One year I was close to the 40:1 ratio. The other was actually 28:1. I used a hydrometer calibrated for high sugar solutions such as maple syrup.

You don't want consistent temperatures. To make the sap flow, you want above freezing (40s) daytime to below freezing at night. The one year the trees budded early, which resulted in a butterscotch like flavor. Usable, but better on ice cream than pancakes.

I used two 6" deep buffet pans over a make shift fire pit with cement blocks. Effective, but caused ash in the syrup which would settle out, then I'd decant to another container. They were some long 8+ hour long boil days. Both years I started with over 20 gallons of sap.

I'll do it again sometime, but rig up some form of stack next time.

Sugar maples work much better than other maples. Not only in the quantity of sap and the quantity of sugar in the sap, but also in flavor quality.

For the best runnings, target a few weeks back to back when the temps drop just below freezing and night, and then you have a nice sunny day the next day. Obviously that's a crapshoot anywhere, but those are the best conditions.

It's important to keep the sap as cold as you can (but not frozen) until adding it to the kettle. It will spoil rapidly at room temp (within a day or two). Just set the buckets outside, covered. Grows some really creepy pink slime and sours if you let it go bad. This is just sugar water after all.

The boil isn't really a boil. The goal is evaporation, not caramelization. All you need is a light simmer at most. You continually add more sap to the syrup as it evaporates. Keep the heat on it and top it off 3-4 times a day with more sap as needed. All you're doing is concentrating sugars.

Once you start to get close to finished syrup (by color - it's a feel thing), you want to do the final 1/2 to 3/4 reduction in volume all at once without adding more sap. You cook it down to finished volume while carefully monitoring the temp with a candy thermometer. Once it reaches "done" concentration the temperature will start to rise even though you didn't add more heat, and this is when you stop. The goal is to avoid ever letting it get hot enough in this final stage that the sugars will crystalize when it cools. You want syrup not rock candy

Can/jar/bottle into preheated (boiled) jars while hot, top with snug boiled lids, and allow to cool freely for 12 hours. The lids will seal naturally. If any don't seal (suck down), either re-can them or use that syrup first.

Stop collecting sap when the buds pop on the trees, unless you like late season sap. It takes on a burnt flavor and darker hue. It's better for the trees if you stop when the buds pop too. Remove the taps right away, and the trees will heal within a few weeks. If the taps are in longer than 3 weeks, the trees take much longer to heal and you risk permanently damaging them, especially since longer seasons tend to coincide with higher air temperatures, then the wounds are more likely to get "infected".

Cool. Unfortunately I've only got the two silvers to work with and after this winter it will be one. Some moron planted a silver maple 4' from the house, so that ones got to go. Shame too as its a big, beautiful tree. The other one will stay around for many many years.

Perhaps I'll fashion an efficient wood stove in the back and use that. I'll hit up the Salvation Army for a pot to use. Is it hard to clean the pot afterward?

Mmmmm.. Cut that tree down and mail it to me. I love smoking turkeys and even ribs/butts with maple.

Yep.
Sugar content is just not quite as high, but on a craft level, it doesn't mean much...

Based on what you've stated about the silver maples they should be good for 2 taps, put them on the south side of the tree. (the side that receives most sunlight) it's the warmth of the day that causes the sap to flow up from the roots.

There's a reason the town I live in got the name it does. hard to find a maple around here that isn't tapped in Feb.

Looks like we're on for Monday and Tuesday if necessary. I'll do 2 taps for each tree and reduce whatever I get from them. Forecast is for 28 those nights and 45 during the days. What should I use for filter medium? Should I use one of my boil kettles? I have a 15 gallon with no valves in it that is pretty wide and a propane burner that I can get a good simmer going with.

I large sieve lined with cheese cloth works great to filter the bugs and gunk out on the way into the kettle. Using a boil kettle should be fine. Cleanup is easy enough, especially with something like PBW. Good luck!

Years ago (1983 to be exact) my buddy gave me 6 gallons of sugar maple sap. I was homebrewing but not very sophisticated (who was? who is???) I didn't even own a hydrometer so I figured "What the heck, boil it hard to kill whatever and then just treat it like water." I then followed a Canadian Amber extract recipe. Nearly blew the lid off the bucket and fermented for weeks! The resulting beer was incredible. Very strong and a noticeable but not overwhelming maple flavor. In fact, probably the only great beer I made in those days. We mostly made super black stouts and blended them with cheap beer for cheap "black-and-tans". I always figured I could attempt to replicate this "Maple Amber" by adding a pint of syrup near the end of the boil...but that's less fun and more expensive!

Any thoughts on how to incorporate sap into all grain? Perhaps just do a single batch sparge then add the sap to the boil instead of 2nd batch sparge??? I think my buddy still taps...hmmm...

Here goes nothing. Drilled and tapped it about 1/2 hr ago. No sap yet, but its still only 33 out. We'll see as it heats up. Sun just hit the tree. I have a 1/2" hose running to one of my old fermenting buckets that I sanitized.
We'll see how it goes.

If it doesn't turn out well I'm going to see how much I get and possibly do and India Brown Ale with the sap.

Just curious... Is it just habit that you sanitized the bucket? Aren't you going to boil the ever-lovin'-crap out of this stuff anyway? Why worry if it is under sanitary conditions to start?

Great write-up. I missed the sap run last year (got too warm too fast), so hoping I can get it this year.

Huaco said:

Just curious... Is it just habit that you sanitized the bucket? Aren't you going to boil the ever-lovin'-crap out of this stuff anyway? Why worry if it is under sanitary conditions to start?

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I guess it is. I use this bucket for cleaning and sanitizing my tap lines. I switched a keg out so it had some starsan in it. I guess I figured, why not?

It is a fun time if you have the time! I try to make 5 gallons every year on my crude wood fired evaporator with a sap preheater. All the sap is tapped from right on the property. You only need a few big sugar maples and it will keep you more than busy.

Another tip is to save all your wood from yard clean ups and recent tree fells. This is the fuel I use to burn in the evaporator. Propane is great if your trying to boil off a finishing pan, but you will quickly see how expensive the operation costs are on a propane burner.

Have a gallon of syrup from last year that is definitely going to see the inside of a fermenting bucket soon. Will be putting together a maple fudge porter and plan to be very generous with the maple syrup this year.

Good luck folks and may your taps be fruitful!

Holy cats! With the way I eat syrup on my pancakes/waffles, I'd need about 100 gallons to start with :cross:

I have always wanted to tap some boxelder trees and see what kind of syrup would come out of it. We had boxelders in our yard as a kid and when I was young and stupid I chipped the bark off and the sap tasted sweet. I have read they are a variety of maple.

The downside to chipping the bark off is that the tree died. The upside was that the boxelder bug infestations disappeared with the tree!

One of the sexes of the tree attracts the bugs, the other doesn't. We must have the other kind where we live now, because I rarely see the bugs.

Yup - boxelders work. Just a lower sugar content, so ratio may be 50:1 or 60:1 instead of 40:1 like a sugar maple. I'm planning on hitting mine up, as well as my birch tree.

Dang. Another hobby to try out. My wife will be furious.

The sap is on the move folks! Just pumped 400 gallons up to my buddies sugar house! :rockin:

Quick question:

What can you use for the brass nipple that's readily available and cheap?

Brewsday said:

Quick question:

What can you use for the brass nipple that's readily available and cheap?

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The brass nipple. Not being a smartass about it either. Just about every hardware store will have a male/male barbed brass nipple in stock.

Or a vinyl nipple. I found a YouTube video where a guy screwed a male garden hose nipple into a tree.

Personally, my trees are dry and I don't know if we'll get a freeze again. Next year...

Funny...I'm watching weather forecasts for a stretch where we break freezing during the day (we did 2x last week).

I like those tree saver, plastic taps. They are cheap and easy to use.
Ah ya, it's getting close to that time around here.

Looks like we'll get a nice stretch late next week in Chicago.

Upper 30's during the day, upper 20's at night. I'm gonna go for it.

You guys actually doing this need to post plenty of pix so all us poor saps without access to good trees can live vicariously though you...

no pun intended??? (...us poor saps..)

Seriously folks, let's say I have a couple buckets of sap, can I heat it and use it as my sparge water (Batch sparge)? I'm guessing it won't be as efficient as pure water but then it comes "pre-charged" with sugars. I;m not concerned with hitting some exact OG.