Small Batch Maple Syrup-Making: You Only Need 1 Tree!

Maple Boiling: Small Batch Maple Syrup-Making: You Only Need 1 Tree! How to make maple syrup at home without sugar maples. Whole-Fed Homestead
This is our 4th year tapping trees and making our own maple syrup. And I’ll tell you a secret: the most trees we’ve ever, ever tapped is 4! And this year we only tapped 2!

When there is still snow on the ground and it is too cold to do most other outdoor projects around the homestead, maple syrup making seems like the perfect activity to welcome in Spring. It’s like the kick-off party to warmer weather, sunshine and green grass.

Maple syrup making seems like it could be intimidating, but the truth is you need only a few things, and one or two decent-sized maple trees. AND YOU DON’T NEED SUGAR MAPLES!

So how many trees do you need? And how much maple syrup can you expect to get and from how much work? I’m going to break down some simple stats for you from this year’s first harvest and give you a step-by-step of how we do it.

This tutorial is for small-scale production (like a few cups to a few gallons of finished syrup).


2015 Maple Stats
Trees: we don’t even have sugar maples! We’ve successfully tapped Silver and Autumn Blaze (a cross between Red and Silver) for years with great success!

This year we tapped only two trees, with three taps:
Tree 1 (Autumn Blaze Maple) Diameter: 12.5 inches = 1 tap.
Tree 2 (Autumn Blaze Maple) Diameter: 18 inches = 2 taps.

Sap Collection Timeline:
Tapped on a Saturday.
Collected Tuesday: 4 gallons total.
Collected Thursday: 4 gallons total.
Collected Friday morning: 2 gallons total.

= 10 gallons of sap from two trees in one week. And this was average at best. I don’t think the trees were pouring out sap at the rate they have some years (it was a little too warm!).

Sap Boiling Timeline
Friday was our first boiling day, just shy of one week since we first tapped the trees. Karl started the fire going, which took about a half hour to get up to a roaring cooking temperature. He used three pans, starting cold sap in each one, and could fit 8 gallons between them. After about an hour of boiling the sap down, he split the 2 remaining gallons between the pans and topped them off.

Quinn helped too…
Quinn helps make maple: Small Batch Maple Syrup-Making: You Only Need 1 Tree! How to make maple syrup at home without sugar maples. Whole-Fed Homestead

We do the bulk of the boiling outside, and then the last finishing (requires monitoring the temperature) in the house. Boiling 10 gallons of sap down to 1/2 gallon took 3 hours (using 3 pans). We brought the almost-syrup into the house and spent another 20 minutes finishing it on the stove.

And then we licked every spoon, bowl and pan that had any speck of maple syrup on it.

Sap to Syrup: How Much Did We Get?
We started with 10 gallons of sap and finished with about 5 cups of maple syrup. This seems to be the ratio that we consistently get.

10 gallons X 16 cups per gallon = 160 cups of sap.
160 cups of sap/5 cups finished syrup = sap to syrup ratio of 32:1.

This is just from one week. We don’t like the sap to sit around for more than a week, otherwise it starts to ferment and get cloudy and icky (unless we get a cold snap and can keep it below 40F outside). We try to boil a batch every weekend, if possible. In the past we have frozen the sap if we have any room in our monstrous freezer and didn’t have time to boil it right away.

Or we boil it down and then freeze the almost-syrup. And when we have a few batches of almost-syrup, we thaw and then finish them.

**Update: We just finished our second boiling for the season. Mother Nature turned it on and from the same two trees (three taps) we got another 18 gallons in one week’s time. That boiled down to about 9 cups of finished syrup. 

**Update #2: At the time of posting this, we’ve gotten 40 gallons from two trees in three weeks time. Which has boiled down to over a gallon of finished syrup! From only two tress and in 3 weeks time! Small-batch maple making is totally worth it!


How to Make Maple Syrup at Home

Why bother making maple syrup? In the words of Karl: “Because it’s awesome. It’s like this resource that’s been sitting in your yard and has always been there, and you’ve never even thought about it, and it produces the most incredible stuff. And it can be free! And from a dietary and health aspect, you go to all the work of hauling the sap, splitting the wood, boiling the sap. Making sugar is a lot of work- and that’s why you can feel good about eating that sugar, because you worked for it, you really earned it.”

Karl tapping Autumn Blaze Maple: Small Batch Maple Syrup-Making: You Only Need 1 Tree! How to make maple syrup at home without sugar maples. Whole-Fed Homestead

When to Tap
When the days start to warm above freezing but the nights are still below freezing, that is when it’s maple-go-time. This will depend on where you live, and also the weather that year. Just like any “crop,” you’ll have good years and bad years. Karl follows a state maple syrup forum to get a gauge on when other people in our area are tapping- why they’re tapping now or waiting.

“During warm periods when temperatures rise above freezing, pressure (also called positive pressure) develops in the tree. This pressure causes the sap to flow out of the tree through a wound or tap hole. During cooler periods when temperatures fall below freezing, suction (also called negative pressure) develops, drawing water into the tree through the roots. This replenishes the sap in the tree, allowing it to flow again during the next warm period.”
-Cornell Sugar Maple Research & Extension Program

Once you drill a hole in the tree, you have about a 4-week window before the hole will start to close and essentially start to scab over. If you drill too early, you can’t re-drill the holes (well, you can, but you shouldn’t, or you risk killing your tree). If you drill too late, you may miss a good run at the beginning.

One other consideration is when the trees start to develop buds. This can create a bitter flavor in the finished syrup, so most people stop collecting sap when the buds pop out.

Tapping Equipment
Drill: use whatever you have. The size of the bit will depend on the taps you use, since they can differ. And you need to make sure that the bit size matches the tap size. The hole will be drilled 1.5-2.5 inches deep and at a very slight angle. Because… well, gravity.

Taps or “Spiles”: we have a couple of cool, old cast iron taps, and a few brand new ones- they both work great. This is what sticks into the tree and directs the sap where you want it. There are many different options, depending on your preferences and mostly what style collection vessel you use.

Stainless Steel Tapered 4-Pack: (7/16″) tapered to prevent leakage, last a lifetime, come with hooks.
Stainless Steel 10-Pack: (5/16″) use with bags or buckets.
Hard Plastic 5-pack: (5/16″) requires a smaller hole in the tree; better for tree; very affordable.
Hard Plastic 10-Pack with Drop Lines: (5/16″) the tubing connects to the spile and drops down into whatever bucket you have sitting on the ground. People like to drop these into milk jugs especially.

Tip: See in the photo above- Karl uses a block of wood to hammer the tap into the tree, so he doesn’t have to hammer directly on the metal tap and potentially deform it.

How many taps should you use per tree? From the Cornell extension office:

“A healthy tree 10-17 inches in diameter (31-53 inch circumference) should have no more than one tap. A tree 18-24 inches in diameter (57-75 inch circumference) should have no more than two taps. A tree larger than 25 inches in diameter (79-inch circumference) should have no more than three taps.”

Collection Buckets: actual metal maple syrup buckets just look so nice out there on the trees. Lids are great to prevent debris or rain and snow from getting in (and yes, they’re usually sold separately).

Metal maple bucket: Small Batch Maple Syrup-Making: You Only Need 1 Tree! How to make maple syrup at home without sugar maples. Whole-Fed Homestead

Or you could go with the more modern plastic bags. I’m not sold on them- I think they seem expensive for what they are. They might be more useful if tapping a tree in an area were there are a lot of random people walking by.

Really, you can use whatever you may have lying around… just try to make sure that what you’re using was meant for food, and never had any harmful chemicals in it. And if it doesn’t hang nicely from your tap, get out your wire or ball of twine and tie ‘er up.

Storage Buckets: possibly the best kept secret in homesteading is bakery buckets. We get food-grade, clean buckets from the local grocery store bakery and deli departments. Depending on which store, they’re either free or $1 each- which is still a steal. These are usually 4-gallon buckets with rubber gasketed lids. And they’re perfect for storing maple sap on a small scale.

A cooler works well, and most people have at least one. Borrow more from friends and family if you need to- they’re probably not using them this time of year. Even better if you can get your hands on a big, food-grade drum.

Processing Equipment
We don’t have any fancy maple processing equipment at all- just a couple old pans and some other old junk we found. I love being able to use “old junk we found.”

Pans: wider, more shallow pans are the best- after all, you are technically “evaporating,” so surface area is your friend. Big Nesco oven inserts work really well and so do enameled canning pots (look for them at thrift sales!). Be aware that whatever you use will become covered in soot if you’re boiling over an open fire… so don’t use someone’s nice piece of kitchen equipment.

If you’d like to buy something new that will work really well, get a couple of these stainless steel buffet pans! At about $25 a pop, they are perfect and will last a long time.

The more pots you use, the faster the boiling will get done. If all you have is one pot, that’s okay too- but you will enjoy a nice loooong relaxing day out by the fire. Bring marshmallows.

Boiling: Sap to Syrup
First, remove any bugs from the sap. It’s the outdoors, bugs happen.

Our favorite set-up is in the fire pit, with cinder blocks on each side, with the old steel fence posts spanning between them, old oven racks on top of those and then the pots sit on top of the racks. We like to make sure it is a sturdy surface that won’t change or shift as the fire burns. But if you’re using longer rectangle pots (not circle) the oven grates aren’t totally necessary.

Boiling maple syrup over an open fire: Small Batch Maple Syrup-Making: You Only Need 1 Tree! How to make maple syrup at home without sugar maples. Whole-Fed Homestead

We don’t like the idea of using a propane tank and burner… just because propane is expensive and maple takes a long time. However, if that’s all you’re able to use, then go for it.

Let it boil away! You’ll need a few more things for this part:
good pot holders, preferably the glove-type
-something to skim foam, like a sieve
-a probe thermometer is helpful

Karl uses maple boiling as a nice time to relax in nature, soak up the sun, work on clearing brush from the edge of the woods and stocking the wood pile. The fire and boiling sap should be watched fairly closely- definitely don’t go out of eye shot from it, but feel free to make the most of your time outside.

Sometimes when it’s vigorously boiling, all the sudden it will start to foam up. Karl uses a sieve to skim the foam, otherwise it keeps boiling over and you lose more sap than if you wouldn’t have skimmed it. Maybe that only makes sense when you see it in person. Anyways… just be prepared, as it kind of happens out of the blue.

You can tell by his face that he wishes he had a longer handled foam skimmer. Ha!
Skimming foam off of boiling maple sap: Small Batch Maple Syrup-Making: You Only Need 1 Tree! How to make maple syrup at home without sugar maples. Whole-Fed Homestead

Filtering & Finishing
What I mean by finishing is what happens to the product in the final 30-60 minutes. When the sap has been greatly reduced and has taken on a golden brown color, but it still very liquid and not yet thickened like syrup, we bring it in the house to finish it on the stove.

Knowing when to bring it in the house is a bit of an art. It helps to know how much sap you started with, so you can guesstimate the final amount of finished sap you should have, and eyeball when you’re close to it.

Karl brings a big bowl out with him to dump the almost-syup into, then we bring it in the house for filtering. I place a big sieve over a pot, then place a flour sack towel nesting in the sieve (I think a lot of other people use cheesecloth). We pour the hot, almost-syrup through it, collecting all the impurities and bits of ash in the towel. If there is a lot of sediment/gunk, the bottom of the towel where the majority of the sap is being filtered will get clogged, so we shift the towel, moving a clean spot to the bottom area.

After it is filtered, we fire it up and return to boiling it. Depending on how far we’ve already taken it down, it takes us anywhere from 15-45 minutes to finish it.

So, how do you know it is done? Well, when it reaches the temperature of about 7 degrees above the boiling point of water… or approximately 219F if you’re around sea level. If you go too short of this, you have too many water molecules present and your syrup will be more likely to get moldy. If you take it past this point, your syrup can crystalize.

If you don’t have a thermometer, wait for the bubbles to change from large to small and foamy. Keep a dinner plate in the freezer (ahead of time) and drop a teaspoonful of syrup onto it to check the consistency. If it thickens and looks like syrup on the plate, it is probably done.

Canning & Storing Maple Syrup
Immediately after we hit the 219 degree mark, we have our sterilized canning jars ready and ladle the hot syrup into them, using a funnel to minimize spills. The lids go on and then the bands are screwed on just finger tight. This is the hot pack method of preserving, and it has worked well for us. We store our maple syrup with our other canned goods and it lasts for at least a year or more.

Alternately, you can freeze it almost indefinitely. We did this the first year we made maple syrup and it worked great as well.

Maple Syrup Starting Kit
This is a great idea! It comes with everything you need to collect sap (at the time of posting this, the kit is $109.95). Find it —> HERE!

Maple sap syrup collection kit

This would also be a phenomenal gift idea for a family with a couple maple trees in their yard, or for anyone who is interested in being more self-sufficient or learning more about where their food comes from.

We use maple syrup or maple sugar as our sweetener of choice, and a few of our favorite recipes are: Maple Poppyseed Vinaigrette Dressing, and Raspberry Maple Butter Sauce.

Want more from the homestead?

How to Eat Your Christmas Tree Feature   Beef and Kale Stroganoff   How to Build a Rustic Garden Gate

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46 thoughts on “Small Batch Maple Syrup-Making: You Only Need 1 Tree!

  1. Wow, my mind is blown. My mother tells stories of very fond childhood memories helping her step dad at his “sugar camp” when he would tap trees and make maple sugar and syrup for for her. I had no idea you could tap different KINDS of maple trees though – I thought you had to use Sugar Maples exclusively. We have two enormous Silver Maples in our yard, and now I may just try this next spring (it’s too late this year in our area, I believe). Those messy maple trees may just finally earn their keep after all! Ha ha.

      1. Days that don’t get above freezing, you probably won’t get a good run of sap that day. We try to tap during a time when there is a long string of days that are well above freezing during the day and below freezing at night. -Crystal

    1. I’m boiling Silver Maple sap as I type this. One would not give up any sap and the other is leaching through the bark and dripping off of the limbs so we had to tap!

      Jason

  2. We live in northeast Nebraska. Long story short, I was talking to a friend about doing some AC work for me, he asked about the trees on our acreage (over 100 silver maples plus others) wondering if he could tap them for maple syrup. I told him I thought you could only make syrup from sugar maples. He’d been tapping silver maple trees of friends in town (our town is 750 people) to get the sap he needed.

    He gave me a half cup of syrup from their canned stock and said “here, try this and see what you think.”

    It is the nectar of the gods!!! I’ve never tasted anything so delicious in my life! And it’s in our back yard!!

    We’re doing this next spring for sure! I’m fairly handy, have tools and everything needed based on what I’ve read here. Any pitfalls to avoid for us newbies?

    Jim Peschel

    1. It is the nectar of the gods! And it’s so much fun! I don’t think there really are any pitfalls, as long as you have a little basic knowledge and can follow directions. :)

      We have definitely gotten better at the process each year we’ve done it. But we never ruined any syrup while we were learning either. I’d say syruping has a nice, easy learning curve. Best of luck!

  3. This is a great article! I appreciate the thorough details and helpful hints! I have no doubt, based on your tips that I can do this, too.

    I live in a Mennonite Community where every fall is Sorghum Season. When I was a kid, I helped strip fields of cane, press the juice with a horse-powered press, skim 30-40 foot pans with channels to open and close when it was ready to go to the next stage. Then finally, from a huge vat they dumped the finished product in, open the tap and fill jars. It was an experience I was fortunate to participate in – though I was always thankful that my help was completely voluntary and wasn’t bound to it like the families who’s business it was.

    A few years ago, my husband and I bought 10 acres in my community that I grew up in. Last week, we were there to decide exactly where we’re going to put the house and which trees were going to remove and keep to maximize the gorgeous lake view were going to have. I tried to keep as many maples as I could, and I clued my husband in to the thought that I want to tap them and make syrup. He laughed at me and said I didn’t need save any, that we only have 100+ trees if I want them – the point is, I don’t want to have to trapse through the woods to find a bunch of maples if I can keep the ones close to the house :)

    Your informative and thorough how-to is exactly was I was hoping to find and so much more than I expected! Wish me luck :)

    1. Thanks Karen- what a neat experience making sorghum syrup! Have fun with your maple tress, and GOOD LUCK!! :)

    1. Hi Morgan- good question! The reason that people don’t boil inside is that it will/can make your walls sticky. So definitely an outdoor project! We finish our syrup inside (so, like the last 30 minutes of boiling) just so we can better control the ending point- and that hasn’t been a problem. Hope that helps!

  4. This was our first year and our first run came out fantastic! However, with our second batch we have so much sediment and we just can’t seem to filter it out…any ideas where we went wrong or what else we could try? Thanks.

    1. We always have a very thin layer of sediment that settles on the bottoms of our jars (we don’t mind it).

      Hmm… did you filter it through a cloth of some sort? Maybe it was too coarse and let too many particles through… was it old or previously used cloth/cheesecloth? I think filtering it while it is too liquid and not close enough to syrup might let more particles through a filter as well.

      If for some reason the problem persists you could seek out an actual cloth that the big-wigs use to filter maple.

      Hope that helps!

      1. We used new filter sheets we just bought from Tap My Trees. Thanks for the help. Maybe we’re being too picky because of how clear our first batch came out.

  5. I have read that as the season goes on, the syrup will get darker. When buds begin to form on the trees, it’s time to stop. I also found (when I was tapping three trees) that as the days grew warm enough for bugs to emerge, the sap became less pleasant to use. But the first week of tapping — oh my — the beautiful amber liquid!

  6. How many years do I have to wait for a tree to grow big enough to get the sap? I read somewhere 50 years to get to the diameter right for tapping.

    1. Nooo… the trees we have in our yard are about 20 years old and big enough for two taps. My guesstimate is that a healthy maple tree in a good environment would achieve the minimum (for tapping) of 10-inches in diameter in about 15 years.

  7. I just found your website while looking for info about making syrup. I’m trying to plan how many trees to plant on my someday homestead. Thanks so much for this post! I feel like it’s everything I need to know to get started. Now I’m binge reading your posts. ;)

  8. Very nice take and tips to help smaller and/or first timers. You have thought this out very well for the small urban and/or hobbyist who doesn’t want this to take over their life. This is really the spin I was looking for and haven’t found yet anywhere else – even though we have 11 acres with dozens of very mature sugar maples that have never been tapped. For us, it is the about the quality of the experience. not the quantity of the journey’s outcome. That may change someday or not…..but for now……we sincerely thank you for sharing….

  9. Nice information about syrup. Recently discovered Black Walnut could be tapped. I definitely will try this. One thing though, I’m thinking you live in the Northeast. I live in South Arkansas. Long summers, Short Winters. If the temperature is the only factor in determining “tap time”, then I could tap in fall or spring (or both). What’s your thought on this?

    1. Hi Pat- good question… and I’m not sure. My best guess is that it is too hard on the tree to tap twice per year, and the better tasting or better flowing sap is in the springtime. I have heard of someone tapping in the fall before- but I’m not sure the outcome. Let us know if you do! -Crystal

    2. I have also boiled walnut sap. It turned out GREAT! It doesn’t quite thicken as well as maple does, yet much of the same principles of boiling down apply, temp, etc.
      Just be prepared to smell like you are boiling a ground hog, (no I’ve never done that). Maple smell is like no other! But the end result is like maple but has a more buttery flavor. Crazy.
      I had friends who like it better than maple!

  10. I live in Alabama and,have a large 79 in. Cirum maple tree. Never made syrup but want to try it this year. When should I tap the tree. It,is,getting down below freezing some now at night and 40 s 50s and 60s during,the day?

    1. Hi Bobby, I’m not sure what is normal for the south… up here in the North, we tap in the spring not the fall.

      Might have the best luck finding a local-to-you maple syruping forum (we follow one for the north to get an idea of when other people around us are tapping, because there is some guess work involved!). Hope that helps! -Crystal

  11. Great read! We just tapped 3 150 year old maples and have gotten 10 gallons of sap in less than a week! We had no idea what to do next! (Now we do!!) Thanks for the helpful info—and I’m definitely looking into those smaller plastic spiles now, too!

  12. I was given a gallon of maple sap. Can I just boil it until it gets thick? any pan will do (aluminum, steel, etc) on our wood stove?

    1. Yes! I would use steel or something enameled over aluminum if you have it. And while yes, you can “just boil it until it gets thick,” it is a little finicky- if it’s too thin it will spoil faster, too thick and it will tend to crystalize and become hard to use. And it is hard to tell the actual thickness of the syrup when it is hot on the stove, as it thickens while it cools. If you’re going to use the finished syrup within a week’s time then I wouldn’t worry too much I suppose. Best to follow the direction and use temperature to know when it is done if possible. Happy syrupping! -Crystal

  13. You might want to add that the pot used for finishing off the syrup indoors should have a heavy bottom. Otherwise, the sugar sand crystals will explode and throw liquid sugar in your face, up to the ceiling, all over the place! Nobody mentions that, and I’m proof (blisters on my face, syrup on the 10′ ceiling) that it can happen with a thin bottomed pan! Scary!!! I took a video. Check it out! (Now I use a cast iron dutch oven, which seems to be safe.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuCv8_s5eYk&t=2s

    1. Hi Mary, sorry to hear you had a bad experience making maple syrup. Yikes, I haven’t ever heard of that happening before!

    2. In reply to what Mary said about exploding syrup, one of the best tools I’ve found for finishing the syrup is an induction cook top. Less expensive ones can be found on sites like Amazon in the $50-$60 range. (And all the cookware that you might use with an induction system would have heavy bottoms as Mary suggests.) Temperature control within a few degrees let’s you completely control your evaporation rate. It may be too high-tech for traditionalists, but it has made my small-batch syrup production a breeze.

  14. About freezing sap:
    When sap freezes, it’s the water that crystalizes out first, concentrating the sugar in the remaining liquid, so this is just as good as boiling down. If you catch the sap partially frozen, either because it was freezing in the buckets outside or because you put it in the freezer, just pour out the liquid and throw away the ice. Now your boiling time is greatly reduced. It doesn’t matter if you are on the way to freezing or on the way to thawing, as long as you have a decent amount of liquid in with the ice. The sugar is always in the liquid. You may have noticed the same phenomenon if you’ve ever sucked the juice out of a melting popsicle.

    This technique also used to be used for turning hard cider into “applejack” as an alternative to distilling.

    1. This is my first year and I only tapped one tree to experiment with. I don’t really have storage space for my sap collections, so I’ve been wondering if there was a better way to keep all of these small batches. I wasn’t sure if you could reduce small batches,cool/chill, and then reboil, so this is great info- thanks!

  15. We’ve been tapping our maples for the thirty years we’ve lived here. We normally do just nine taps, but this year I did eleven because I just found out you can tap silver maples, something I was not aware of before. These 11 taps are on five trees. We only do it about every 4 years because we are able to produce enough to last that long from that number of taps. I’m a little perplexed by the comments like, “we got ten gallons of sap in less than a week.” The amount we get varies, last week we didn’t get a lot because it was so cold outside both day and night. However, the last 3 days I’ve been getting over 20 gallons a day on those 11 taps. This is normal when the weather is right. Three of those trees produce 5 gallons a day easily, two of them are usually running over by the time I get home from work. We just canned three and a half gallons of syrup and I am still boiling sap. We also did a little over 5 lb of maple sugar candy. I think the most we’ve ever done was 5 years ago when we did 6 gallons of syrup, and 5 lb of maple candy. Hot packed into pint lasted us and our children’s families for five years. We do all of this on the stove top in the kitchen. We use two 6 inch deep Buffet pans that go across two burners on our propane stove. We have a very strong exhaust fan so steam is not a problem. A word on filtering, do yourself a favor and buy a felt cone shaped filter that is specifically for filtering the final product before canning. They aren’t that expensive and it’s well worth it.

  16. Thank you!! I seldom read an article where I feel like I have all of the information to tackle a fun project like this successfully and this is great! We have more trees then we should tap, I will have to restrain myself so that we aren’t overwhelmed our first time. We are in south east Michigan and I will be getting our materials together over the next year, mark our trees and be ready for next spring with everything we need! I so appreciate your time to put this information together for everyone, this will be a great addition to my new love of canning, gardening, preserving and homesteading! Best time of my life!!

  17. One way to keep the outside of the boiling pot clean is to coat it with liquid dish soap. We used to do that whenever we used to cook chili or stew over the campfire at Girl Scout camp.

  18. I had a friends old great grandpa tell me about the operations they have in Vermont and the smell of the boiling maple syrup. It sounded so fantastical I wondered how it was ever first discovered. Fascinating read. While I’m in California and wouldn’t likely be able to get a maple to the point of tapping, I still really enjoyed reading about the process.

  19. This is great! Thanks! This will be our first season trying to make syrup, and this answered some questions. I especially liked your diy outside grill for evaporating!

    You mention getting a 55 gallon food grade drum for storage. I’ve seen some for sale and have been thinking about picking up one or two. This is likely a stupid question, but how do you get your sap back out of the drum?

  20. I’ve been tapping silver maples on our property for a few years now and use the freeze method. I started really small, about a litre of syrup produced and boiling outside didn’t seem worth it. I freeze juice jugs of sap and consolidate, boiling down what’s left on the stove.

  21. I have always wanted to make maple syrup and I’m thankful for this article for kick starting me to just do it. I knew you can make maple syrup from trees other than sugar maple but was led to believe it made an inferior product. We made a delicious syrup from red and silver maple. This was wonderful family time as well! Thanks again!

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