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Message
Maple Syrup
Posted on 3/7/26 at 8:50 pm
Posted on 3/7/26 at 8:50 pm
I know this is an LSU board so there might not be many lurking in here who make it. Being in Wisconsin it’s become an obsession.
Started cooking sap at 6am and just walked into my house. 700 gallons of tree sap to start. Got it all in my pan and bottled up just over 20 gallons of finished syrup. Opened my first beer at 6:30am. Long day of standing by a fire, drinking beer, talking stupid, and getting away from the women.
Curious if by chance anyone here make it. I think the farthest south I’ve seen people post on message boards who do it is Tennessee.
Started cooking sap at 6am and just walked into my house. 700 gallons of tree sap to start. Got it all in my pan and bottled up just over 20 gallons of finished syrup. Opened my first beer at 6:30am. Long day of standing by a fire, drinking beer, talking stupid, and getting away from the women.
Curious if by chance anyone here make it. I think the farthest south I’ve seen people post on message boards who do it is Tennessee.
13
Posted on 3/7/26 at 9:11 pm to 32footsteps
In Louisiana, we produce lots of sugarcane, so kinda hard to get away from cane syrup. Not that you are, but I wouldn’t expect a Canadian to understand…
Posted on 3/7/26 at 9:12 pm to 32footsteps
Us Southern gentlemen prefer Cane sirp
Posted on 3/7/26 at 9:23 pm to 32footsteps
Everything you describe sounds amazing, I'm in! Need some trees though. My 4 maples are not big enough and probably not the right kind.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 3:31 am to 32footsteps
quote:
700 gallons of tree sap
U collect it yourself?
Maple syrup is great in that a little seems goes a long way. Like it packs 2x the sweetness of regular syrup.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 4:36 am to 32footsteps
quote:
Maple Syrup
Is gross. Applaud your effort though.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 7:51 am to calcotron
Yeah, we ain’t getting no syrup outta these swamp maples around here.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 8:00 am to 32footsteps
we spent a day in the sugar house at Von trapp in Vermont a couple years ago. They let us help gathering sap and we (kinda) helped boil the syrup it was a blast
Definitely a labor of love it’s insane how much sap you need to make even a gallon of syrup. I brought home a case and we use it all the time. Way better than cane syrup
Definitely a labor of love it’s insane how much sap you need to make even a gallon of syrup. I brought home a case and we use it all the time. Way better than cane syrup
Posted on 3/8/26 at 8:16 am to 32footsteps
Doesn’t the sap you need come from hard maple trees?
There are soft maple and hard maple.
I would have no idea how to determine which is which though.
There are soft maple and hard maple.
I would have no idea how to determine which is which though.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 9:05 am to 32footsteps
quote:
Started cooking sap at 6am and just walked into my house. 700 gallons of tree sap to start. Got it all in my pan and bottled up just over 20 gallons of finished syrup. Opened my first beer at 6:30am. Long day of standing by a fire, drinking beer, talking stupid, and getting away from the women
Holy shite. That sounds magical.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 9:32 am to Loup
quote:
sounds magical.
Unfortunately since OP doesn't seem to own a photography machine, imagination is about all we have to go on.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 10:06 am to 32footsteps
Hard to beat maple syrup. I have to order mine from Vermont every couple of months
Posted on 3/8/26 at 10:55 am to SulphursFinest
Used to own a restaurant and 3 guys from the Corps of Engineers would come in when they were sent to Ft. Polk. They were all from the northeast and brought me a can of maple syrup on one of their visits. Some good stuff for sure.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 7:54 pm to 32footsteps
I buy Wisconsin syrup, it is the best.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 8:15 pm to 32footsteps
Plenty of Maples, just not enough cold weather.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 8:54 pm to 32footsteps
I noticed the maple in my back yard was "leaking" about a month ago.
Upon inspection, squirrels were chewing away the bark to have at the sap.
Upon inspection, squirrels were chewing away the bark to have at the sap.
Posted on 3/8/26 at 10:39 pm to 32footsteps
I’ll answer as many questions/comments as possible.
You can tap any maple. You can also tap box elders as they are a cousin of the maple.
Primarily people will tap sugar maples as they have the highest percentage of sugar in the sap. The lowest concentration are silver (soft) maples. The trade off is that silvers piss like crazy. More volume but less sugar percentage. I also tap Norways and Reds. Their sugar concentration is in between sugars and silvers.
If you exclusively use one type of maple the taste signatures of the finished syrup will be different. It’s all good and you’ll know it’s maple syrup but pure syrup from sugar maple trees will have different flavor notes than pure syrup from silvers. The pure stuff that you can buy in a store will almost exclusively come from sugar maples. I tap a mix of them all so it has a unique flavor a bit different than if I only tapped sugar maples.
The basic standard is that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of finished syrup. At 2% sugar in the sap it’s roughly 43 gallons. You boil it to remove water and it makes “test” at 66.9% sugar. As it cooks down the sugars and minerals in the sap caramelize and that’s what gives it its flavor. I try to get mine a bit past 66.9% so that it is more shelf stable. Below that and it could start to mold even after it’s in a sealed jar.
I use a reverse osmosis system on my sap to eliminate water and bump that sugar content up. One pass through that system will reject half the water and double the sugar content. If my sap is 3% it’ll take it up to 6%.
I have roughly 100 taps and I’m using plastic bags to collect. I’ll drive around with two 55 gallon drums when I collect the sap. I could run tubing from tree to tree and then to one or two collection points but I’m not there yet. My wife’s cousin has around 4500 taps in trees all on vacuum tubing. He simply flips a switch and the sap flows right into his sugar house. My 85 year old father in law puts in around 300 taps all on bags and buckets.
Some days the trees run like crazy and on others they won’t. Ideal conditions are when it gets below freezing at night and into the upper 40’s to low 50’s during the day. Sun is good as it warms the trees up. Last Wednesday was a sap flood.
I have a bunch of 55 gallon barrels that I use for storage and two of them are set up on a rack. From those two barrels I’ll hook a hose up to a float box on my purpose built evaporator and that maintains a consistent level in my 20” by 48” stainless steel pan. Then it’s all temperature regulated. Hotter the fire the better. Sap becomes syrup when it’s 7 degrees above the boiling point of water. I have an electronic temp sensor that will open a valve to drain syrup out of the pan when it hits that temp. Then when the temp drops back down it automatically closes. Once it’s up and running it’s an entire day of feeding wood into a fire and drinking beer.
I don’t have any pics up on a photo hosting site otherwise I’d add them into this. It is a labor of love. A ton of physical labor and the equipment isn’t cheap. I might have close to 20k stuck into it but it’s a hobby so I can justify it. I don’t golf, I don’t ride snowmobiles or ATVs, etc. I give syrup away to friends, donate a bunch to our church for a pancake breakfast, and use it to barter for things.
You can tap any maple. You can also tap box elders as they are a cousin of the maple.
Primarily people will tap sugar maples as they have the highest percentage of sugar in the sap. The lowest concentration are silver (soft) maples. The trade off is that silvers piss like crazy. More volume but less sugar percentage. I also tap Norways and Reds. Their sugar concentration is in between sugars and silvers.
If you exclusively use one type of maple the taste signatures of the finished syrup will be different. It’s all good and you’ll know it’s maple syrup but pure syrup from sugar maple trees will have different flavor notes than pure syrup from silvers. The pure stuff that you can buy in a store will almost exclusively come from sugar maples. I tap a mix of them all so it has a unique flavor a bit different than if I only tapped sugar maples.
The basic standard is that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of finished syrup. At 2% sugar in the sap it’s roughly 43 gallons. You boil it to remove water and it makes “test” at 66.9% sugar. As it cooks down the sugars and minerals in the sap caramelize and that’s what gives it its flavor. I try to get mine a bit past 66.9% so that it is more shelf stable. Below that and it could start to mold even after it’s in a sealed jar.
I use a reverse osmosis system on my sap to eliminate water and bump that sugar content up. One pass through that system will reject half the water and double the sugar content. If my sap is 3% it’ll take it up to 6%.
I have roughly 100 taps and I’m using plastic bags to collect. I’ll drive around with two 55 gallon drums when I collect the sap. I could run tubing from tree to tree and then to one or two collection points but I’m not there yet. My wife’s cousin has around 4500 taps in trees all on vacuum tubing. He simply flips a switch and the sap flows right into his sugar house. My 85 year old father in law puts in around 300 taps all on bags and buckets.
Some days the trees run like crazy and on others they won’t. Ideal conditions are when it gets below freezing at night and into the upper 40’s to low 50’s during the day. Sun is good as it warms the trees up. Last Wednesday was a sap flood.
I have a bunch of 55 gallon barrels that I use for storage and two of them are set up on a rack. From those two barrels I’ll hook a hose up to a float box on my purpose built evaporator and that maintains a consistent level in my 20” by 48” stainless steel pan. Then it’s all temperature regulated. Hotter the fire the better. Sap becomes syrup when it’s 7 degrees above the boiling point of water. I have an electronic temp sensor that will open a valve to drain syrup out of the pan when it hits that temp. Then when the temp drops back down it automatically closes. Once it’s up and running it’s an entire day of feeding wood into a fire and drinking beer.
I don’t have any pics up on a photo hosting site otherwise I’d add them into this. It is a labor of love. A ton of physical labor and the equipment isn’t cheap. I might have close to 20k stuck into it but it’s a hobby so I can justify it. I don’t golf, I don’t ride snowmobiles or ATVs, etc. I give syrup away to friends, donate a bunch to our church for a pancake breakfast, and use it to barter for things.
This post was edited on 3/8/26 at 10:42 pm
Posted on 3/9/26 at 7:02 am to 32footsteps
Dang, makes me want to go spend $12 on a pint of maple syrup.
Sure didn't know you could make it out of that many different trees.
Sure didn't know you could make it out of that many different trees.
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