Enjoy on pancakes, waffles and French toast. Real maple syrup is also great for sweetening beverages and flavoring salad dressing, vegetables, meat and baked goods. Lifestyle changes that are realistic and attainable can be more effective at fighting climate change than an overwhelming overhaul of your life.
Please enable Javascript in your browser. Some features of the site will not work without Javascript enabled. Learn how to enable it here. We use cookies to provide relevant content and ads, to enable certain donation functionality, and to analyze our traffic. Find it Identify a stand of sugar maples.
Tap it On the south side of the tree, drill a 3-inch hole about 4 feet above the ground at a slight upward angle. Hang on Hang collection containers from the spiles. Cook it Boil the sap indoors on a stovetop or outdoors over a fire.
Make it last Strain the hot syrup through felt or cheesecloth. Eat it! Trees up to 18 inches in diameter should have no more than one tap. Trees greater than 18 inches in diameter may receive two taps. Using more than two taps per tree is discouraged. Unhealthy trees or trees of low vigor should not be tapped. You should move the tap hole at least two inches to the side and twelve inches above or below the hole from previous years.
Taps placed close to previous holes are likely not to produce sap. Tap holes will usually close within three years. Careful tapping will not damage trees as there are reports of trees being tapped for years. You will need a rechargeable drill or brace to begin the tapping process. The upward angle will help facilitate sap flow. Take care not to oval the tap hole so the tap spile will fit snugly and close quickly.
Tap holes should not be drilled into frozen wood. While drilling the tap hole, check the color of the wood being removed. Cream, as opposed to brown, is the desired wood color.
Brown-colored wood shavings indicate rotten or unhealthy wood, and you should move the hole to another location. Clean all shavings from the hole do not blow, place any sort of sanitizing pellet, or spray into the hole and insert the spile into the hole and tap it gently to secure it snugly in the hole.
Keep in mind that the spile will hold the weight of the bucket and sap during collection. Your spiles should be sanitized before using with a unscented household chlorine bleach solution. Make sure they are thoroughly rinsed with hot water after sanitizing.
If using plastic tubing, any remaining chlorine bleach solution on the spile is likely to attract squirrels. They will damage the spile and make it unusable. Drilling the tree in preparation for tap insertion. Commercial spiles are available from suppliers in many styles. The style you choose will depend on your collection method.
If you use buckets for collection, you will require a different spile than if you plan to use plastic tubing. Spiles should be carefully removed at the end of the syrup season. Do not leave the spile in the tree. Tap holes do not need to be plugged; this can interfere with hole closure. If you choose to use buckets for sap collection, purchase new or undamaged, clean, used buckets. Make sure that the buckets you purchased are made of a lead-free material.
You will need a lid or covering to prevent dirt, rain, snow, twigs, and other debris from getting into the sap. Before collection begins, you should clean all buckets with a chlorine bleach solution and rinse the buckets thoroughly several times with hot water. Capped gallon jugs may also be used. Whatever you use, make sure it is of food-grade material and has not previously contained any hazardous or toxic materials. Sap should not be left in the collection container for more than two days.
After two days microbial action will result in a lower grade of syrup. If the days are warm the sap may spoil. This sap is no longer useful and must be discarded. You will need to plan accordingly to transport, store, and boil the sap as quickly as your evaporation system will allow. Maple sap collection using the bucket method.
If your site and conditions allow, plastic tubing may be used to collect and transport the sap to the storage facility. Steep slopes are not required as tubing may be used on slopes as low as 2 to 5 percent. It should be noted that wildlife can affect the use of tubing. Squirrels often chew the tubing and deer occasionally knock the tubing from the spile. Because of these possibilities, you need to check tubing regularly during sap flow. Using hot water for several rinses instead of chlorine bleach to clean the tubing at the end of the season will reduce the amount of squirrel damage.
If you wish to expand your operation, consider investing in a vacuum system. Vacuum systems increase sap production over gravity systems. Maple sap collection using the tubing method. If not using tubing, you will need to consider transportation to your storage tank. Roads or paths will need to be constructed and maintained to transport the sap in all types of weather. Depending on the quality of the road or path, you may use a truck, ATV, or horses and a sled or wagon fitted with a collection tank to haul sap.
The size of the storage tank will be dictated by the size of the operation. You will need to have enough storage capacity to accommodate two days of sap collection for your operation. Allowing for two gallons of sap storage per tap is a good standard to follow. Storage tanks must be of a food grade material and nonporous. Tanks with lead solder are not acceptable.
The tanks should be cleaned regularly during the evaporation season using a chlorine bleach solution and then triple-rinsed with hot potable water. It is recommended that you have two tanks so sap can still be stored while the other tank is being cleaned. Once you have collected and transported the sap to a central location, you can begin the process of evaporating and producing syrup.
Sap should be filtered to remove debris and other foreign material before boiling. Sap is best boiled in a well-ventilated building to allow steam to escape. You will need several pieces of equipment: a heating source, evaporating pans or continuous-flow evaporator, thermometer, filtering material, and bottles or barrels for storing the syrup.
You may be able to make the evaporator yourself, or you may choose to purchase an evaporator from an equipment dealer. You may be able to find good-quality used equipment from a producer who is expanding his or her operation. You should make sure that any used evaporator was constructed of lead-free materials. A hydrometer and hydrometer cup or refractometer is a must. This will help you determine the sugar content of your syrup.
Syrup must have a minimum of 66 brix this equates to 66 percent sugar content to be considered syrup. Syrup at a lower concentration is more likely to mold or go sour. There is legally no upper limit for syrup, but syrup with sugar content greater than 68 percent is more likely to form sugar crystals in the container. The heating source is called an "arch" in maple syrup production. For very small producers, this may be an old stove or constructed from concrete blocks and a smoke stack.
If you plan to construct your arch from concrete blocks, it should match the size of your evaporating pans. It should be at least two blocks high and be fitted with a smoke stack to remove the smoke and increase heat efficiency.
Wood is the most widely used fuel source, so a smokestack will help move the smoke above head level. The evaporation process may be completed by either a batch process or continuous-flow system. The batch process uses flat pans at least 2 inches deep because the sap should be at least 1. The larger the pans you use, the quicker the entire process.
Whatever you use as an evaporator, it must be lead free. If you have more than 50 taps, small continuous-flow systems may be purchased from a supplier. Sap will boil at the same temperature as water and depends on elevation and barometric pressure. The procedure above is intended for home manufacture of maple syrup.
If syrup is to be marketed, grading and labeling standards are required for retail sale in most maple producing states. Contact your Extension Office or state Department of Agriculture for regulations covering maple products. After a period of warm weather, cloudy sap may appear in buckets or gathering equipment. This is caused by bacterial growth and can have a negative affect on syrup color and taste.
A mixture of 1 part unscented household bleach to 20 parts clean water can be used with a cloth or brush to clean the inside surfaces of sap collection equipment. Follow the cleaning with a triple rinse of clean water to remove any hint of the bleach application.
Sap boiling equipment can be cleaned with hot water, or the product recommended by the equipment manufacturer. Do not use any other cleaning substances in any maple equipment. Household detergents cannot be completely rinsed from equipment and will contaminate sap and syrup with undersirable tastes and odors.
When washing sap or syrup filters, use hot water only. At the end of the season after cleaning in the manner described above, store equipment and supplies in a dry place. Production supplies and materials are available from maple equipment dealers throughout the maple producing regions.
Many local hardware stores carry a small line of equipment such as buckets and spiles. Used equipment is often offered for sale in classified sections of local newspapers and agricultural circulars. A maple equipment dealer or distributor nearest you can be located by contacting your local Extension Office, maple producers in your area, or through your county, regional, or state maple organization. The authors acknowledge the following individuals for review of this bulletin: Jim Finley, Bob Hansen, H.
Prepared by Anni L. Davenport, former educator and Lewis J. Let's Stay Connected. By entering your email, you consent to receive communications from Penn State Extension. View our privacy policy. Thank you for your submission! Home Maple Syrup Production for the Beginner. Maple Syrup Production for the Beginner. Maple syrup is among the oldest natural food products produced in North America.
Folklore credits the Native Americans with the discovery of this flavorful natural sweetener. Background Although modern day commercial operations differ greatly from those of our ancestors, the basic process of converting maple sap to syrup still requires the removal of water from the raw sap to form the finished product.
Species to tap Although several types of maples grow in the Northeast, sugar maple Acer saccharum is the traditional species tapped for maple syrup production. Figure 1. Maple species and leaves. Equipment Most of the equipment required for tapping may be available in the home workshop or purchased with minimal investment. Storage capacity of 1 to 2 gallons for each tap ex.
The pan size will vary with the number of taps. Heat source can be wood fire, propane or camp stove. Stainless steel pans fabricated with lead-free solder or welded seams are strongly suggested. Kitchen or candy thermometers may be adequate but must be easily readable above o F. Procedures Tapping Tap maple trees in early spring when daytime temperatures go above freezing while nighttime temperatures fall below freezing.
Table 1. Figure 3. Taphole wound. Collection The volume of sap collected during a flow period will vary from less than a quart to several gallons per tap, depending on the tree, weather conditions, and duration of the flow or run. Figure 4. Covered sap bucket.
Processing Usually about 40 gallons of sap are required to produce one gallon of finished syrup. Filtering When syrup has reached its proper temperature and density, it should be filtered to remove a gritty material called "sugar sand" or "niter" before hot packing in containers.
Cleanliness and quality control After a period of warm weather, cloudy sap may appear in buckets or gathering equipment. Equipment and supplies Production supplies and materials are available from maple equipment dealers throughout the maple producing regions.
Other Sources of Information Tapping guidelines and determining tree diameter.
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