Backyard Maple Syrup Production

Backyard Maple Syrup Production

By Dan Turner

Anyone that reads this magazine is a follower of the seasons; spring, summer, fall, winter, fishing, hunting, and mushroom just to name a few. But few know of syrup season. Iowa has multitudes of maple trees, both in our urban yards and also in the rural bottom lands. The draw for me is that syrup season coincides with a dead area of the year when hunting seasons are over and the ice is fading too much to fish on safely. The best thing about making your own syrup is that you can keep it as simple as making a pint on your stove or increase production to several gallons every year. I will discuss every step in this article so you can get started as soon as the sap starts running.

Maple syrup is basically concentrated tree sap. The sap itself has a sugar content of 1-8%, but when it is boiled down and concentrated it turns into the liquid amber that makes morning pancakes oh so good. The highest quality sap runs in the spring of the year as winter fades. The sap is pulled into the tree in a vacuum like process as the wood warms above freezing during the day then drop below freezing at night, pulling the sap like a pump. This is why after the first of the year I start watching the forecast closely for the first sign of above freezing temps. In southern Iowa it can happen as early as the 2nd week in January, while the northern counties you may have to wait until March. I like to see at least four days of above freezing high temps, ideally with nighttime lows below freezing. The sap will not run when the temps stay below freezing, so don’t even bother if it’s not getting above 34 degrees or so during the day.

The next step is finding trees. This is easier than you may think. Maple trees are in many urban yards and groves of them are scattered all over Iowa, especially in low land areas. And the trees you tap inside the city limits will have a tendency to be bigger and more productive too. I have two neighbors that are gracious enough to let me tap their trees every year and I repay them with a pint of fresh syrup. You don’t want to give all your liquid amber away obviously, but I figure 25% can go to them and everyone is happy!

Not all trees are created equal. For a tree to be productive it should be at least 10” in diameter, with 24” trees being some of the most productive. Maple trees do have a tendency to rot from the inside out, sometimes making a healthy-looking tree very unproductive of sap. I try to avoid trees with large dead sections in them, but sometimes tapping the live side of a seemingly dead tree can be very productive. There is a lot of trial and error, and once you start tapping you will find out which trees are best and then use them every year without harm to the tree.

Once you find the trees, you will need some basic equipment. You will need:
• Taps with tubing (less than $2 each on Amazon)
• Food grade buckets with lids (two per tap)
• Cordless drill with 5/16” bit (size may vary with taps)

Drill a hole in the lid just big enough for the tube to go into. I have twice as many buckets as I do taps so that when I collect sap I can just switch an empty bucket for the full one. Sanitize all your taps, tubes, and buckets with mild vinegar or a weak bleach solution and rinse very, very well. There should be zero residual aromas when you are done. You can also get buckets from grocery stores and bakeries for free but make absolutely sure that they did not have pickles or something else in them that will give an off flavor to your syrup. There is nothing worse than spending all day boiling down 20 gallons of sap only to have two quarts of pickle flavored syrup!

To tap the tree, try to find a spot on the tree just above a root on the south side of the tree. You want the south side because it will warm first with the sun. But on bigger trees you can install multiple taps, with 1 tap per 10” of diameter being the rule. You can put taps all around the tree as long as they are at least 12” apart. Pick a spot about 30” off the ground and drill your hole at a slight upwards angle. You want the upwards angle so the sap will naturally drain out of the hole. Drill the hole 2-3” deep. As you drill, watch the shavings that come out very carefully. The shavings should be pale colored. If the shavings are brown or dark yellow then you have hit a dead area of the tree and you should pick a different spot on the tree.

Next take your tap and tube and lightly tap the tap into place with a hammer until it is snug. Put the tube into your bucket and you’re done.

Every tree and every area is different. I have trees that will give me five gallons of sap a week and I have others trees that will give me seven gallons a day, so checking and changing your buckets every day is important. It is unlikely you can boil your sap every time you check your trees, so it must be stored. Unfortunately, sap is unstable and can go sour. You can keep it cold for up to a week safely or freeze it. I usually just keep it in the shade behind the house with a piece of duct tape over the tube hole in the lid. It is usually cool enough during syrup season that the sap will stay cold in the shade.

Once you have enough to boil……but how much is enough? Every tree has different sugar contents and every year will produce varying sugar levels in the sap as well, usually between 1-6%. When we boil, we remove a specific amount of water to reach a sugar content of 66%, which is attained when our sap reaches 219.4 degrees, or 7.4 degrees above the boiling point of water. On average it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, or 40:1 ratio. That can vary between 30:1 and 50:1 depending on the year and your trees.

You will also need a couple kitchen basics to boil your sap into syrup. You will need:
• Fine mesh stainless steel strainer
• Candy thermometer (digital probe models work best)
• Large pot
• Heat source
• Cheese cloth
• Reusable syrup filters (optional)
But how to boil? If you only have five or 10 gallons of sap then it can be as simple as using a turkey fryer. And you should be able to boil about 10 gallons in eight hours or so with that. But after my first batch I realized that I was not going to be satisfied with producing syrup at this measly scale. So, with a tight budget and a little ingenuity I made a syrup boiler where I could do 50 gallons of sap a day.

On Amazon (yes I support local businesses when ever possible, but in rural America Amazon is a Godsend too!) I bought three large restaurant buffet steam pans. They measure 20”x12”x6” and cost less than $20 each. Then I went to work on my wood fired boiler. I took a piece of 1/4” metal that was 30”x60” and cut three holes in it that the pans would sit on. The holes were 2” smaller than the steam pans so they would not fall through. I want to only heat the bottom of the pans. I then took cinder blocks and made a fire box just smaller than the sheet metal, and about 24” high, leaving a small opening on each end to stoke the fire. I place all my kindling and small pieces of firewood in the box, place my sheet metal over that and start my fire. Once it has died down a bit, I place the pans on, fill them with sap, and (WA LAH!) home-built syrup boiler. Stoke the fire frequently to keep the BTUs as high as possible and with this setup I can boil 50 gallons of sap in about eight hours. It appears crude, but it’s cheap and it works. I would love to have a custom-made stainless-steel vat with a built-in drain, but that would be several hundred dollars.

Regardless of what you use, the boiling process is the same. Fill your vessel within 2” of the top and bring to a boil. Check on it every 30 minutes or so and keep adding sap as it boils down. Skim the top with your strainer every time you add sap to remove froth and impurities. Once you have poured in the last of your sap, this is when you must watch the boil closely. You can continue to boil it outside, but I usually choose to move the process inside on the stove for convenience. The syrup will go from 214 degrees to 219 degrees very fast, sometimes within a few minutes so it is important that you monitor it closely and have your filters ready. Either leave your thermometer in the syrup and monitor it or check it every 60 seconds until it reaches 219.4 degrees (7.4 degrees above the boiling temp of water. Believe it or not, the boiling temp of water fluctuates on the day based on weather and altitude).

When you boil you will get natural occurring niters that form. It is basically just minerals that naturally occur in the sap. They won’t hurt anything if you ingest them, but they are visually unappealing so I filter them out. I have a steel colander that I line with three layers of cheese cloth. As soon as the syrup hits 219.4 degrees I pour the hot syrup through the cheese cloth to remove the bigger particles before I run it through the reusable wool filter. It may take several minutes to drain through this filter.

After it is filtered, I put the syrup into the refrigerator overnight. Even with all the filtering there will still be some niter leftover in the syrup. You can then pour off the clean syrup into another pan, leaving the syrup in the bottom of your vessel with the niter in it for your coffee or to sweeten anything where the cloudy appearance won’t matter. The syrup is now ready to store. Heat the syrup back up to 180 degrees, pour into sanitized Mason jars, seal and store for up to a year in a cool, dark place. Once it is opened it needs to stay refrigerated.

There are not many things as satisfying as enjoying the sweet amber gold you harvested and processed yourself. Whether it is on pancakes, in coffee, or maple candies, your maple syrup will cure the winter doldrums and impress your friends and family!