And the reality is it's uh it's pretty much just like water, maybe slightly sweet water. I've always heard that it's like
So, in today's article, I'm going to show you guys how to make maple syrup. Now, if you're watching this video and you want to play along at home, here's pretty much the rundown of all the things that you're going to need to make your own maple syrup. So, first off, you're going to need a tap. And most of the taps that you're going to find online and in the stores, they're going to look kind of like this these days. Because the way you basically make maple syrup is you drill a hole in a tree and you insert a tap and then you collect the sap that comes out of the tap. I actually used to use the traditional metal buckets and metal spiles. These little spiggy things are known as spiles and that's what you hang the bucket on and this is what goes into the tree to collect the sap and then it falls out this way like almost like a little faucet. Whoa. Pablo Barncat just spooked Jenny Barcat. I mean, yes, the metal buckets, they actually look really nice. And if you're picturing like rustic Vermont maple syrup making, this is pretty much exactly on brand. But unfortunately, as it works with most things in this world these days, the plastic bucket and the plastic spiles are way more flexible, way more durable. They're easier to clean. And what I really like about these is I can collect probably about 2 days worth of sap in one bucket or I can connect multiple trees to the same bucket. and it just makes all the collection process that much easier.
Large scale maple sugaring operations like you find around here in the Northeast Kingdom, they'll typically do almost a much more sophisticated version of this where they'll have tubing that basically meets up in like various ways running through the forest to like make bigger and bigger collection lines and they might use reverse osmosis to really suck the sap out of there. I don't do this as a commercial enterprise. This is just kind of like a homesteading hobby for me. And usually I'll sugar enough just for like us and maybe some friends and family. And like we don't have nearly enough maple trees around here, particularly close to the the house, that it makes sense for me to try to do this as a commercial enterprise. But if you want to see something like that in a future video, let me know down in the comments. And I have plenty of friends who do exactly that process. But for me, the humble 5gallon bucket is probably the best way to collect the sap. Really important though, don't just use a standard 5gallon bucket. Make sure it's like food grade, BPA free. You want that cuz you don't want like the plastic leeching into your sap. The process I usually go through and what you'll see through this whole video is that I will set my taps out and then like you know maybe once or twice a week like every 5 to 7 days depending on the weather I will go out there and then I'll collect all this sap. I will boil it down and that's when we'll make maple syrup. But before we can even think about doing that we got to start by tapping the trees. And yes, also in your sugaring tool kit. You should have a good solid drill with a 5/16 drill bit is actually dictated a little bit by the size of your tap. These files here require a 5/16. Sometimes they might be a little bit bigger, particularly the oldfashioned ones. And then you're going to also want a rubber mallet to help bang the tap into the tree. Particularly if you're using the plastic spiles, don't use a metal hammer. You will break them almost immediately. So yeah, let's get to it.
So this was the very first maple tree that I ever tapped. It's right here at the front of our house. And pretty much every year when I tap the trees, I always make this the first one to do because it's just kind of ceremonial. You know, there's really two things that are most important for your success when you're making maple syrup. Number one is making sure you have the right types of trees. So, this right here behind me is a sugar maple. You can also tap other types of maples, but they typically have less sugar content, so it's going to require more sap to make as much syrup. But knowing that you're tapping the right trees is really, really important. And given the time of year that you're going to have to be working, knowing what types of trees you have will be very helpful. But if you haven't pre-identified your trees, now with your trees properly identified, you're also going to need the right weather temperatures that are below freezing at night and above freezing during the day. So overnight, I think the low was like 22°. I think it's like about 33° Fahrenheit or 34° F. As I'm recording this now at like 10:30 in the morning, and as I'm looking at the forecast over the next week or so, we are coming into perfect sugaring weather. And so I almost expect to drill into this tree and see some sap come out immediately. Here goes nothing. Doesn't look like there's any sap coming out yet. I've actually had moments where I've tapped a tree and almost immediately the sap just comes right out. Oh, actually, wait a minute. You can see it. There it goes. It's just starting to drip. So, that means this tree is primed to receive its tap. Give it a couple quick taps so it's nice and snug in there. And then we'll just give it a minute. We'll probably have sap start to trickle right out of the bottom of this hose. Put a bucket down here on the ground. Oh yeah, look at that. See? Watch it drip. Got a little bit of a leaf in here. You're going to get a little bit of particulate and stuff in here. You'll clear that out when you do the filtering process when we actually make our maple syrup. But for right now, as you can see, look at it. It's just really going. I am going to set the lid on this guy so that it doesn't get too many bugs in it and things don't tip over too much. There we go. I did one dumb thing as I just realized as I tap this. See that snow bankank on the ground? That's probably going to melt over the course of the next week. And so I might need to get like a cinder block to prop up my bucket. If you're doing this at home, just remember to compensate with the amount of hose you have relative to the ground so that your bucket and the hose connect and reach. One other thing, you'll probably see people selling like plastic bags to catch the sap. I am not a big fan of that because I find that they break so easily and they can rip and if they freeze overnight, they can have problems and rupture. And so, I don't like those. So, while I'm willing to give up on the metal buckets and go plastic buckets, I do not think the plastic bags are a good choice if you're planning on doing this yourself.
Now, most mature maples we have on our farm are actually right along this tree line, right in between my neighbor's place and our place. So, I've been tapping these trees specifically for years. This is always a good, reliable sugar maple right here. Now, sometimes when you have a big tree like this one, you can actually put two taps in. So, I think I'm going to do a second one right down here. You know, another little trick I like to do is I actually put a mark on my drill bit for how deep I'm supposed to drill. That way, I don't hurt the tree when I tap the tree. Here we go. And now you're probably wondering, well, what's the exact depth that I should be using to tap the tree? And I don't remember off the top of my head, but I'll go look it up and put it right here for you guys. All right, let's cover this guy up and go to another tree. So now, while this tree is actually a sugar maple, this one is actually a red maple. I only know that because I've looked it up when they have leaves. I'm actually not that good at identifying trees that I could tell the difference between the two in the dead of winter. Now, one thing you want to avoid doing though is tapping the same tree in the same exact spot year over year. The reason for that is because it actually potentially exposes the tree to disease. I was actually being very cautious. I should be sterilizing this as I go from tree to tree, which I'm not. This one's already running again. Let it flow. Let it fall. Sweet like syrup. You already know. Drip tap sap. Let it flow.
The next morning. So, I just made a very sad discovery. Trying to see if I can even pick it up without breaking it cuz it feels like it's frozen to the ground. There it is. So, we've got some bird eggs. I don't exactly know what type of bird these are. I think they're a little too small to be robbing. There's a broken one down there. There's another broken one over here. This one in my hand feels like it's kind of frozen. So, there's no point in trying to like say put this in an incubator. So, that window that you see right there, that's actually where my office is. And I'm actually pretty sure there's like a bird's nest or some birds that were trying to make a nest up there. And whatever happened, something raided it. I don't think it was a Jenny barn cat, but I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibilities. Jenny, was this your handiwork? Huh? I don't know. She does not seem interested in the eggs. And I don't know. I don't really know how she would get up there. But yeah, let's go check on some tree sap. Huh. So, yesterday was the perfect day to put my taps out. Maybe even a day late, but the sap was running hard and I'm curious to see how much we collected over the last 24 I guess 22 hours ago. All right, so here is one of our buckets. Ooh, yeah. Look at that. This bucket is about a third full. So, it looks like out of these two taps, we got about two gallons or so, I'd guess. Let's see how this tree is doing. Yeah, this one has less, but I would say maybe just a little bit less than a gallon. Wow. This one just by itself might have two gallons. So, you know, one thing you'll notice is not all tree taps deliver consistently. And just depending on the weather, the placement of the tree, the sun, like so many different factors, it will dictate how much sap you get from a tap. Our low overnight last night was like about 21° Fahrenheit or somewhere around there. Right now, it's warming up. It's probably about 29° F. The high today should be about 41. One of the things you'll notice is this is pretty much frozen solid. It's just starting to thaw. You know, one question I will often get about collecting sap and trying to make maple syrup is like, how long can you store the sap for? Because in case you don't know, eventually the sap will go rancid. And while much like the trees, there's a whole lot of variables at play. What I will say is I find that I never hold it longer than a week. And I usually try to aim for boiling within 5 days. Obviously, the weather and the temperature here plays a role, too. So, like the fact that that's frozen now means it's going to store much better than say if it hadn't frozen. And so, yeah, given where we're at on what is now day two, my hope is that probably by day five, we're going to start the boil.
So, it's now day six of this video, and today is the day that we're going to be boiling the sap. I've just taken the necessary steps to get the fire going. Even though it's about 28° Fahrenheit right now, it should be a really warm day, and I think the high is going to end up being about 50°. Even Jenny Barncat, who somehow just got bock on her face, came out to hang out. How's it going, sweetie? You going to make sap with us? I think Pablo's going to join us, too. At this stage of the game, it's just really about getting the fire going. And so I've loaded it up with some logs. I've got it started. Should actually close this door. So in order to make maple syrup, you do need something to burn down your sap or boil down your sap, I guess, or evaporate your sap is probably the most accurate term. This is year three of using this evaporator. And I like it a whole heck of a lot. It's made by a local company here in Vermont called Vermont Evaporators. They're not too far away. They're just over in Mont Pillar. Really, really nice folks. I'll actually leave an affiliate link down below if you want to buy one yourself. Honestly, if you're looking to do maple syrup at like a homestead scale, so not like big commercial production, but you know, just like what we're doing where we're making enough for ourselves and some friends and family, this unit is like perfect for it. Basically, they took a barrel and retrofitted it and cut it and put a door on it. And there's actually a pan that comes with it that I'll show you in a couple minutes that sits right on top and that's where you evaporate the sap. If you're watching this video and you just want to do a tiny little bit as an experiment to see if you even like it and you don't want to spend the money on something like this. You can definitely do it in a pot, too. That'll work. The first time I ever made maple syrup, I did it that way. The couple of things I would caution you on are number one, if you ever do it, don't start doing it inside your house. You're just going to release so much moisture that I've heard stories of people peeling the wallpaper off their walls. So, don't boil it down in your house. What you can do though is boil it down like on a grill or like a propane burner or like a wood camp stove or something. All of those things work really well. The principle I would just try to remind you of is the more surface area your pot has, the quicker that sap is going to boil off because it just gives more area for it to steam off. You know, part of why this is so wide and long, and you'll see that the the pan is actually relatively shallow. It doesn't sit too much higher than this spot right here. The reason for that is it gives maximum amount of surface area and it makes the sap evaporate that much quicker. Like you can definitely use like a tall big soup stock pot, but the problem is they're so tall that it's going to slow down how quickly your sap boils off and that's less than ideal. Not that you can't do it, it's just less than ideal. Now, since I just got this fire started, we're going to give it a few minutes just to let it do its thing and heat up.
So now, as far as the pan goes, let me just show you the design of this before we start collecting the sap. So this pan will eventually just sit right on top of the fire. It's pretty wide. There's a lot more surface area. It's only, I don't know, maybe about 8 in deep, 7 in deep maybe. And then one of the other things you'll notice is there's these dividers. So these dividers actually have like little pathways that go from one section to another section to another section. And then you'll actually notice over here there's a spigot that you can use to drain everything out. The reason for a design like this is it lets actually you put the colder like more sap here. Then as it boils down it gets heavier. And so if you keep your pan roughly level, what's going to happen is the more cooked off stuff is going to migrate to the front of the pan and then you can drain it off. And so this lets you actually you could continuously cook batches for hours and hours and days and days. And so that's why I'm actually such a big fan of the design of this evaporator specifically. It's just it's really great cuz you can just keep cooking without ever having to stop. I've actually made like a really crude version of this with like cinder blocks and like uh catering dishes, but the problem was I would have to stop the fire, wait for the dish to cool off before I could pull it off the fire. And so you have just a lot less control. And so again, if you want to do like another like very crude, simple version, the version that I've made in the past with like cinder blocks, that actually works just fine. Eventually, your cinder blocks will crack though. But you can easily build something for, I don't know, less than $100 that can do a whole lot of maple. Probably about as much maple as I do on that. But the downside there is just that it's a lot more cumbersome to use and it will eventually break down when the heat cracks to the cinder blocks. I don't think we're going to have a crazy amount of sap to cook today, but I think the only way we're going to know that is if we go out there and start collecting from the trees.
Okay, so we now have collected all of our staff. We still have a couple buckets full of sap here, but by my estimation, I would say we probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 35 gallons of sap. So, we're not going to quite make a gallon, but we'll put in a pretty hefty amount by the end of this video. Now, the sap hasn't really started to boil yet. I put it in here, it's like a warm bath water, basically. I know one question a lot of folks have is like, what does the sap actually taste like?