Maple syrup season again.

Put a few taps in Saturday hoping to do more tonite if i get home from work early enough. If not tomorrow for sure.

Keep sharing your successes and pictures. I’m living vicariously through the posts and hope to one day have the time to dabble in making maple syrup. There’s nothing better than a good batch of homemade maple syrup. We’ve got a nice mixture of trees that are ideal sized, but just not the time to dedicate or take on the endeavor.

I tapped our woods on Saturday. 125 taps, 100 on gravity lines, 25 bags on the random trees the lines won’t work on. Last year made 27 gallons, this year hoping for 30. We sell at our local farmers market and boil ours just a little longer to make it thicker (hate the runny stuff). I built a reverse osmosis which takes off about 50% of the water before we boil which really helps cut our boiling time. Would be happy to share any info if anyone is interested.

Dang, Dan! That sounds like one heck of an operation! We got 42 taps in yesterday with hopes to do a few more this week (we ran out of hose). Last year we had 16 gallons of Syrup & hoping for close to 20 this year. The weather looks great until the end of next week. Hopefully just a minor cool down, then back into the mid 40’s!

We started 4 years ago with 25 bags and cooking in the woods on a cinder block arch with buffet pans. I welded up a new cooker from an oil diesel tank from my grandparents farm and moved it down to the house. Last year we did just over 1000 gallons of sap. My neighbor a mile down the road has 3500 taps on 40 acres and boils down about 1500 gallons an hour with his set up. Its pretty amazing to watch but then I see the costs involved and never want to get that big.

@dbuchmann What do you guys use for storage?
Do you worry about it spoiling if it gets too warm?
How often do you do a batch & how many gallons of sap can you do in a day?

We boil pretty much every weekend (Friday & Saturday), boiling down some where around 150-170 gallons of sap. It’s definitely not the greatest setup, but it works well for us. But, there is always room for improvement!

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Dan Buchmann wrote:

boils down about 1500 gallons an hour

DANG!! We’ve looked at buying a nice cooker but just can’t justify the costs for a small hobby that last maybe a month.. But it sure would be nice. We could put out 1,000 taps too, just don’t see the need. We have it at my buddies folks who also own 40 acres along the Rum River. Maples Galore!

We use 275 gallon IBC totes. We have two in the woods for the lines to run into and then one in the garage which stays at 40 degrees and out of the sun. We usually boil when we have 300 gallons of sap, which after the Reverse Osmosis is about 150 at 9% sugar content. I start the Reverse Osmosis 24 hours before boiling. Usually about a 10-12 hour day of boiling for 10 gallons of syrup.

We’ve looked into the IBC totes for storage & I think they’d be great. I’m just concerned about what was in them before hand.. Do they clean well with a pressure washer? Or did you find some clean/food grade totes?

I found food grade ones from a guy that had yeast in them. Cleaned up easily with soapy water and a pressure washer. Some of the food grade ones have Vitamin D in them and they are a pain to clean, I would avoid those at all costs, but make sure you get the food grade ones no matter what. I see them all over Facebook for $50-$100

Dan Buchmann wrote:

We started 4 years ago with 25 bags and cooking in the woods on a cinder block arch with buffet pans. I welded up a new cooker from an oil diesel tank from my grandparents farm and moved it down to the house. Last year we did just over 1000 gallons of sap. My neighbor a mile down the road has 3500 taps on 40 acres and boils down about 1500 gallons an hour with his set up. Its pretty amazing to watch but then I see the costs involved and never want to get that big.

How did the buffet pans work? This was my idea for a cheap alternative for hobby brewing. I have 3 trees and used a turkey fryer and it was miserable – I must have dumped over 30gal of sap because I was tired of it.

Honestly it was horrible using the buffet pans compared to our 2×4 flat pan we have now. Constantly adding sap, moving from one pan to the next since the back boiled faster. If I were to start again I’d find any kind of flat pan with 8″ deep sides I could. I have a co worker that used regular steel for awhile until he could get a stainless pan.

Our pan is stainless 26x36x5. Works well for us. The first year my buddy did it, about 6 years ago, he did it with turkey fryers. After about fifteen 20lb tanks and 4 days of cooking the sap down, he decided to never attempt that again.. It worked, but not efficient at all. The next year was my first year tapping trees & collecting sap. We got our pan made and the rest is history.

I use propane because i dont have time to manage a fire all day. With propane i can just light it when i get home and do other things. My stainless pan i had made is 38x24x10 fits perfect on top of a two burner stove i bought to use it with.

Awesome work guys! Love the homemade syrup. I’m just about out of mine (gifted) and look forward to another batch this spring…I’m thankful for retired parents…

tindall wrote:

How did the buffet pans work? This was my idea for a cheap alternative for hobby brewing. I have 3 trees and used a turkey fryer and it was miserable – I must have dumped over 30gal of sap because I was tired of it.

Here is a pic of my homemade setup using stainless pans. I think I bought the pans for $50 on amazon, and got the 55 gallon barrel and angle iron for dirt cheap. This setup isn’t great for large quantities but it works well for the size of operation I’m running. It usually takes me about 10 hours to boil down 40 gallons of sap with this set up and I usually do 3 batches a year.

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@duluth1an my buddy has one very similar that he built last year, but didn’t have a stand for it. Lesson learned. Need to get it off the ground. He’s building a stand as I type. But, I’m curious how stable is that setup? Anything you’d change?

IceNEyes1986 wrote:

@duluth1an my buddy has one very similar that he built last year, but didn’t have a stand for it. Lesson learned. Need to get it off the ground. He’s building a stand as I type. But, I’m curious how stable is that setup? Anything you’d change?

We’ve used a barrel stove nearly identical to duluth1an’s for decades heating our hunting shack (periodically replace the barrel). Very stable, the pans appear to be custom and arched to fit the barrel contour. We’ve never had an issue with the barrel stove although we are careful not to use pine to avoid creosote buildup. That’s not a big issue in this instance.

You will definitely want a stand, whether that’s out of angle iron or concrete blocks or whatever. Concrete blocks might be better at holding radiant heat, I’m not sure? I made mine out of scrap angle iron, so it isn’t pretty but it works. The only issue I had was after a few hours of having a fire in there and warming temps throughout the day, the feet of the stand would start sinking in the ground and putting the pans out of level. Easy way to remedy that is I place a couple 1x4s under the feet and then stake all four angle iron feet in via one large nail so there is no movement. You can kind of see the wood support under the feet in the one pic here. That is really the only issue I’ve had.

The only thing to take note of with this type of setup if you aren’t going to be able to do super large volume batches and you have to tend a fire all day. It takes me about a full day to boil down one 40 gallon batch. I actually really enjoy the fire tending as it gives me time to do other random clean up and spring cleaning projects simultaneously.

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The barrel cooker my buddy made was kind of a last minute deal last season when we realized we had A LOT of sap. So he whipped up another cooker just so we could get more done in a day.

In the pic, the setup right in front is what we have been using for the last 5 seasons. With a rolling fire we can get about 12-15 gallons of sap per hour through that pan. In the back right of the pic, you can see the barrel cooker. He’s got a bigger, shallower pan that worked ok. Seemed like we couldn’t get enough heat to keep his boil rolling though. This year, it will have a stand and be much more efficient I think with it being off the ground with some added holes for breathing.

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This weather sure is nice but not so great for the trees making sap. Lot of season left to go but already wondering about how productive its going to be. We usually run til the 1st week of April in Ham Lake. On the other hand my dads operations just north of Mille lacs is looking like a banner year. Might have to go help him out. He has had a couple off years in a row.

Hardly anything running up here in the Duluth area yet.

my brother’s in-laws are set up for the season, tapping 1037 trees up in NE Wisconsin. they sure make some outstanding syrup!

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Dang that is a nice setup!! ^^^

We have about 110 Gallons collected in our first week. I’m thinkin about 40-50 more gallons before the weekend. We’ll be starting our cooker Saturday morning & hopefully get thru it all in 12-15hrs.

For you guys that sell it, what is your price point for a pint of the good stuff? We were selling them for $12 a Pint/$20 a quart. But I’ve heard some people charging upwards of $15 but as low as $10.

We sell at the farmers market, we get $6 1/2 pint, $10 Pint and $20 a quart. We may have to bump our prices up since jar prices have gone up due to the shortage. We have collected 350 gallons of sap so far. Hoping for another 50 before Saturday. I think its going to run hard next week up here in Washburn County now that the snow went down. As of Monday there was still 16″ of snow in the woods.

We don’t sell a whole lot, not really our thing, yet! Just sold some jars to some friends at the local watering hole and buddies making their own venison sticks. Plan on selling a few jars just to re-coup costs of hose, taps, jars, buckets, etc.

We got the OK from our “landlord”, who is my buddies dad & property owner of the Maple trees, to build a Sugar Shack! He said he’d even pay to have electric run to it, which is kind of our motivation. We’ve got the spot picked out, just have to clear some brush & flatten it out a little bit. Plan is to get the site prepped this year & pour a slab. Hopefully next year lumber prices will be a little better & we can construct the building. Then, maybe, we can get into the selling game a little more.

Well we put 40 taps in last Sunday I would guess we got about 210 gallons of sap. Started cooking today at 11. We added legs to or homemade firebox this year to attempt to get to cook quicker. I would guess I am seeing about 10 gallons an hour boil off. Still new to this last year was first attempt.

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Did my first boil yesterday 335 gallons of sap at 2% sugar content, put it through my reverse osmosis, took it down to 85 gallons at 5.5% sugar and ended up with 6.5 gallons of syrup. Yesterday sap ran really well and got 150 gallons. Will be boiling again Friday and Saturday.

You guys and gals that do all the work is called labor of love collecting sap to make maple syrup.

Well we just got done with our first batch. Had 191 gallons of sap ended up with 6.25 gallons plus 1 cup of finished syrup had a real nice color I thought.

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