For people who enjoy living a more sustainable lifestyle, like to be outside all year long, or want to help their children discover where different foods come from, making maple syrup can be a really fun hobby. To pursue this winter hobby, you will need maple or birch trees, a winter season, and a few simple supplies.
Traditionally, maple syrup is made with sap from sugar maple trees. However, the swamp maple in my yard is growing in popularity with commercial sugaring operations because it is much hardier and lives a lot longer. Many of them are planting this more common maple tree variety in spots where they've lost sugar maples to disease and are not seeing a big difference in the quality of their maple syrup and maple sugar products.
Some people think of maple syrup as something from Canada, but part of western Maryland and many other locations with a good winter season also have commercial maple syrup operations. My trees are about three hours from western Maryland, but produce enough sap to allow a family to try this sweet hobby.
To begin making maple syrup, you will need to gather:
- Spiles, which are basically hollow little pipes with a tapered spout that the maple syrup comes out of. We bought ours from Lehmans.com, which sells them individually.)
- A bucket or milk jug to gather sap in. There are also syrup bags available, but milk jugs that have been rinsed and have a small hole cut in the handle for the spile end to fit in are really all hobbyists need.
- A cordless drill and 3/8 inch drill bit. You can buy special bits for drilling holes for maple sugaring, but they are pretty expensive for someone who is just making two or three holes.
- A container to hold your collected sap. You'll need to keep it cool, so don't use a five gallon food grade bucket unless there's enough snow outside to pack around the bucket. A milk jug in the fridge works well for a small quantity.
- A big pot or microwave safe container.
- A candy thermometer to help you keep track of the temperature of the sap.
- A clean, sterile container to keep your finished syrup in.
- A coffee filter to catch any little bits of bark as you pour the syrup from the pot to the container.
Cooking Maple Sap Down to Make Maple SyrupIf you are making a small batch of maple syrup using about a half gallon or so of sap, you can just make it on the stove, or, as I recently discovered after playing around with a small batch, the microwave. Otherwise, you'll need to have a fire pit outside to cook the sap down into syrup.
Simply simmer the sap over low heat until it reaches a few degrees above the boiling point of water. In my area, I want the sap to reach 219 degrees Fahrenheit. You'll be cooking down the sap for a few hours, but as you get to around 115 degrees, start to really keep a close eye on the sap. Several times, I've had it go from that temperature to a charred mess in minutes!
If you decide to microwave the sap, do so in short intervals. It takes me about 21 minutes to microwave down a small amount of sap, but some batches burn in about the same amount of time.
Once you have added maple sugaring to your winter hobbies, you'll finally have something to do in that awkward time between real winter and the spring growing season.
Katelyn Thomas - If you can't find me in the spring, I'm out hiking through the wood with a few pounds of photography gear strapped to my back. In the ...
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