Maple syrup, the simple way

In this part of the world, the first gift we get from the land every year is maple syrup. We tap about a dozen trees most years. Mirroring our approach to everything else, we aim to harvest enough maple syrup to last us for the year and give a few gifts. Since that's a fairly small production, we keep things very simple and use as little specialized equipment as possible. 

To produce maple syrup our way, you will need:

• Maple sap pails, spiles and lids - one per tree. We have a dozen sets. If you live in maple country like us you can find these at a co-op store, Home Hardware, etc.
• To install the pails: a drill, 7/16 drill bit, mallet or hammer
• A means to carry the pails from the trees to home - depending on conditions we use a sled, biek trailer or lawn tractor trailer.
• Some big pots
• Some big containers with lids to transport the sap (we use white food grade buckets from winemaking kits)
• Something to filter your sap (we use a jelly bag)
• Ladle
• Thermometer (digital is most convenient)
• Jars for bottling (I use mason jars)

As a rule of thumb, when it's freezing at night and above freezing in the daytime, the maple sap will flow. Once we see a stretch of time in the forecast that will fit that pattern (usually around mid-March), we tap our trees. We drill holes about waist high, with a slight incline up, and hammer in a spile - it should fit snuggly but not be too hard to take out at the end of the season. 

We tap about a dozen trees. On a good flow day, that could fill two big buckets (50L in total) which is about the maximum we can pull up the hill on the sled comfortably. The sap flow isn't always predictable. There is more to it than the rule of thumb I mentioned above... it depends on how sunny it is, how wide the fluctuations are, and it seems to depend not only on the weather in the last 24h but a little bit longer too. The science of the maple sap flow is very interesting.

Every couple of days we empty the pails into plastic buckets and carry them up the hill. We filter the sap through a jelly bag and boil the filtered sap in big stockpots. We simply boil the sap on our electric stove. This produces a lot of humidity, which is why a lot of people boil outside, but we don't worry about it too much since it's a once-a-year occurrence. We open the windows, it's nice to get some spring air in the house. Sometimes we ran the dehumidifier. Lots of people say that if you boil sap inside, your walls will be sticky but I haven't seen this to be the case at all.

As the level drops, we had more sap. You'll be able to tell by the color that it's getting more concentrated. 40L of sap will make approximately 1L of maple syrup. Stick a thermometer in there once in a while - once you reach 4 degrees over the boiling point (for us that's 104 Celsius but it depends on your altitude), your maple syrup is ready. Keep a close eye on it as you get close to this reading, because maple syrup that is close to being done can very easily boil over (spill over the top of the pot) and that is a huge mess to clean up! We keep combining new sap into the pots over several days, it's easier not to burn it if you have a good amount in the pot. Sap will spoil so we refrigerate it or put it in a snowbank in between boils. 

Don't forget to sample the sap at various points during the boiling process! We call this "maple tea"!

When the maple syrup is ready, I pour it into mason jars or whatever jars are on hand. I haven't found a safe canning procedure anywhere for maple syrup to make it shelf stable, so I store it in the freezer. I have had a bit of mold on it when I tried to store it at room temperature so I don't want to take any chances. I suspect you could use the same canning procedure as for canning simple syrup but I don't think it's been tested. 

We use maple syrup all year long for pancakes (which is a camping treat), hot beverages, one of my favorite family recipes, turnip maple soup and a new favorite, maple delicata squash

Turnip maple soup