Maple Syrup: As Local as it Gets

As you may have noticed, I like to experiment with all things food.  I also feel such a sense of pride when I can duplicate or recreate or improve upon foods I like that are already readily available.  My husband and I are also big fans of domestic adventures, focusing on botanical and other... experimentation, shall we say.  Since we've known each other for the last almost 7 years, we've dabbled in organic gardening, canning, freezing, beer-making, wine-making, vineyard and orchard growing, beekeeping, cheese-making and I'm sure other projects I'm forgetting.

Well, add maple syrup making to our list. 

I actually don't know why it took us 7 years to come up with this idea, but this year we decided to learn how to tap the maple trees in our yard.  The quick description of maple syrup "making" is this:  you tap your trees, collect the sap, and boil it down until most of the water is gone, and you are left with sweet, gooey maple syrup.  It takes 40 gallons of sap to produce 1 gallon of maple syrup.  So far, after 2 days of collecting sap from one tap, we have... drumroll please.... 1 oz of syrup!  Here it is!

I know, I know, less than impressive.  I'm pretty excited though.  This shows me that it is possible.  I share more details on the maple syrup process below.

First, you find the south-facing side of your tree and drill a 1/2" hole 2 inches deep (eek, I felt like I was killing our lovely maple tree, but I know this is done all the time for maple syrup making, and their trees don't die!).  I only did one tree the first day just to make sure it worked before drilling another tree.  Once your hole is drilled, you push in the spile - that's the little spout that guides the sap out of your drilled hole into your collection bucket.  The spile has a hook on it so you can hang your bucket.

I covered the whole contraption with foil to keep the sap as clean as possible.

Then you let it sit and the sap drips into your bucket.  After 2 days, here's what we collected:

We couldn't believe it!  You don't want to have the sap sit outside too long, as I'm guessing the sugars may start to ferment, so today I brought in the weekend's sap and started boiling.  I poured it into a 4 cup measuring cup, and it was basically overflowing.  I guesstimated it to be around 5 cups, or 40 oz sap.  I poured it through some cheesecloth and then boiled it down for an hour or two until it got darker in color, thickened up slightly, and since there wasn't much there, I stopped boiling before it burned to the bottom of the pan.

And once again, here is my finished product, all 1 oz of it!

                       

I tasted it a couple times, and it is definitely sweet and kind of mapley.  Here's the thing:  I knew we had at least one sugar maple, but I wasn't sure if I picked the sugar maple or the "other" maple tree to tap!  Sugar maples have brilliant red fall color, and our other maples have yellow leaves in the fall.  Since there are currently no leaves on any of the trees and I couldn't remember which was which, I just picked one.  I don't think I picked the sugar maple.

A couple things to consider when trying to make maple syrup:

::  Sugar maples produce sap with the highest sugar content, but other types of maple trees produce sweet sap also that can be made into syrup.  You just might have to boil it down longer to get more water out.

::  The time of year that you can collect this sap is in the spring when outdoor temperatures are below freezing overnight and above 40 degrees in the daytime.

So today, I tapped the other tree that I suspect to be the sugar maple.  I used the other two spiles we bought, and put them both in the same tree since it is a bigger tree and apparently you can tap a few places on one tree.

               

I'll have to let you know how it all turns out!  I'm hoping for another couple ounces at least, and then next year... we'll get started a little earlier.