Gonna try make some maple sryup

[nekshot]

I have around 8 taps in some maple trees. The containers are half full so tomorrow morn I will collect it. I do not have alot of spare cooling space(as in refrigerator). Can I boil down small amounts as in 3 or 4 gallon at a time?

[Mk42gunner]

I don't see why not, but I have never made maple syrup. I seem to recall from watching youtube videos that you wil need to reduce the volume of the sap by forty times, i.e. 40 gallons of sap will yield 1 gallon of syrup. That is a lot of water to boil out.

Good luck with it,

Robert

[redneck1]

It's not enough at a time to make any amount of syrup obviously, but there's no reason you can't boil down and condense it as you collect sap .

[dtknowles]

I have not done it but my brother does. You can do smaller amounts but 4 gallons of sap will only produce 12 ounces of syrup and getting the stopping point right will be harder. My brother in law got some free Maple Sugar one year. It got burnt, could not sell it so the producer gave it to him sort of as a favor. It was awesome for sweetening coffee. Production goes faster if you have a large surface area for evaporation. Free heat help make it cost effective like burning free wood.

Tim

[Hickory]

Cook it down outside if you want peace and tranquility in you life.

[dtknowles]

I had a bunch of free syrup so I decided to make some caramels. I added butter and cooked it down and added milk. Way better than a Sugar Daddy but would pull out your fillings just as fast.

Tim

[CastingFool]

In a town nearby, the Boy Scouts make syrup as a fund raiser. However, if you collect sap and take it to them, they will process it, they keep half of the product, you get the other half. I ended up with 1-1/2 gallons of syrup. I only had to pay for the containers. Since then, I met a local guy that does the same.

[Kev18]

Its 40/1 ratio. You can over boil it and pour it in a bottle and let it sit. It will create little sugar crystals. Probably one of the greatest things I have ever tasted.

[Tom W.]

My first mil and her mother used to make some when I lived in New York. I don't believe they boiled it near enough, as it still looked like clear water, but was sweet. Not thick at all. Between that and Log Cabin, I chose the Log Cabin...

[mpkunz]

Depending on the tree, you will have anywhere from a 1:25 (a super productive tree) to a 1:40 ratio (mediocre). My trees (Pocono Mtns, PA) combined give me in the middle of that range. For several years I boiled about ~45 gallons of sap to produce around 5-1/2 quarts of syrup. Mostly, I did it so I could say I had done it. I gave much of it to friends and family as gifts in 4 ounce and 8 ounces jars. Its a lot of work, it comes at significant expense for the propane, and is generally under-appreciated. Responses to gifts of syrup ranged from "Oh, yeah, that's nice", to dumping 4x as much syrup as needed onto pancakes and industrial-grade "Eggo" waffles, and tossing the 3x the necessary amount in excess unused portion into the trash can or washed down the drain, treating it like the garbage corn syrup based "maple syrup" you get at ShopRite. I stopped giving it as gifts, and since I use so little myself, I stopped producing it altogether. Real maple syrup is wonderful. Sell it for all its worth, and keep only what you yourself use, as that is the only way to make it worth all the effort.

[CastingFool]

You can cut down the boiling time by concentrating the sap. When temp drops below freezing at night, the water in the sap will freeze. Dump the remaining liquid into another bucket and throw the ice away. Hook up the line to the bucket with the remaining liquid and continue to gather more sap. Next day, repeat the process, but start afresh on the 3rd day. The sap will be clear, but should be a little thicker, due to the higher sugar content.

[jonp]

As Kev18 indicated, you can boil down smaller amounts but you won't get much syrup although if you just want a quart or 2 it's pretty easy to get out of a few trees. We used to tap a number of trees and boil it down ourselves outside over a wood fire even taking some down to the actual sugar stage for cooking, coffee etc. Just remember that it takes about 40gal or so of sap per gallon of syrup and plan accordingly.

8 taps per tree is quite a lot.

Wife's dad still has a small 10 acre bush and the old sugar house on it with the arch, buckets etc still there. Between the bush and the surrounding trees lining the road they always made enough to last quite some time and give a little away to boot.

[FISH4BUGS]

We hit the easy button here in New Hampshire. We let a guy tap our trees and he gives us free syrup. He has a sugar house just down the road from us. Bumped into him at a funeral yesterday and he said he was about ready to go. He makes maybe 100 gallons of syrup every season.
I don't see why you can't do small batches, but when it is all said and done, the effort may not justify the reward....other than the pleasure of it all. Be sure to not over tap the trees....ours have a MAXIMUM of three on each tree. Taking the food (sap) away from the trees can harm them if you take too much.
We had a guy across the road from us buy all the makings of a small maple sugar operation, but abandoned it when he found out how much work it was.
Give it a try. It isn't like you have to invest a whole lot in the operation.

[blackthorn]

Birch trees can also be tapped for their sap, which can also be made into syrup.

[Beerd]

first time I tried to make syrup I put a 2 or 3 gallon pot full of sap on the stove to boil, drank a few beers and took a nap.
talk about a smoke filled room!
subsequent attempts were much more successful.
..

[quilbilly]

I make my own maple syrup from our own trees every year. I hope yours tastes as good as ours. Good luck!
This is what we do. We boil down 2-3 gallons at a time down to about a 3/4 pint but we like ours a little thin anyway on our waffles. We use a small Walmart hot plate to boil the sap down outdoors. DO NOT BOIL THE SAP DOWN INDOORS IN THE KITCHEN!!!!! There is enough sugar in the condensation on the walls indoors to grow new forms of life!! We store and freeze our syrup in 8 oz. plastic screw top freezing jars.
The boil in a canning kettle takes most of a day on the hot plate without too much care but when you get down to the last quart you have to watch it like a hawk or you will lose it to burned crystals in a heartbeat.
The season for our tapping of maples in the PacNW starts on New Years Day and ends abruptly when the the trees start to bud out sometime this month. For our local maples, when the sap turns brownish instead of crystal clear, the season is over. Not all maples on our property are good producers. Some will produce just a quart of sap a day but others, my favorites, will produce 2 gallons a day when the weather is just right. Our best trees are usually smaller active growers about 8-12" in diameter at the base with a healthy looking crown.

[.429&H110]

Books have been written about backyard sugaring. When I lived in NH I had 121 taps on tubing which boiled down to 10 gallons syrup. Coulda made more. Enough, then stop.
+1 on do not boil indoors!
I boiled on two 6" deep welded steel pans, one for sap, one for finish, fit into a sideways 55 gallon drum. Another drum bolted in front wound around with three layers of aluminum foil was the firebox, barrel stove door on it, 10 feet of stovepipe in back made a draft and kept the ash away. The thing looked like a still. Smoke, steam, big blue jugs... A cover for the pans kept the rain out. Easy enough to devise an automatic sap feed. I burned all the deadfall in the woods for a mile around. The thing burned wood as fast as you could stoke it. Mix ice cold sap 50/50 with ice cold Southern Comfort, or put sap in a carbonizer to make maple soda... I don't like maple ice cream anymore...
Finished syrup is hot enough to really scald, I used a hygrometer battery tester with 4 plastic balls to check, should just float the fourth ball when hot. Was fun to burn away the snow, ruin the lawn, what else is February in NH good for? Ice fishing, maybe.

[dtknowles]

Books have been written about backyard sugaring. When I lived in NH I had 121 taps on tubing which boiled down to 10 gallons syrup. Coulda made more. Enough, then stop.
+1 on do not boil indoors!
I boiled on two 6" deep welded steel pans, one for sap, one for finish, fit into a sideways 55 gallon drum. Another drum bolted in front wound around with three layers of aluminum foil was the firebox, barrel stove door on it, 10 feet of stovepipe in back made a draft and kept the ash away. The thing looked like a still. Smoke, steam, big blue jugs... A cover for the pans kept the rain out. Easy enough to devise an automatic sap feed. I burned all the deadfall in the woods for a mile around. The thing burned wood as fast as you could stoke it. Mix ice cold sap 50/50 with ice cold Southern Comfort, or put sap in a carbonizer to make maple soda... I don't like maple ice cream anymore...
Finished syrup is hot enough to really scald, I used a hygrometer battery tester with 4 plastic balls to check, should just float the fourth ball when hot. Was fun to burn away the snow, ruin the lawn, what else is February in NH good for? Ice fishing, maybe.

Man, you made it real.

Tim

[FISH4BUGS]

What else is February in NH good for? Ice fishing, maybe.

How about the new indoor winter hobby - casting and reloading the upcoming year's ammo?
Smelting those ww's outside, too....unless it is snowing..... and below zero....Snowshoeing too.
I never got into ice fishing but NH is the best!
Embrace winter....don't fight it!

[.429&H110]

North Pole Alaska 99705 has a much nicer climate than NH. Fairbanks freezes solid for six months, doesn't snow much, and clicks over to summer 2nd week of May.
New Hampshire snows on mud. Summer starts 2nd week of May after mud season.
My dad said NH is the most beautiful place on earth, two days a year.
In my arthritic old age, Arizona is the place. Came here on vacation, and stayed awhile.