For a couple years my father in law and I would tap about 10 trees and do our own syrup. But going there everyday to check buckets and then going there every weekend to boil I realized I was spending way too much time at my in laws. Have 2 trees in my backyard I'm going to tap this year though. Get a few mason jars worth for the family
I have friend who produces over 1000 gallons annually, he tapped a section of my property for a few years. Seems to be very labor intensive. NY is probably the second leading producing state to Maine. With NYs predominantly beech birch maple forest it’s ideal for tap production.
I used to tap the few maple trees I have when the kids were young, been a long time now. You can also tap box elder trees.
Some day I'm going to try this. My neighbor and a couple of my friends do it. It is the best maple syrup I have ever tasted. According to them, it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. It is labor intensive but I have plenty of trees and more than enough time so we will see.
Yeah the sap to syrup ratio is nuts. On a good day though you can damn near fill up a 5 gallon bucket with sap.
Greg you can always set up a pipeline to the trees if you want to go big time. I would suggest you invest the $ for real taps and go with bags rather than buckets cleaner sap. My barber does it very old school his sugar shack is amish no electricity used not even for lights no cell phones either. I have gone over a few times pretty fun to watch. I am not sure the ratio of beers consumed per gallon of finished syrup might be higher than 10-1.
Our property we purchased a few years ago has taps and lines running throughout all the hard woods, has to be a web of around 100 trees. We don't tap at our property but my Dad does tap at his house and generally gets around a gallon of syrup when all said and done.
I've always wanted to, seems like a great hobby to introduce the little ones. I have a silver and 1.5 sugar maples in the yard; would those 3.5 be enough for our family? (mostly just me that would be tapping) turkey fryer work for boiling?
Yeah three trees would be enough. They say you can expect 10-20 gallons of sap per tree. Depending on weather and temp. So with three trees and say you get even 30 gallons of sap total that puts you at just shy of a gallon of syrup after boiling. A turkey fryer works but, its costly with all the gas you would be going through and takes a loooong time to boil 30 gallons of sap. If you could make a fire pit and boil sap in a hotel pan 4-6 inches deep it would go a lot faster and be a lot cheaper. Think something like this.
very nice, and you basically boil it down until the taste is right or a combo of taste color and thickness? right now i could eat the sap that comes directly out of the sugar maples
I grew up around several syrup operations as a kid in Vermont. My mom is now a retired teacher, but her retirement job now is at a pretty large sugar shack facility there. The 40 gallons to 1 is accurate. It's a ton of work, but there are a few operations that are incredibly efficient. The operation my mom works at is 100% off grid but is running around 40,000 taps worth of production off all solar and propane.
