First, wash everything well, before you get started– the pot for boiling, the taps, the collecting bags or buckets, and storage containers.
Make sure you are tapping hard maple trees. A soft maple buds up sooner than a hard maple, and while it will produce sap, the taste can be "buddy" or funny tasting, and throw the whole batch of syrup into the unusable category. Don't tap a tree with a trunk that is less than 10” in diameter, or else you can do damage to the tree. A tree that is 18” can accommodate a second tap, and a tree that is at least 26” can have three taps on it.
Drilling and installing the tap- Use a hand drill or a battery powered drill with a 7/16” drill bit for drilling wood. Place a piece of tape on the drill bit to mark 1.5 inches. Drill the hole in the tree 2-6 feet from the ground. Drill at slight downward angle. Don’t drill the hole directly above or below or within a few inches of the old hole. Use a hammer to gently drive the tap in, but be careful not to drive it in too deep and split the tree.
Collect sap using a bucket, a gallon milk container, a handle and sap bag, or tubing which empties into a larger container. Hang or install one of these on the tap. Make sure the container is covered to keep anything other than sap out. Check on the containers regularly to avoid having overflow. To put a sap bag on the handle, fold the bag down a couple of times, and secure the folds in the inside lip, and press down on the rim. Be careful not to cut yourself on the handle's sharp galvanized metal.
Store the sap in a food grade container outside on the northern side of your house until you are ready to boil. Sap will sour if not kept cold and if you keep it too many days. If it's cloudy, don’t use it.
To boil off the water in sap, you need a good fire. Wood is a good source of fuel, but you need to use a stove pipe to direct ash and smoke away from the evaporating pan. ,You can also cook small batches indoors on the stove, but the process produces lots of sticky steam. The kitchen stove is a nice way to finish off a pot of sap though.
I use a turkey fryer cooking stand and pot, and cook the sap over a propane fire. It isn't that efficient since you have a small surface area for the evaporation to take place, so the next step up in backyard cooking is an evaporator, which is a stainless 5" or so deep pan that sits on the fire.
Boiling the sap in the pan. Add a little cold sap at a time, to avoid having to start over. The sap will foam up while boiling from time to time. Simply touch the surface of the syrup with a spoon with a little bit of butter on it or drop in a single drop of cream. I set a timer and come outside every 20 minutes to check the fire and add fresh, cold sap.
When the sap gets to 219F, 7 degrees above boiling at sea level, it should be done. If you boil too long, crystals will form, or it will scorch. It is worthwhile to buy a testing cup and a hydrometer to make sure the syrup has the proper density to be labled syrup. I've had syrup measure 219 degrees F, that was still too watery to be syrup - so I'm glad I use the hydrometer.
The testing cup is a tall narrow cup that can withstand the high temperature of the sap liquid and allows you to use just a couple of ladles full to test each time. The hydrometer is a glass tube that floats in the syrup and if enough water has been evaporated off, will float at a certain level in hot syrup that indicates there is 66% sugar content in the syrup. It also has a measure for cold syrup too.
When the sap is very close to being concentrated enough to be real syrup, you'll notice that there is a different kind of foam that builds on top of the surface. You really need to stay on top of this and use a drop of cream or a tiny bit of butter to create enough surface tension to bring the bubbles down, or it will overflow the pot.
Some people strain the sap before boiling and some strain it after. Straining before helps by improving the grade of the syrup. Stores carry a special filter for syrup, or you can let the syrup sit and then pour the clear syrup off the top, or you can use some cheesecloth. I've used layers of cheesecloth to filter the syrup and it gets the little flecks of bark out just fine. This year I have a new felt filter.
I store the syrup I make each day in our second fridge. At the end of the season, I group jars of the same color syrup and decant the jars slowly to keep out the maple sand. Maple sand is a calcium byproduct that settles out of the syrup. Rarely does it reform after it settles out and is removed this way.
For each color or grade, I reheat the syrup to just below boiling. Then I pour the syrup into sterile jars that have been boiled in a canning pot for 15 minutes, and seal with sterile lids and rings, leaving ½ inch of jar head space. I store the jars of syrup in a cool, dark place.
