Maple Syrup

Well 2025 is definitely a good year for Maple Syrup! Seven and a half gallons and unless the weather changes drastically it is looking like the next week plus will produce a lot more sap!

A Maple Syrup Hydrometer is an absolute must have when boiling your sap down to syrup! It has two lines on it, one for when doing a "hot test" and the other for a "cold test" and chances are you will be using it for hot syrup rather than cold. When syrup is hot it is less dense and therefore the hydrometer sinks deeper into it. Although I do test my syrup once it cools down just to verify!

33 Quart Canner at Amazon.

For those who are serious about canning you will need one of these!

At 33 quarts this canner can hold nine (9) one quart jars! May sound like a bit of over kill but when you have three to four gallons of syrup to can you will thank me!

As the sap continues to boil down it will turn more and more brown and become sweet! I enjoy taste testing it! There are two ways to determine when you are done, the first is when the temperature is 220 F and the second is with the use of a hydrometer (which is far more accurate). Keep in mind that when syrup is hot it is going to seem thinner than what it is once it cools down!

In roughly 24 hours we were able to gather 12 gallons of sap! Not the high flow for a single day but certainly nothing to complain about!

Sap begins to flow as soon as temperatures fluctuate above and below the freezing point. Typically this means day time temps are above freezing and night time temps are below freezing as days tend to be warmer than nights. However, if you have a really cold day where it is below freezing followed by a warm night, where it is above freezing, sap will flow!

While it may not be "gardening" it has become a yearly tradition to harvest our own maple sap!

This year three trees are tapped and each tree has three taps!

I do not have a fancy system where tubes run to a sugar sap but I was able to get my hands onto some four gallons, food grade, pails complete with covers that already had holes drilled in them. Very handy for being able to collect sap and not have all kinds of debris land in them!

Is important to check daily since I have had them fill up in a 24 hour time period!