Maple Syrup Operation at Green Acres

This is no Clinton Camp operation but I thought maybe someone would be interested in seeing pictures of a small hobby operation. This is my third year for making Maple Syrup, each year I add some more equipment and tap a few more trees. It is a learning process and one learns by doing.

This year I will produce 8-10 gallons of syrup. Next year I will be adding a "store bought" evaporator and hope to prduce at least 20 gallons.

So is the barrel stove the first evaporator pan with raw sap coming from bucket? in the second pic what is white LP tank hooked to, some kinda double boiler, guess coffee urn is to heat and bottle. very good, tried first time this year tapped 1 tree, got around 13 gallon sap down to a quart of syrup, gonna try more next year

Looks like you're doing OK. And with some of those tanks and buckets sitting around idle during the rest of the year, you might want to try your hand at beer making. LOL

Indiana Ken,

Thanks for sharing.

How many gallons of sap does one have to cook-down in order to get one pint of syrup?

That is a really good setup for a small producer. When I was a kid my brother and I made syrup out in the bush with no shack, just a pan set on a metal frame with tin set around to keep the heat in. We overfired many times and had to throw snow in the pan to keep the syrup from burning. We carried all the sap by hand in pails. When we had it mostly boiled down we had to carry it in pails 1/4 mile to the house to finish. It was a lot of fun though and I still miss it. Where I live now it is too cold for maple trees to grow. My brother bought the farm from dad and build a proper sugar shack with a good evaporator.

(quoted from post at 18:16:13 03/18/13) So is the barrel stove the first evaporator pan with raw sap coming from bucket? in the second pic what is white LP tank hooked to, some kinda double boiler, guess coffee urn is to heat and bottle. very good, tried first time this year tapped 1 tree, got around 13 gallon sap down to a quart of syrup, gonna try more next year

Click to expand...

To your questions:

The raw sap is pumped from the tractor mounted collection tank to 1 of 2 storage barrels. One of the barrels is visible in the second picture at the right. The pump is on the floor and not visible.

From the storage barrel the sap is pumped into the white resorvior bucket hanging obove the barrel stove evaporator. This pump is visible sitting on top of the barrel with the plastic tubing going upward. You can also see the end of this tubing just above the white bucket.

Yes, the major part of the sap boiling is done in the barrel stove evaporator. Once the boiling temperature begins to increase I transfer the sap to the LP gas stove evaporator for finishing. The LP gas is easier to control than the wood fired barrel stove. The "double boiler" is simply an old turkey fryer that I put a metal wind shield around to save LP. The shield allowed me to turn down the LP about 30% and still maintain a boil.

The coffe pot has a filter inside and is used for filtering and then bottling of the syrup. I am not using the heater inside the coffee pot as the syrup is hotter than coffee and the thermostat immediately shuts off the heater. The heater would be useful and I plan to incorporate it for next year by bypassing the thermostat. Also, I will add a diode to the circuit to reduce the wattage - I think it could burn the syrup other wise.

Congratulations on your "Lone Tree" Maple Syrup operation.

Ken

(quoted from post at 03:42:59 03/19/13) Indiana Ken,

Thanks for sharing.

How many gallons of sap does one have to cook-down in order to get one pint of syrup?

Click to expand...

To your question:

Maple sap has 2-3% (this can vary) sugar and to be called Maple Syrup you need 66-67% sugar. I was always told it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. However, I find the number is more in the range of 30-40 gallons of sap for 1 gallon of syrup.

For 1 pint 4-5 gallons of sap should get you there.

Remember if you are planning to do this on the kitchen stove all the water will go into the house. My mom did this one year, she must have been 85 + years old at that time. I came home one weekend and my glasses steamed up as I entered the house. She was happily boiling away....the kitchen windows had about 1/4" of frost on the inside which was melting onto the sill, making a mess. I am thinking - you could never have this good a time in a nursing home- she made it to 92 and died carrying feed to the calves.

Enjoy your pint - Ken

I like the idea of the wind sheild around your burner. I have thought about that just never done it.

I see you only run one pan on your cooker. I have 2 and thinking of going to 4. Just can't get through it fast enough to keep swmbo happy.