My pan was the cheapest part. The ladies dad welded me a 19″x36″x16″ stainless one for free from a sheet of stainless someone cut wrong at his work. If filled full holds like 45 gallons. Usually on put about 25 gallons in cause it seems to go quicker.
My pan was the cheapest part. The ladies dad welded me a 19″x36″x16″ stainless one for free from a sheet of stainless someone cut wrong at his work. If filled full holds like 45 gallons. Usually on put about 25 gallons in cause it seems to go quicker.
Any recommendations on finding a pan for those of us without a hook up?
Any recommendations on finding a pan for those of us without a hook up?
I bought two stainless steel pans off of amazon when I first made my setup. I want to say each pan was like $20 of something like that… Then get a 55 ga drum (for free off marketplace) and cut out a spot for each pan to sit. I use the back pan as my main boiler and the front one (since it doesnt get as hot) as the preheater
this isn’t the exact pan I bought but its pretty similar
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Where you at in Cambridge? I am from the Cambridge area and still have folks live down there.
I grew up in Isanti, graduated from Cambridge. Now live in Harris.
My buddy’s folks live NW of town kind of near the gun club. That’s where we have our syrup operation.
Put in 10 taps last night. Nine were running on the drill while drilling one was dry.
Got a phone call and it has been running like crazy! Was planning on getting our storage barrels ready tomorrow but some our 5 gallon pails are full and others half full! So they’ll be getting a good pressure wash and then we’ll go collect.
I can’t believe how much its ran the last 2 days! Fingers crossed for a good season. Last year was our worst season ever & we’ve been doing it for 10 years now. One year we ended up with 16 gallons of sap. Last year only 5 gallons.
One year we ended up with 16 gallons of sap. Last year only 5 gallons.
Of sap or syrup?
Of sap or syrup?
Syrup. My bad. lol
Anyone boiling this weekend?
Anyone boiling this weekend?
All my dry wood is 2 hours away (4hr round-trip)
Trying to boil some down today with wood I split yesterday….not going too great so far, I’m having to cheat lol
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We’ll be boiling this weekend, no doubt. I’m off work at 230 and heading to the Sticky Icky Shack. If buckets are as full as I’m told, we’ll be sitting on 60+ gallons of sap. Now I gotta find something for the Smoker on Saturday! My Pork Butts are froze solid…
B-Man, That ain’t cheatin’!! BTU’s is BTU’s!! Let er rip!
nice setup bman. I like it. Holy hannah that one pot is huge! How many gallons do you fit in there? Is the front pan your pre-heater?
Rock on B-Man! Awesome setup!
Ha guys 
It works but definitely a slow/hobby operation.
The file cabinet was free sitting on the side of the road, the giant 15 gallon stock pot I bought at a garage sale years ago from a Boy Scout leader that was clearing stuff out. I only keep 3-4″ or so of sap in it, and preheat on the front pan that I stole from the kitchen (don’t tell Mom)
The boys are home from school now, splitting wood and doing chores.
Time for a beer for Dad, this sapping stuff is work 
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Nice B-man. Good to see the boys helping out with all that goes into it. Hope their aim is true, probably don’t need any more incidents. Wish I still worked out in the fab shop, I made quite a few sap pans, biggest was 4×8 n 16″ deep. Actually tapped trees for 5-6 yrs,alot of work but the end result was always worth it.
Went out after work and collected what sap we had. Ended up with a little over 40 gallons. The neighbor made it sound like buckets were overflowing. They weren’t 
But, from Tuesday night until Thursday afternoon we accumulated 40 gallons. Put out another half dozen taps and got our storage barrels setup. Saturday we’ll get the cooker in place and cook down what we have. Things go the way they are going we should have 90-100 gallons to boil down.
this sapping stuff is work
it sure is! I think no one can appreciate how much work goes into making maple syrup until they actually do it themselves.
A tip I came up with is have a second preheating system. I had the 2 pans in my boiling setup heated by the fire, back pan was main boil and front pan was preheater. But adding 35-40 degree sap into your preheater pan really slows the process down, even when only adding a little at a time.
I would take a couple 5 gallon buckets of sap at a time, fill my bath tub with as hot of water as possible (~120 degrees), and let the buckets sit in the hot water in the bathtub until it was time to start adding it to the preheater on the fire. I found I was able to get the sap up to over 70 degrees before adding it to my preheater. Not sure how you’d calculate it but that had to amount for some time savings versus adding 35-40 degree sap.
Cooking 2nd batch for this year. We do 40 gallon batches.
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Nice Mike 
We have no chance with keeping up before the sap would have a chance to spoil.
We found a local guy that is too old to collect sap and is wanting to buy it from the boys for $.50 a gallon. He has a more professional set-up and said he’d buy as much sap as they could collect (up to 1,000 gallons)!! They’re also going to trade sap for syrup.
He dropped off a trailer with barrels and the boys are making $5-$8 a day right now after school.
They love money, and every day you can see the cash registers in their heads clicking away
They’ve been watching the weather and know ahead of time what days are going to be good and what days will be duds.
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awesome B-man!!!
I finished making first gallon and filtered as I normally do and man its some dirty stuff this year.
I finished making first gallon and filtered as I normally do and man its some dirty stuff this year.
Dirty good or dirty in a bad way?
Its tastes fine im just gonna let it settle for a day or two to get rid of the sediment then laddle it off the top. I dont like any of that in my finished bottles.
We have done 3 batches so far and found the same thing. Little lower sugar content so far and plenty of niter settling out of it. 4th batch is in buckets next to the cooker now.
Sure is a pretty morning out there now with the fresh snow covering all the trees.
This might be a stupid question but what the hell I’ll ask anyway.
Is it possible to do this much on a smaller scale in the kitchen? I’ve thought about doing this for years but don’t have any of the large capacity stuff a lot of you are referring to, and with other hobbies, the garden, and chickens, and young kids, I don’t see myself getting that outdoor setup right now. Someone mentioned the cost of everything but mentioned that they enjoy harvesting the resources on the land they have and I’m all about that.
So could I do this with a lot of boiling on a small scale in the kitchen? I could see myself on a Sunday afternoon doing that. In the fall I spend countless hours at a time peeling, cutting, shredding, and boiling potatoes from the garden to have freezer bags of fries, mashed potatoes, and hash browns so I wouldn’t mind putting hours in for this, just wondering if it would be possible using pots on the stove for a smaller scale operation.
Dan people have tried it, but you pay the price with sticky windows, paint, etc.
If you have a kick ass range hood that vents directly outside it might be feasible.
I’d recommend just using a turkey burner outside. Once your sap is at a light boil you can turn the flame down a lot, there’s no need to run at 100% throttle (it’s faster at 100%, but not as efficient). Think of it like an outboard’s fuel consumption.
The big thing is to keep just a few inches in the pot all the time. Add a quart of preheated sap every 10-15 minutes to maintain that level. (You can preheat on your stove, just don’t get it to a boil to avoid the problems mentioned above).
Once your sap is getting close to finishing, you can bring it inside and do the final process on the stove without releasing a bunch of moisture.
Turkey cooker or gas grill are better options and outdoors. Or even a few bricks with a pot set on top and fire underneath. Boil it down so far then finish off inside the house. For taping trees we started out with half gallon milk jugs and a bendy stray going into them. Little teflon tape around the stray to seal the hole. Pretty sure we made close to 2 gallons of syrup the 1st year with milk jugs and boiling on the grill.
We decided to try maple syrup for the first time this year. Fun project for the kids (and dad!). We tapped 6 trees, collected around 30 gallons of sap for the first batch and finished 3 quarts of golden maple syrup last night. Delicious! We did half our boiling on the turkey fryer and the other half over the solo stove.
The season has been all over the place for us. 65 gallons a couple weeks ago. 120 gallons last weekend and about 25 gallons this week so far. I don’t expect it to run much if at all for the next four days. So far we’ve finished 4.5 gallons. Most likely taking a weekend off and we’ll see what we collect for sap next week. Hopeful for a “second” season.
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