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Search results for: “maple syrup evaporator”

Simple Maple Syrup Evaporator : GF Video
Learn how to make maple syrup with this simple maple syrup evaporator. I’ll show you how to tap and collect sap from your sugar maples and then boil down the sap. This setup uses propane and 2 outdoor propane stoves.

We have used several methods to make maple syrup, watch all our maple syrup videos here and we have built a DIY maple syrup evaporator out of a file cabinet.

What’s great about this simple maple syrup evaporator rig is you can walk away from it. You don’t have to watch it constantly. I have mine outside the kitchen, and every 15 min or so I go out and check it.

I found a used large stainless steel pot that was probably used to boil clams, and I found a large shallow stainless steel bowl at the dollar store. The idea behind this DIY maple syrup evaporator is the cold sugar maple sap is brought up to a boil in the first large pot, and then it is ladled into the shallow finishing pan to be boiled down into maple syrup.
Sugar Maple Sap becomes maple syrup when the sap reaches 7.5 degrees F above the local boiling point. Boil a small pan of water on your stove and when it boils, measure the temperature with your digital thermometer. Add 7.5 degrees to that temp – at our house the boil happens at 210F – and when the sap reaches that temperature, it is now syrup. Quickly turn off the heat on the finishing pan burner, and strain the syrup in to jars. If you are up to it, you can let the sap boil to a slightly higher temperature for a slightly darker syrup – be careful not to burn the finishing pan.

Parts You Need For The Simple Maple Syrup Evaporator
- Propane Burner https://amzn.to/2GezLE0
- Wide Stainless Bowl https://amzn.to/2J1SkJo
- 20 Quart Pot https://amzn.to/2GxaSTt
- Digital Thermometer https://amzn.to/2GDEiiC
- Fine Mesh Sieve https://amzn.to/2IbeRlF
I strongly suggest buying a digital kitchen thermometer, old style candy thermometers are hard to use with this setup.

If you see your finishing pan foaming big time, you probably have syrup, and probably the temperature is above the ideal, turn off the propane and pour off the syrup.

The drawback of this system is that it uses quite a bit of propane, not the best use of what you’ve got. The plan is to build a wood fired evaporator next year. I have a ton of white pine from the trees we dropped that would fire a sugar shack nicely.

Watch all our Maple Syrup How To Videos here.

Here is a great PDF from the Univ of Maine on how to tap trees and boil sap

Questions? Comments? let us know below:
March 28, 2018
File Cabinet Maple Syrup Evaporator Photos From A Friend

Always love getting file cabinet maple syrup evaporator photos, these are from a friend who has greatly improved the GardenFork version 2.0 file cabinet evaporator. The photos tell the story best here. This is designed be used with a stainless steel evaporator pan made by our friend Zach of Silver Creek Maple Equipment. But you could certainly use this file cabinet with steam table trays, similar to our GF version 1.0 file cabinet evaporator.

Super smart way to build your homemade maple syrup evaporator.

My friend sent me this photo of his version of the homemade maple syrup evaporator and my jaw dropped. I had been trying to find a solution to how to slow down the heat escaping from the fire box, and here is the answer. A smaller firebox and a sloped channel to the chimney. There will be a baffle or bricks at the sharp bend in the floor of the cabinet. This closely mimics the arch of many evaporators I have seen.

The back of the cabinet is cut along the sides to preserve the right angle corner, and this slips over the cut sidewall of the cabinet. Self tapping screws hold it all together. You could also weld this seam with a flux core or mig welder.

The firebox is about 24″ deep, the fire grate was bought at Tractor Supply. You could do the same, or go to your local welding shop and pick up some scrap extended steel grate.

To create some turbulence and keep the heat swirling under the pan, a firebrick, or sand or some steel will go right at the sharp bend in the bottom of the box here.

Big thank you to my friend for sharing the photos and his crafty knowledge here. Read and see more about how to make maple syrup here.

Steam Table Pan Maple Syrup Evaporator Improvements – GF Video

December 27, 2017
Maple Syrup Evaporator Information

We have a ton of information on how to make maple syrup and how to make a maple syrup evaporator, learn all about what we have, click here.

The cheap maple syrup evaporator pan we use was made by Silver Creek Maple Equipment. They did an excellent job, I am very impressed with the quality of the workmanship. The pan works great for us.

March 16, 2017
Steam Table Pan Maple Syrup Evaporator Improvements – GF Video

After making boiling sap with out steam table pan maple syrup evaporator for 2 seasons now, I have a few thoughts on improvements. The build videos for our homemade maple syrup evaporator are here. Watch the update video below:

How To Improve the Steam Table Pan Maple Syrup Evaporator

I’m not sure why I connected the chimney stack about 6″ below the top of the cabinet. But I think the air flow might improve if the smoke exited higher up, in addition, the hot air would wrap around the back pan more. Also, consider a higher chimney pipe, it will cut down on the smoke the downdrafts on top of you.

For the turbo fan, which really womps up the fire, consider connecting it just below the fire door. I plan on adding a dimmer switch in the power cord, since controlling the fan speed is important. You can find bathroom fans at tag sales or in your neighbor’s garage.

For most 4 drawer letter sized file cabinet, two regular sized trays fit, but there will be space. As a result, that gap needs to be filled in with a scrap piece of metal or a small food tray. Put this small space above the fire door, and move the pans closer to the chimney. Because your fire is moving toward the chimney, the hottest part of the fire is on that end.

I found that putting the fire grate about 10-12″ below the steam table pans worked for me. It depends on the kind of fuel you are burning, consequently, adjust yours to the size of the wood. We burn pallets, which slide uncut into this evaporator.

This homemade maple syrup evaporator gets really hot, so be careful when standing near it. For our next evaporator build, I may line the sides with firebrick.

If you are thinking about buying a real evaporator pan, read our post here.

January 30, 2017
How To Build A Maple Syrup Evaporator – GF Video

I figured out how to build a homemade maple syrup evaporator because I was burning through a lot of propane when making maple syrup. I don’t make enough syrup to warrant buying one, but a DIY maple syrup evaporator was just what I needed. Watch the 2 videos below and step through the photos of the evpaorator build.

The Making Of time lapse video:

How to use the Homemade Maple Syrup Evaporator

This is made out of a metal 4 drawer file cabinet and a few steam table pans, plus some stuff you may already have or can get cheaply or for free. If you can find a 5 drawer file cabinet, even better, it will allow you space to have another pan for boiling.

This is not an original idea of mine, I learned about it through Annie Corrigan of Earth Eats, a WFIU radio program and podcast. She produced a story about Mike Bell of the Hinkle Garton Farmstead, who made this great homemade maple syrup evaporator. You can see photos of his rig here.

We have two videos of this evaporator. One is a fun time lapse of me building the rig, the second is a walk through of how to use make maple syrup with it. Below the videos are photos of building the evaporator and more videos on how to make maple syrup

Before I built this evaporator, I was using a lot of propane to boil down sap into syrup, you can watch a video of how we use a propane turkey deep fryer to make maple syrup here. The turkey fryer method works, but you burn through the propane, and make a bunch of trips to the hardware store buying refills.

I did not keep close track of how many gallons of sap I boiled down in a day, but if you keep on top of it, I imagine you can boil down about 50-70 gallons a day, depending on the sugar ratio of your sap and how hot your fire burns. Pallets and scrap lumber burn hotter than firewood, I found.

Click Here to go to the next page for photos and instructions on how to build the homemade maple syrup evaporator.

After reading through photos for the homemade maple syrup evaporator, check out how I improved the original design in this video:

Watch all our Maple Syrup How To Videos here.

Steam Table Pan Maple Syrup Evaporator Improvements – GF Video

April 10, 2015
Homemade Maple Syrup Evaporator Plans

This is a homemade maple syrup evaporator made out of a metal filing cabinet. It is brilliant and works really well for how simple it is. Using free or almost free stuff, you can make a DIY evaporator. Most of the items I had around the garage or shop.

Couple of things first:
• Use this information at your own risk.
• Wear the proper eye, hand, mouth, ear protection when using power tools and assembling any DIY project.

If you haven’t already, watch the two videos we made about the file cabinet evaporator. One is a time lapse of the evaporator build, the other is a walk through of how to use the DIy evaporator to make maple syrup. Then go through the photos and info below.

Tools you will need:

Cordless drill, having a flip bit is real handy.

Right angle grinder with a metal cutting blade. Have several spares on hand.

New metal cutting drill bits slightly smaller than the screws you are using.

Self tapping screws #8 x 3/4

Angle Iron or a metal bed frame you can cut up.

2 hinges – almost anything will work, I recycled some I had laying around.

Metal hasp for fire door

4″ vent pipe 4′ – 6′ long

4″ to heat vent metal duct to connect chimney to cabinet

4″ metal vent elbow

Full size steam table trays

Zip screws for sheet metal

Terra Cotta garden pots or firebrick or some other heat resistant objects

Steel grate the width and length of the cabinet. This one is 12″ x 48″

After you build this, fill the pans with water and fire it up. Let it burn for an hour or however long it takes for the paint to blister. I scraped the blistered paint off and put it in the trash.

Some paint will remain, as you can see in the photos.

I tried different lengths of pipe for the chimney. It helps if the chimney is higher than your head, so you get less smoke in your eyes.

The steam table trays need the angle iron to suspend them over the fire. Do a dry fit with all the angle iron and pans in place before screwing them in.

In the video, I attached a bathroom fan to the evaporator. I discovered I did not need to use the fan, as I was burning scrap lumber, which burns hot and fast. If you are burning firewood, you may want to attach one. Its better if you attach the fan to the front of the evaporator rather than the side like I did.

I did not have an adjustable air intake, I found if I kept the door slightly open, that worked very well.

I used terra cotta pots and steel grating to raise the fire up closer to the pans. I found this worked well for me. I did not line the evaporator with firebrick. Though I could see lining it would make it easier to stand next to the rig and carry the heat better. If the fire died down, the boil did too. Firebrick may have helped that.

For Version 2.0 of this homemade maple syrup evaporator, I will move the pans closer to the chimney, and have that extra space that I filled in with a piece of drawer right above the firebox door. The area right near the front door was not nearly as hot as the rear of the box.

This design is based on one by Mike Bell of the Hinkel Garton Farmstead, I learned of it by listening to Annie Corrigan on Earth Eats, a WFIU radio show and podcast. Here is a set of photos on their Flickr page

Check out how I improved the original design in this video:

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Watch all our Maple Syrup How To Videos here.

April 10, 2015
Barrel Style DIY Maple Syrup Evaporator

Here’s a DIY maple syrup evaporator made out of an old metal barrel with a few enhancement you can easily put together from spare parts or a scrap yard. I ran across the homemade evaporator at my friend Priscilla’s house. She has upgraded to a stainless steel commercial evaporator, but this was sitting next to the barn, so I had to check it out.

The evaporator tray on this DIY maple syrup evaporator is an old turkey roasting pan, perfect for the wide surface area you need when boiling down sugar maple sap. The wider and larger your tray is the better. The whole idea is to boil off the water to make maple syrup.

I’m not sure where the firedoor came from, you might find one at a welding shop, or you can buy a kit online that will turn a barrel into a wood stove here. After you attach the fire door and the stovepipe, you cut out an opening for the evaporator tray, and you are good to go.

Couple things to remember using a DIY Maple Syrup Evaporator:

Maple sap becomes maple syrup when it reaches 7.5 F degrees above the local water boiling point. Water boils at 212F at sea level, so boil some water on your stove and use your digital thermometer to see what temperature it is boiling at. The temp will probably be lower than 212. Our water boils at 210F, as we are at about 1700′ in elevation.

Don’t let the syrup get overheated. I do the final boil in the stovetop in my kitchen in a big pasta pot. Its hard to control the temp on a wood fired barrel stove.

You don’t have to boil all the sap down at once. You can let the fire die down with sap in the tray, and just start up again the next day.

Store your sap in the cold. I keep it in clean plastic trash can buried in snow.

You can buy maple tapping supplies here.

Check out our other how to make maple syrup videos here:

March 2, 2015
Outdoor Maple Syrup Evaporator In Our Yard

There are the vestiges of an outdoor maple syrup evaporator in our yard and every time I look at it, I think about a bunch of people hanging out outside in the winter in the cold boiling sap over an outdoor fire and how much fun that must’ve been. This evaporator was made out of a custom made metal tray that was welded together, and pieces of old wood stoves.

One of my neighbors has a very DIY maple syrup evaporator that is basically a large steel tray that a divided into two parts. He sets this over a fire and boil sap outside on the weekends. Most trays are divided into at least two sections so you can manage the boil. The larger sections are for the initial boil, the smaller sections for when the sap is close to becoming syrup. Most DIY evaporators have a pipe and a valve drilled into one end of the tray to pour off the syrup.

He lives on the main road so when I drive by and I see the steam coming off the saturate I stop by and we’ll just hang out we talk about the same things every time how much sap we collected what the ratio is this year how much sap to how much syrup sometimes it’s high sometimes it slow it’s usually around 35 to 1 or 40 to 1

This year I plan on building a new DIY maple syrup evaporator out of a metal filing cabinet so stay tuned for that in the meantime you can check out sober maple syrup videos here

Check out all of our how to make maple syrup videos here

December 19, 2014
Propane Maple Syrup Boil : GF Video
Our first year of making maple syrup! Learn how to make maple syrup with this cheap evaporator, using a propane turkey deep fryer rig.

We have used several methods to make maple syrup, watch all our maple syrup videos here and we have built a DIY maple syrup evaporator out of a file cabinet.

A turkey deep fryer is a good way to start making maple syrup. It will take quite a while to boil down the sap. Here is what we used:
- Propane Burner https://amzn.to/2GezLE0
- 20 Quart Pot https://amzn.to/2GxaSTt
- Digital Thermometer https://amzn.to/2GDEiiC
- Fine Mesh Sieve https://amzn.to/2IbeRlF
Maple sap becomes Maple Syrup at 7.5 degrees F above the local boiling point. Go boil a pan of water on your stove, use your digital thermometer to measure the temp at boiling. I bet it wont be 212F, but probably lower. Add 7.5 to that boiling point for the temperature you want to attain.

Wide Pots work best for boiling sap

When its Syrup, the sap starts to foam up, so you have to keep an eye on the process.

Be very careful. Hot sap burns bad, plus there is open flame. Use common sense, keep kids and dogs out of the way.

The wider the pot you use, the more sap you can boil off faster. Its all about surface area. This is why evaporators are wide and shallow.

Take the pot off the propane burner as soon as you reach temp. Its OK if the temp goes a bit higher, but not much higher. I find it best to finish the boil on the stove in the kitchen. Take it inside when you are within a few degrees of syrup at your elevation.

Strain through cloth, cheesecloth, whatever you like. You will have some cloudiness in the syrup if you use cheesecloth.

This video shows how we improved version of making maple syrup with a propane burner

Let us know any questions or comments below! Go out and do stuff!
March 28, 2018
I Over Did It On Making Maple Syrup This Year

I realized I bit off more than I could chew about one week into this year’s maple syrup season. Ever think about a project for months, only after you start you realize, OK what did I get myself into? That’s me this year making maple syrup.

Have to clean up the rig soon.

First I built a new homemade maple syrup evaporator, I had been building it my head since last season. I found a legal size file cabinet in Brooklyn for $50, hauled it up to the house, and started building the firebox. I bought a Harbor Freight Flux Core Welder to help with the build.

For a while now I have been wanting a MIG welder, but after learning about the flux core, it was the obvious choice, and I now had a project where it would be useful. So a deep dive on YouTube on how to weld led to our first basic flux core welding video.

I had also been thinking about getting a evaporator pan made to fit right on top of the cabinet. For the previous homemade evaporator, we used steam table trays, and that’s ok, but I wanted to boil more sap in less time.

I found a guy named Zach who was selling sap evaporator pans on Ebay, and contacted him about a custom pan. A week later a cheap maple syrup evaporator pan shows up on my doorstep. Cheap isn’t the right word, but mbe that phrase will help Zach get more biz for his site through search. Really well made is a better term to describe it.

Last fall I started collecting way too many pallets to supply the firewood to boil down all the sap I was going to collect.

Way Too Many Pallets!

All during last winter I’m eyeballing more sugar maples I can tap around me. How would I run the lines, how close can I get them to the road – too much thinking. I order more tree taps and sap lines. Sap line and taps are surprisingly cheap, BTW.

And I bought a food grade pallet tote on craigslist, which holds 275 gallons of liquid.

So I fire up the new evaporator and realize quickly I’m burning wood real fast, and not getting a lot of heat in the tray. The sap is boiling OK, but it should be really boiling or I should be throwing less wood into the firebox. The fire is racing through the cabinet and going right up the stack.

Firebox Raceway

Always fun to see flames coming out of the top of a 8′ chimney. No pictures, sorry.

So while I’m slowly boiling sap, I’m collecting A LOT of sap. I had been thinking about extending some of the sap lines I do along the road up into the woods, but I’m glad I didn’t.

The big problem with collecting lots of sap is storage. I then discover the neat pallet tank freezes. And you can’t just break through the ice in the tank like you can with an open barrel. So I had 150 gallons of sap in a pallet tote that I couldn’t get out of it. The valve on the bottom, and the water in the sap, was frozen. The tank is plastic, so you can’t heat it, or it melts. The beauty of the blue plastic barrels I use is that you can break through the ice and haul out the concentrated sap in the center, then turn it on its side to dump out the ice. Not so with an enclosed tank.

A related issue was when I wanted to run a gravity fed line from the storage area up by the garage down to the evaporator, I used the 5/8″ sap line. If it was 32F or lower outside, the sap would freeze in the feed line. I gave up and hauled it with buckets.

My two big problems were the heat racing through the firebox and sap freezing in storage.

The sap freezing was easy, sell the pallet tank buy some more blue barrels for storage.

The firebox inefficiency was not as easy. Reading on the Maple Trader maple syrup forum, many sap makers build a baffle or obstruction in the firebox to get the heat to stick around longer. My friend Bill, who I learned how to make sap from, has two bricks halfway down the firebox, covered with sand. This causes the air – heat to become turbulent (we think) and stick around longer. I read about others who put a metal baffle in the box to slow the burn. One could also put a damper in the chimney.

My experiment with pre-heating the sap by running a copper tubing around the chimney stack didn’t work. The sap just didn’t warm up very much. Copper tubing is expensive! Maybe running the tubing inside the chimney may work better.

And of course, we had the epic FAIL on a glorious winter day:

Not fun…

After this I went out and bought a food grade tank that sits nicely in my trailer. BUT, like the pallet tank, you can’t let sap sit in it, you have to get it into barrels or it will freeze. The fact that the tank sits low in the trailer (good for avoiding more spill fiascos) means I have to bucket it or pump it into the taller blue barrels. I see a pump purchase in my future…

Storage: I’ve been a big proponent of doing with less, minimalism, downsizing your junk. But making maple syrup causes you to need to store quite a bit of stuff. Kinda like beekeeping. The barrels go up in the garage, but I have to find a place for the tank.

More stuff to store

What did work quite well was lining the side of the firebox with firebrick. I found the firebrick at Lowes. It was pretty cheap – previous I always thought firebrick was expensive. This type was sold as bricks to replace cracked ones in a home wood stove. I basically leaned them up against the sides of the file cabinet. This directed heat up to the evaporator pan, and kept the sides of the cabinet cooler. With the previous file cabinet evaporator, you couldn’t stand next to the rig for too long without burning your pants.

The last thing that hampered the sap season was me. I did this all by myself. Friends would be interested, but wouldn’t show up. So if you are thinking about making maple syrup, get your friends involved early.

But I am already thinking about next year!

I will post some photos of my firebox on Maple Trader and ask the experts for suggestions. My friend Bill suggested the bricks and sand method, that is the first one I will test out. Improve the sap pre-heater. And yes, test the firebox before the start of the season. Did not think to build the evaporator in the fall and boil some water to see how it all worked.

It will be easy to sell the pallet tote to a neighbor, and blue barrels are easy enough to get.

So if you are thinking of making maple syrup, start small and involve your friends. Your eyes will be bigger than what you can get done in the 3 weeks of sap season. Learn from me!

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May 12, 2017
When Your Maple Sap Freezes Too Much

This last weekend the temperature was around 5-10 degrees F all night and day. So this played havoc with our maple syrup evaporator operation. The line that feeds raw sap to the evaporator froze as soon as I would defrost it, so I was ladling sap in to the pan by hand.

Bigger problems were elsewhere in the yard. My main sap storage tank was frozen to the point that the drain valve froze shut. Its kinda a bulky object to work with, so it just had to sit until it warms up later this week.

But one thing I had never seen is just how frozen one of my barrels out in the wood was. These barrels sit at the end of a line of maples we have tapped. This one had so much ice in it, the lid had been popped off.

I hacked through the top layer of ice knowing there would be slushy sugary sap inside. I scooped out the sap and carried it in buckets over to the evaporator.

Usually, if I have overnight ice in a bucket, its maybe an inch thick. I remove this ice and toss it. My thinking is the first ice that freezes on cool nights has a low sugar content.

But this barrel was different. It had gotten very cold, and this was a lot of ice. So I dragged a spare barrel over and connected it to the sap line, and let this one just sit. The temperature will go up later this week and I hope most of the ice will melt. Then I can haul it to the evaporator.

Tossing ice from sap buckets is one of those contentious topics in the maple syrup world. I want to borrow my friends brix refractometer and measure the ice in the buckets and the remaining liquid to see the actual sugar percentages.

March 7, 2017
Easy Maple Baked Beans Recipe Video
We just finished the maple syrup season, so its time for our easy maple baked beans recipe. You can use canned beans for this or cook some beans in your pressure cooker. There aren’t a ton of ingredients to this, but the few ingredients combine to make this perfect for a BBQ side dish.

A viewer suggested the other day that our homemade maple syrup evaporator could be used as a DIY meat smoker, and that provided the easy connection to make baked beans with maple syrup.

I’ve been to plenty of BBQ places across the U.S.A., and some of the baked beans I’ve been served are not great. I want them to be slightly sweet with some baked tomato flavor, and not too soupy. I’ve seen and eaten a wide range of them, and my easy maple baked beans recipe reflects what I like in a baked bean recipe.

A good potluck dinner recipe, these beans should be served on a paper plate in your friend’s backyard on one of those red stained wood picnic tables. Or at least one made out of pallets… ( more DIY pallet videos coming )

I baked these beans in a seasoned cast iron dutch oven. Learn how to season cast iron here. I think its the perfect vessel for this dish. Its got a nice carrying handle, and the thick walls keep the heat even. And drop that puppy on a potluck table and it looks so much better than those plastic food storage containers, right?

A lot of recipes call for molasses or brown sugar, or both. I am not big on super sweet beans, and the maple syrup works well, I think. 1/2 cup of syrup does well for me. I would not suggest adding any more, but again, its a personal thing. The canned beans are cannelini beans, but any white bean works here – you could even use lima beans – which has now got me thinking about a lima bean baked dish.

The small can of tomato paste stands in for ketchup. I LOVE ketchup, especially on meatloaf, but these beans are better without it.
Here are a variety of cast iron dutch ovens to check out:

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Easy Maple Baked Beans Recipe Video

Author: Eric Rochow

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 50 mins

Total time: 1 hour

A perfect segue from the Maple Syrup season to the BBQ season, baked beans work in winter and summer, perfect potluck dinner recipe or just because you love baked beans like I do.
Ingredients

2 29 oz cans of white beans – northern, cannelini, small whites.

1 6 oz can tomato paste

1 medium onion chopped medium

1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

2 tablespoons brown or good deli mustard

1/2 cup real maple syrup

5 strips of bacon, thick cut is preferred
Instructions

Drain the liquid from one of the cans of cooked beans.

Roughly chop the onion.

Cut or Slice 3 of the bacon strips into 1/2″ pieces. Cook in a fry pan while preparing the dutch oven.

Put about 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat or vegetable oil in the dutch oven on the stovetop.

Add in the onion and cook, you want the onion to start to brown and be kinda clear.

Put in the two cans of beans, reserving the drained liquid from one of the cans.

Add the tomato paste, Worchestershire, mustard, maple syrup.

Add in the cooked bacon and mix together the ingredients.

At this point, see how much liquid is in the pot, the liquid should not be above the beans. The top layer of beans should be just above the liquid.

Add more bean liquid if the liquid level is too low.

Lay the remaining uncooked bacon across the top of the bean mix.

Set the oven to 350F and cook covered for 30-40 minutes. Check at 30 minutes, if its not bubbling, cook a bit longer.

Take the lid off the beans, turn on the oven broiler, and put the beans about 6″ below the broiler for 10 minutes, when the top starts to brown, its done.
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April 16, 2015
Tap Sugar Maples for Maple Syrup with Buckets – GF Video

Its time to tap sugar maples to make maple syrup in our area, and I went out with my neighbors to help them tap with buckets and spouts. This is the traditional method of tapping trees, many people now use plastic taps and tubing. See the links below for our videos on tapping using tubing. My neighbor Bill puts out about 150 buckets, mainly along the roadsides in our town.

If you are thinking of what method you’d like to use to tap sugar maples, I have no strong opinion between buckets and tubing. The buckets are better for smaller operations, and for tapping on other people’s property. Most tubing stays up year round, and not everyone likes how it looks in summer.

I use tubing and plastic taps, and I take down the tubing every spring. I tap the same trees each year, and I can put back up the tubing. Its work, but so is hauling sap buckets.

This is a hard to find attachment for your chain saw

I’ve also seen people use plastic bags and milk jugs to tap trees. I have no experience with these, but at least with the milk jugs, i can see how they would overflow easily when the sap is running. That wastes a lot of sap.

Ask around your town or check on craigslist for buckets to tap sugar maples, I’m sure there are some in a garage. You can also buy them new, though I believe the new buckets are made of aluminum.

We have a bunch of how to make maple syrup videos, check them out below:

Click Here To Watch All Our Maple Syrup Videos

March 7, 2014
DIY tapping maple trees for maple syrup – GF Video

Tapping sugar maple trees to make maple syrup is a big tradition in my part of Connecticut, so I wanted to show you how to tap maple trees to get maple sap to make maple syrup. We use plastic taps and tubing that are connected to buckets at the base of each tree. The advantage of using individual buckets is that some of the water in the sap will freeze in the collection bucket. The whole goal of boiling sap in an evaporator is to remove the water from the maple sap, so removing some of the water as ice is a super simple way to reduce your boiling time.

Tubing Connector for tapping sugar maples

We buy our taps and tubing from Leader Evaporator. The smallest length the tubing comes in is 500′, but don’t fret, its quite inexpensive, about $60 for that much tubing. To buy a lesser amount of tubing locally would cost just as much. We use Tree Saver taps. Buy a bunch of their tubing connectors too, you will need them to tie several taps into one bucket.

In a future sugar maple tree tap video, we’ll connect several trees into one large collection barrel.

Check your buckets every morning, scoop out the ice with a sieve, and then store the sap in a large barrel that is in a cold place packed with snow. The sap has to stay cold or it will spoil. You can tell if you sap has gone bad if it has a milky color to it.

We have a bunch of maple syrup making videos, including how to boil down your sap into maple syrup, click here to watch our maple syrup videos

Here is a great PDF from the Univ of Maine on how to tap trees and boil sap

Have any questions or comments? Please post them below:

March 12, 2013
Tap Maple Trees to Make Maple Syrup How To – GF Video

Tapping maple trees to make maple syrup in this DIY video. We tap our Sugar Maple trees to collect sap in preparation for making maple syrup. This is a DIY low tech low volume method of tapping some trees in your yard or perhaps a neighbor’s field. Several of my neighbor’s have sugar shacks complete with large evaporators and huge piles of firewood, some use traditional sap buckets to collect sap, others use plastic lines and taps.

For my yard, I went with plastic taps and lines, they are not expensive, and I used the food grade plastic buckets from my homebrew beer kit to collect the sap. After we collected the sap, we boiled it down, and we’ll post a video about that soon.

The general rule of how many taps to put in a tree, according to the Conn. DEP is 1 tap for a 12″ diameter tree ( 38″ in circumference ), 2 taps for 18″ diameter or larger tree ( 56″ in circumference )

The holes you drill for the taps should be 1.5″ deep with a 5/16″ bit. If you are tapping trees that were tapped previously, pay attention to the previous tap holes. New taps should be 6″ left or right of an old tap hole, and 12″ above or below the old tap hole.

Sugar Maple sap needs to be stored at 38F degrees or cooler, ideally you will boil the sap the day you collect it. If the sap has turned milky and foamy, it has gone bad.

Do you tap sugar maple trees? What are some tips you can share with us below? Thanks for watching!

Here is the tree identification book we like to use:

Buy From An Indie Bookstore Here
Buy From Amazon Here

April 16, 2012
Maple Syrup Season Update GF Radio

Eric talks with Bill of Maple Knoll Farm about tapping Maple Trees for sap, making maple syrup, and how this warm winter is affecting the maple syrup season. Bill can be seen in our GF Video Make Maple Syrup here. Bill has about 150 trees tapped, using metal buckets. He and his family collect the maple sap, and boil it down in the evaporator in the family sugar shack. This warm winter weather has thrown a wrench in the usual maple syrup making process. Sap runs in sugar maple trees when the nights are cold and the days are warm. This year we’ve had just warm weather for the most part.

In the sugar shack, Bill and his family fire up the evaporator and boil down the sugar maple sap to syrup. Its very cool process to watch. There are several maple syrup operations in our town, and we visited another one recently and made this how to make maple syrup video there. Each sugar shack is different, reflecting the interior design sense of each sap house owner.

Some additional maple syrup posts on Gardenfork:

How to make Maple Syrup at Bill’s Sugar Shack

How to tap sugar maple trees

How to make maple syrup at the Norfolk sugar shack

Summer Salad with Maple Blue Cheese

photo by earl53

February 27, 2012
How To Make Maple Syrup at a Sugar Shack: GF Video

Ever wondered how to make maple syrup? I have a number of friends who have sugar shacks and boil down sugar maple sap to make maple syrup. Last weekend I visited one of my friends and made this video about how to make maple syrup.

You can also use simpler methods than the one shown here with the 2 stage evaporator, I plan on tapping my sugar maples next year and making maple syrup in with a simple propane burner and stainless steel steam table tray that will be my evaporator.

Do you make your own maple syrup? How do you make it? and any tips and tricks you can offer us here? Let us know below

March 18, 2011
Flux Core Welding Success! – GF Video
My first successful flux core welding project, not without an ‘oops’ moment, but watch and read along here. You may learn something, or teach me something. Let’s see.

I first heard of flux core welding from Jimmy Diresta, when he suggested to a viewer that it was a good beginning welder to buy. Officially called Flux-cored arc welding, aka FCAW or FCA, it is used widely in construction.

I have seen a lot of maker people on YouTube using MIG welders for their projects, but MIG welders can be expensive, and you have to use a tank of gas (usually argon) with MIG welding.

A while back I had taken a 4 hour intro to welding class at a Brooklyn metal arts collective, but I wasn’t sold on getting a MIG welder.

So I was at Harbor Freight Tools and saw they had a flux core welder on sale for $100. I know Harbor Freight is famous for cheap tools, and it could be a gamble to buy a flux core welder from them. But that’s what I did.

Back to YouTube I went and watched many flux core videos. Some were awful, some were great. But I learned enough to start welding. An even greater source of help was my first flux core welding video, where I asked people to post constructive comments on how I could be a better welder. It worked, lots of great comments.

A year later that vid still gets nice people writing out what I should be doing better. It was these comments that were in my head when I was repairing the tree guard with the flux core welder. And my welding has improved from the first welding video, I hope you can tell!

You can also buy an cheap flux core welder online:
- Cheap Flux Core Welder http://amzn.to/2HO4C6K
- Auto Darkening Welding Helmet http://amzn.to/2IDuEe9
- Welding Gloves http://amzn.to/2GbzOzI
- Welding Tips (buy extras!) http://amzn.to/2GLym4W
- Welding Wire Pliers http://amzn.to/2FPHYhR
- Welding Locking Pliers http://amzn.to/2G6ofd3
A cheap flux core welder will work fine for welding thin metal and repair stuff around the house. If you want to build furniture, you should upgrade to a MIG welder. The cheap flux welders are AC welders, the better units are DC, and more expensive. I have seen some hacks online to convert a cheap AC welder to DC, but have yet to attempt that.

This type of wire fed welder is called flux core because the flux is built into the center of the welding wire. This wire is fed from a spool inside the welding unit, through a hose to the tip of the wand. When the wire is energized (by pressing the red trigger on the welding wand) the wire at the welding tip is heated, flux is released, and it allows the wire to melt, create heat, and weld the pieces of metal together.

This core inside the welding wire also has ingredients that create a shielding gas around the weld point. MIG welding uses an intert gas, usually argon, as a shielding gas. The advantage of FCAW is that you can use it outside in windy conditions. With a MIG welder, the argon gas may get blown away by the wind. As you see in the video I made, the flux core unit is super portable. All you need is a heavy duty extension cord.

The down side of flux core welding is it shouldn’t be used indoors unless its really well vented. It puts out some noxious smoke. MIG welders can be used inside. The other downside is it can be harder to see the weld puddle, the melted metal you are working into a joint, with flux core. The process creates slag that can get in the way.

I did some welding on the homemade maple syrup evaporator project

But I do think a cheap unit is a fine way to get into flux core welding. If you find you really like it, you can sell your cheap welder and upgrade to a nicer unit. If you find you don’t like it, you can still sell the unit.

Let me know your experience with welding, I am always learning from you. Thx!
March 28, 2018

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