Maple syrup - evaporating

Raw maple sap looks like water and tastes slightly sweet. Boiling it is necessary to evaporate the water content and increase the sugar concentration. The use of a wood fire is ideal because it gives the syrup a slightly smokey flavor.


In Middle Tennessee, it takes approximately 50 gallons of raw sap to make 1 gallon of finished syrup.

Making Syrup from the sap

In a nutshell: build a fire and find a pot.  Not mom's nice cookware. Trust me, that goes over like a lead balloon. I use an old stainless pressure canner to evaporate my sap. Add sap to pot. Do not fill the pan/pot completely or it will boil over. The more violent the boil, the faster the water evaporates. If foaming occurs, skim it off with a fine strainer. Continually add more sap as it evaporates. Carefully monitor the syrup, never letting the level of the liquid get below 1.5". If it gets any lower it will scorch.

Finishing the syrup
When you are ready to finish the syrup (basically when you run out of sap), stop adding sap, and continue the evaporation process until the liquid is boiling at a temperature of 106 degrees Celsius (or 6 degrees over boiling point in your location). We usually finish the syrup over the stove because it is easier to control the heat. Finishing the syrup to the correct temperature is critical for the syrup to achieve optimum viscosity.




Evaporators don't have to be fancy. Just a fire and a pot will work. Here are some pictures of my current cinder-block evaporator prototype:

 "Right. Riiiiight...."