Maple (Syrup) Firewood!

[Wood1Dennis]

So around here I pretty much ignore softwoods for the firewood that gets burned to heat the house. With a good supply of hardwoods and space to season it, hardwoods are always my firewood of choice. But I have one hobby (maybe too many hobbies) that also uses firewood. Maple Syrup! We make syrup every spring, and with a wood fired evaporator I can burn a lot of it! The evaporator requires constant tending and I find that that finely split softwoods burn fast, hot and give me the best boil. So that is what I have been concentrating on over the last couple of weekends. We have a few areas in the woods that took a lot of storm damage over the years that I am cleaning up. All dead pine and spruce. One more load and I will have the rack full, more than enough for the syrup season.

I thought I would share some pictures. Everyone like pics of firewood, in all of its forms even if it is basically a rack full of kindling!

 

[Caw]

Im actually going to take my first crack at syrup this year with my kids. Id love to pick your brain for a second!

How big is your evaporator?
How much are you making?
How much firewood to make said amount?

I'm trying to get an idea of how much wood to set aside for it. I also have mostly hardwood firewood but I've saved a bunch of poplar and mystery wood for this project. I can always stir up some scraps of whatever too.

I intend to just make a small temporary fire pit with cinder blocks with a small stove pipe angled out to keep the smoke out of the syrup. I'll use two buffet pans to boil in over the fire and do the finishing inside. We have mostly red maples here so I'll be boiling a little more than the usual sugar maples. I expect about a 50:1 ratio and I will probably only make 1-2 gallons this year as it's our first year...lots to learn.

 

[wishlist]

I also am a maple producer . I’ll burn softwoods but pine throws a lot of sparks up the 12” chimney . Neighbor cut down a huge willow few years ago and gave it to me . Heavy as heck wet but dried quick and did burn hot and fast . Most important thing is small splits with whatever wood you use .

 

[wishlist]

Few pics of my setup .....

View attachment 272214 View attachment 272215

 

[Caw]

Damn... that's awesome! I'm like a backyard moonshine producer and you're making fine red wine haha. Very cool.

 

[Stinkpickle]

I want to do that. But no space or time.

 

[Caw]

Have you tried backyard brewing? I think it's going to be a fun little experiment with the kids. Doesn't even matter if it comes out good...just the whole experience will be fun. Good syrup will be a bonus!

Im making sure to save super uglies etc for it though along with some poplar. I'm not tossing and good wood in that fire pit

 

[Stinkpickle]

Yes, but it has nothing to do with syrup.

 

[Caw]

Yes, but it has nothing to do with syrup.

Ha ok wrong word. Back yard sugaring

 

[Wood1Dennis]

Im actually going to take my first crack at syrup this year with my kids. Id love to pick your brain for a second!

How big is your evaporator?
How much are you making?
How much firewood to make said amount?

Caw, sounds like a fun project. When I was a kid we cooked syrup in a big vat, maybe 20 gallons or so that we put over an open fire with some cinder block around it. No chimney. We always had dark syrup, but it was good. At some point we went to a flat pan and a chimney, still out in the woods, but it was better. Now we have a proper sugar shack. About 17 or 18 years ago my dad built the sugar shack out of cedar he sawed out of our woods. Unfortunately he passed after only a couple of years using it, but I am carrying on the tradition. I think that making syrup is a great thing to teach kids, of course for me there were not all the distractions that the kids have today, but I think it is a great way to connect with nature, something I have appreciated all my life.

It is just a hobby for us. We collect in 5 gallon buckets, and mik cans. We do have sugar maples, so we usually end up around 35:1 or 40:1 ratio of sap to syrup. I will bottle around 60 to 100 quarts of syrup a year. Our evaporator is a Waterloo Small brand, I'm not sure the size, I will ahve to measure it. The pile of wood you see in the pics will take care of all the sap I can cook in a year. I never measured the pile, so I don't know how much it there. I will check it out this weekend. The evporator is fed through a float system, fed by gravity from a tank in the rafters. We finish in a turkey cooker. Pretty simple, somewhere between cooking the the backyard and the setup that Wishlist has! I've got better pictures, but for tonight this is what I found.

 

[Caw]

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like my plan of a cinder block pit, metal pans, and a small chimney isn't too far fetched. It'll be really interesting.

When is sugar season for you guys in WI?

 

[Simonkenton]

That is fascinating. I have seen videos of them making maple syrup in Vermont. We don't have any maple syrup trees down here in the South.

 

[Mutineer]

I tap 15 trees, mostly reds, every year and make about 3 gallons. One suggestion is to forget about using cinderblocks as they crack after a season or two, I use the cheapest brick pavers I can get from Home Depot or Loews, I think I paid 58 cents the last time I needed a couple. I built a rig that looks like the sphinx with a chimney out of pavers maybe 30" high out the back and use the 12 x 18 stainless pan with a 12 x 12 stainless pan on the top of the chimney for preheating the sap. I can boil off about 2 gals/hr with that setup, my big upgrade this year is a home built reverse osmosis rig that takes about half the water out of the sap. My fuel is mainly oak that I split out of board ends that a local sawmill piles out front and sells for 20 bucks a pickup truck load. I split and box these 1" x 1" x 12" pieces and store them in my basement for a couple years, I must have 25 boxes down there right now. Plus I use the maple dead branch fall that I clean up from the yard after storms. I give away nearly all of it, people have come to depend on me for the real stuff.

 

[Caw]

When you say papers do you just mean landscape bricks? Could you possibly share a pic please? Pavers come in so many different sizes and shapes. I have ones I got for my sidewalk but then actual bricks too.

Interesting 15 trees makes 3 gallons. I plan to do 10-15 red maples as I mentioned. That gives me a good guesstimate of what to expect.

 

[Wood1Dennis]

When is sugar season for you guys in WI?

Our season usually starts early in March. I have tapped in Feb. on warm years (like this one is shaping up to be) but honestly I don't wory too much if I miss the earliest couple of days of the run, it is a hobby after all.

 

[Caw]

Our season usually starts early in March. I have tapped in Feb. on warm years (like this one is shaping up to be) but honestly I don't wory too much if I miss the earliest couple of days of the run, it is a hobby after all.

Yeah I was planning on late Feb/ early March here but its been so warm who knows. Might only be a few weeks away

 

[Mutineer]

I tap when we're going to have a string of days where the temps go over 32 in the day and below at night, I've tapped as early as Jan 17.
The pavers are regular brick shaped and size. This latest rig is the third iteration that I've evolved through.

 

[Caw]

Hmm yeah thats pretty much exactly what I was thinking except I planned on using cinder blocks. I'll switch to bricks thats easy enough.

What do you have yours mounted on? It looks like wood! That seems precarious lol. Also do you do a bottom layer of bricks or just on the ground? I might do a layer to save the ground/driveway. Not sure where I'm doing it yet.

 

[Mutineer]

I built a 3' x 5' box out of leftover PT 2x6 and 2x8's and anchored it in the ground. It's about 18" high, then I threw all the scrap busted cinder blocks, broken old bricks and some leftover pea gravel and various other stones in it, then my buddy was rebuilding an old house and gave me enough true firebrick bricks for a layer to use as the base. This raised the work area up to a more reasonable height for my old bones to sit in my canvas chair and feed the beast for hours.

 

[Mutineer]

BTW, my cheap pavers are about 8-9 years old and a couple of them have cracked but for the money they were great.

 

[Caw]

Ha that is a good idea. Im still young but every year the knees get a little worse thats for sure. My insert is floor level so I have a knee pad to help. Doesn't help the back though.

I saw firebrick for pretty cheap at tractor supply yesterday, ill pick some up.

 

[Mutineer]

Yeah, my local brick supply house had firebrick but they were way more than the pavers at HD

 

[Caw]

Im thinking I'll make it mostly out of cheap pavers then grab some fire brick for the bottom layer just to reflect a little heat back up into the pan and keep the ground safe. Shouldn't cost much as you said.

 

[Solarguy3500]

Im thinking I'll make it mostly out of cheap pavers then grab some fire brick for the bottom layer just to reflect a little heat back up into the pan and keep the ground safe. Shouldn't cost much as you said.

I'm planning on making maple syrup with my kids too. When I was a kid I always helped my dad make syrup. One of my fondest memories from childhood. I hope to do it this year, but if not, I'll do it next year.

Caw, just a thought. There is a guy in CT who advertises on CL a barrel stove evaporator kit for only around $200 and I think it includes the barrel and stainless steel pans. The kit includes the legs and door for the stove and he gives you templates and instructions for making the cutouts in the barrel for the pans and the door.

I am thinking of going this route myself. Let me know if you need me to find a link for that posting on CL.

 

[Caw]

That's am interesting idea. If you do go that route please come back and share the results! I want to give the stone MacGyver evaporator a go this year.

Oddly enough the weather conditions are decent this week to tap... very weird winter so far. Im not going to though, I have a truck of hardwood logs coming tomorrow!