Maple Sap - Maple Syrup and Other Uses

This year was the first time to venture to tap maple trees.  We have over 30 trees that could be tapped but started with just five to see how we would get along and to make it a manageable endeavour.  Tapping shown a few blog posts down in pictures was easy and fun.  You need a sprout, bucket, lid all available at the local Co-op or hardware store that has farm supplies.  Then you need a drill and bit to drilled the hole into the tree and a hammer to tap the sprout into the tree.  Once the sprout is in you put your bucket and lid on and then check and dump the sap daily into a large bucket.  Then to boil it down.  As it turns out the boiling down is the more time consuming part. 

Boiling it down to syrup
We tried two different ways:
1) Boiling outside in a chimmea or wood fire with a pot on top.  I took all day to boil down and then it wasn't quite ready....adding firewood all day.  So lots of firewood, time checking etc.
2) We used a large slow cooker and covered it with a plastic container - don't recommend this as it made the floor all sticky and hard to clean.  We let it go on high all day and when we shut it off at 9:30pm (full 12 hour run) it had boiled down only 1/4 of the pot.

Other Uses for Maple Sap
From others we learned that maple sap can be used as a sport's drink - the native Indians used to have the maple sap for strengh and it is loaded with nutrients.  Suggest boiling it to remove any bacteria present.  That said I drank some before I knew to boil and I'm alive and not ill.  It takes like water with a little sugar taste, quite nice. 

And we heard from someone who used it to make mead or an alcoholic beverage , if you make your own wine you can certainly consider this. 

Overall it was fun and we will likely tap a little syrup each year just to have some sport's drink to have on hand.