Making Maple Syrup At Home With Tap Your Trees – Review

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We’ve been making our own maple syrup at home for  a long time.  It’s something we look forward to every spring. 

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post, I received a complimentary copy of Little Boy for review. This has no effect on my opinions in this article.

Our children love to join in the fun so they were very excited to help open our box from Tap Your Trees that contained their Starter Kit with Aluminum Buckets and all the supplies they would need to help make our syrup this year.

What Is Tap My Trees

Tap My Trees is a company started by Joe McHale.  Joe started tapping his maple trees at home to teach his children about nature and where their food comes from.  He found that most of the information was geared towards large commercial syrup production.   This isn’t always the best method for working on a small scale  at home.  So this lead him to create Tap My Trees as a way to offer starter kits for people wanting to tap trees at home or at schools.

We live in Ontario and maple syrup production is a large industry here.  Every spring you can see the shine of buckets glistening in the bush along with blue tubes carrying the sap to holding containers.

The first time hubby and I bought supplies to make our own maple syrup it was 15 years ago and we were living on a large farm.  It was so easy to go to the local farm store and buy the aluminum buckets, lids, and taps.  We had a lot of fun that year making our own maple syrup.

10 years ago when we had moved onto a smaller property with just a few maple trees we wanted to make syrup with our children.  However, we found this time that it wasn’t easy to find the supplies we needed.

Most of the large maple syrup produces had moved from using buckets to using the blue tubing that automatically collects the sap and takes it to a holding tank.  If you’ve ever driven down the road in the spring and seen blue tubing going from tree to tree is this likely what you’re seeing!

The aluminum buckets were few and very expensive.  We ended up having to buy the plastic buckets and we haven’t been overly happy with the quality of them.

So when we had the opportunity to receive a starter kit from Tap My Trees I was very excited but also not sure what to expect.

It’s so much easier to identify maple trees in the fall rather than waiting until winter.

My Video Review

The Starter Kit includes:

• 3 Aluminum Buckets 2 gallons each
• 3 Metal Lids
• 3 Stainless Steel Spiles (Taps)
• 3 Hooks to hang the buckets from the taps.
• 1 Drill Bit 7/16″ with a 3/8″ shank to drill the tap holes.
• Cheesecloth to strain the sap.
• Maple Sugaring at Home Book.  This is a step by step instruction book on how to make syrup at home.

I have to say, that we have been amazed at the quality of their products!  The aluminum sap buckets are thick and very strong.  It looks like they might have been made in a cast mold compared to the old style aluminum buckets that were welded together. When I first took them out of the box hubby’s eye’s widened, yes he was impressed.  I don’t think these will dent or break as easily as the old styles did.

The lids are also heavy duty and I don’t think these ones will be blowing up in the wind like our old ones often did.  This will help to keep our sap clean even in a nasty storm.

The Maple Sugaring at Home book is a wonderful resource for anyone who is new to making their own maple syrup.  I’ve been making syrup for years and even I picked up a few new tips!

The book is a softcover and 44 pages long.  

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Equipment
• Identifying Maple Trees
• Tapping Trees
• Collecting and Storing Sap
• Cleanliness and Sanitization
• Making Maple Syrup
• Other Uses for Maple Sap
• End of Season
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Resources
• Quick Reference Checklist
• Notes

Maple Sugaring at Home is filled with photos although they are in black and white.  They are very clear and really help to illustrate what the author is talking about.  As a visual learner I really appreciate it when books include nice clear photos.

It gives a clear overview of what supplies you need to make your syrup and then moves into teaching you to identify 4 diffrent types of maple trees.  These are:

• Sugar Maple
• Black Maple
• Red Maple
• Silver Maple

It also briefly talks about other types of trees that you can tap like birch and walnut.  Our walnut tree isn’t big enough to tap yet, but I’m looking forward to trying that someday.

The book will walk you through step by step how to find your trees, make a map of your property so you’ll remember where these trees are in the winter, drilling your taps, sap collecting and how to cook down your sap into syrup.

I’ve been very impressed with the quality of this kit and I’m so happy that we now have a source we can buy more buckets from if we need them in the future.

I’m planning to do another unit study on maple syrup with our children this spring.  I’m looking forward to showing you how the kit works!

Tap My Trees has also made a series of videos showing how to make your own maple syrup.