{"id":554,"date":"2015-01-08T20:45:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T20:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/?p=554"},"modified":"2025-01-10T20:49:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T20:49:56","slug":"our-backyard-homestead-copy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/?p=554","title":{"rendered":"West Coast Maple Syrup?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Who knew you could tap maple trees on the west coast and make your own maple syrup?\u00a0

This is a project we have wanted to try for a while.\u00a0 Last year we ordered supplies from\u00a0Atkinson Maple Syrup Supplies<\/a>\u00a0in Ontario.\u00a0 We ordered their\u00a0Beginner Kit<\/a>\u00a0which consists of ten plastic spiles,\u00a0ten buckets, and a whole lot of other things to get you started\u00a0– enough\u00a0to get a taste\u00a0for tapping trees, or as they call it back east, “Backyard Sugarin'”.\u00a0

Next we looked for suitable trees.\u00a0 Here on the West Coast you can tap big leaf maple trees (which are fairly common), red maples, sugar maples (if you are lucky enough to find them big enough), as well as birch trees.\u00a0

<\/p>

<\/a><\/div>
Big Leaf Maple<\/div>


\u00a0Luckily, there were a good number of Big Leaf maples in the forest at the back of our property.\u00a0 There were a few good birch trees back there as well.\u00a0

We waited for the temperature to drop and started tapping!

<\/p>

<\/a><\/a><\/div>



The amazing thing about the West Coast is that you can basically tap all winter long.\u00a0 Anytime it freezes overnight and then warms up by about ten degrees or so during the day, the sap will usually start running.\u00a0 In our case, it started running as soon as we drilled into the tree.

<\/p>

<\/a><\/div>


Within minutes the sap started flowing pretty good.

<\/p>

<\/div>


When we had collected about 25 litres or so we took it in the house and started boiling it down.\u00a0 The ratio we found was about 40 to 1.\u00a0 We ended up with just over half a litre of maple syrup after about 3 hours worth of boiling.

<\/p>

<\/a><\/div>


Here is a collage of pictures of the entire process right through to the finished product.

<\/p>

<\/a><\/div>


West Coast Maple Syrup – probably the best tasting maple syrup I have ever tasted!<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who knew you could tap maple trees on the west coast and make your own maple syrup?\u00a0 This is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hops-homesteading"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnbriner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}