Turning a 55-Gallon Drum Into a Backyard Maple Syrup Boiler

Making maple syrup at home gives you a sweet topping for pancakes, french toast and plenty of other dishes. In principle, if maple trees grow on your land, you can produce your own syrup — though the work involves far more than tapping trees and gathering what runs out. Sap is mostly water, and that water has to be boiled away before the liquid thickens into sugar. An evaporator built at home requires a big metal vessel to boil the sap in, and large metal drums — the kind normally used to move water and other liquids — work well for this purpose.

Giant drums can serve as heating pans for homemade syrup evaporators.

Step 1

Wash out the 55-gallon drum using hot water and a gentle dish detergent. Rinse it well so no soap is left behind. Then dry the inside so standing water is gone.

Step 2

Prepare a wood-burning fireplace outdoors. An outdoor stove or a fireplace you already have can serve this purpose. Otherwise, dig a hole roughly 2 feet deep, wide enough that the bottom of the drum can rest above it.

Step 3

Place stones or bricks along the walls of the fireplace, building them up a few inches past the hole. The bricks serve two purposes: they keep the fire from spreading and they hold the drum above the flames so it can reach the needed temperature.

Step 4

Start a fire in the hole using dry wood that burns quickly. After the fire is going strong, set the drum on top of the support bricks.

Step 5

To keep the syrup from boiling over, coat the drum's rim with a thin layer of butter or margarine.

Step 6

Add the sap you collected to the drum. Leave room at the top — filling it all the way can cause the sap to boil over.

Step 7

Keep boiling the sap until it thickens to the consistency of syrup, then put it in jars that seal for storage and later use.