This year we managed to make a gallon of maple syrup, tapping only six trees and boiling down the sap over a firepit. While it was rewarding, it was also a lot of work and not the most efficient way to make maple syrup.
Like many maple syrup hobbyists, once I had a bit of success, I wanted to find a way to improve our setup. The next step in the progression from a firepit is to make a barrel stove. This homemade contraption consists of a 55-gallon drum and a camp stove conversion kit, along with a couple of stainless steel pans from a restaurant supply store. Our office happened to have an old drum that had been used and was in poor condition, but was perfect for a stove (cost = free). I bought the barrel stove kit from Menards along with some firebrick and stovepipe. YouTube is full of videos on how to make a barrel stove, but I used a plan from the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Facebook page.
I have worked on the stove periodically for the past month or two between other projects, and finally finished it. I took it for a test run by filling the pans with water. I was pleasantly surprised to see the stove actually worked! Starting with a small fire, it took about 40 minutes to get the water boiling, which was slightly faster than my firepit. I am confident that if I build up the fire more quickly, I can get boiling even faster.
As with most cobbled-together contraptions, it is hard to stop tinkering with the stove. I plan to make a couple of additional tweaks. I have wheels on the base, but plan to add a couple of handles to make moving the stove around easier. I also plan to wrap some copper tubing around the stovepipe to act as a pre-heater. I will dribble sap into the tubing, which will warm as it works its way to the end and one of the pans. This will allow me to slowly feed in sap without decreasing the rate of boiling.
I am now excited for spring to come, and not for the usual reasons. I plan to increase the number of tapped trees to ten, now that I have a more efficient boiling system. We have plenty of maple trees in the back woodlot. The next step would be to buy a professionally made evaporator pan for the stove, and then a professionally made stove. That is the problem with a hobby - it can quickly spiral out of control. For now, my little barrel stove should give us more than enough syrup for pancakes.
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