This Family Is Way More Hardcore About Maple Syrup Than You’ll Ever Be

Ever wanted to learn how to tap a tree for maple syrup?

A reddit user has you covered. In an extensively detailed post on the image-sharing site, spanning 18 images with very technical and helpful descriptions, Imgur user hdc3 lays out the entirety of a maple syrup tapping operation for any hobbyist syrup lovers.

If you’ve ever given any thought to the origins of maple syrup, you’ve probably seen or read about a more old-school approach that includes fixing buckets to the taps in individual trees, and then harvesting the sap from each bucket — a labor-intensive process, to be sure. But this syrup wiz has taken the at-home tapping process all the way into 2018. “The first thing I did this spring was to prepare 200 drop rigs,” begins the “DIY Maple” post, accompanying a picture of a set of blue tubes and spigots. The photo series then takes us through the technical parts of the tapping process that transforms sap into sugar — the drilling of taps, the intricate connecting of lines, the sap-releas monitor, the reverse-osmosis system of distillation — in a true journey of expert-level amateur maple syrup production.

“It isn’t pretty but it makes delicious maple syrup,” notes the creator at one point about their advanced setup, referencing a wood-burning “evaporator” used to help bring the raw material to a boil and condense it down into its sugary final form.

Looks like this syrup-concocting aficionado would be right at home with the maple-syrup-obsessed residents of Riverdale. Or, in real life, would make for a great neighbor.