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Welcome to the
Willow Creek Sugarhouse,LLC
 East Kingston, New Hampshire. 

 
The spring of 2009 was my first season of making pure New Hampshire maple syrup I had 25 taps and made several gallons of wonderful amber gold on a backyard rig with a roasting pan on cement blocks.  It was then I realized I had been bitten by the maple bug and fell in love with the process.  

My name is Brad Rice and I am a chef by trade and I also have a love for the outdoors.  So with that combination making maple syrup is perfect for me.  Especially getting out of the house in late winter when cabin fever is at its worst.  

The following summer I started out building a shed and came across an evaporator and my plans changed just a bit.  I decided to make my shed a little bigger and add on a few more taps, so I ended up with a beautiful sugarhouse, and a Patrick Phaneuf 2x6 drop flue stainless steel evaporator and about 300 taps for the 2010 season. 

So instead of standing in the mud and making 1 gallon of syrup in about 8 hours, I can make close to a gallon of syrup per hour in a nice dry sugarhouse.  

Approximately 250 of the taps run on about 3500 ft of tubbing that are hooked up to a vacuum pump that gently help persuade the sap out of the tree and drain into tanks located just behind the sugarhouse.  The remainder of the taps are on buckets and some tubing without vacuum so I have to collect that sap and bring it to the sugarhouse.

With the poor 2010 season, that brought the worst winds and rains ever, long gone, its time to get ready for the 2011 season.  So now is the time for fine tuning and apply what I learned.