Dang good isn’t it. We never had a syrup house, but my mom said she make in a big cast pot in the fire place. My friend. Built a new house a few years back, all stainless steel but he still uses wood. He has thousands of feet of pipe sap lines run to big 300 gal tanks, and he just drives his truck by and pumps it into the truck tank. When I was a kid we collected sap in an an old truck using buckets and milk cans. We would go to school and come home and collect sap until midnight. Cold and hard work but we were having fun I drove my old ford tractor down to his place.
There lots of the taps, called spiles, for sale on ebay. The reason is they are obsolete. The pros use the taps and vinyl tubing like you say. The old ones are for sale
I bought an enameled turkey roasting pan at walmart. it holds about 2 gallons of sap and fits exactly on my camping stove.