firefighterjake
Minister of Fire
Probably just good karma . . . I don't mind . . . I know it's probably bad to say . . . but while I tend to like the real stuff for most things I actually prefer fake syrup.
Anyone Here Make Syrup???
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Probably just good karma . . . I don't mind . . . I know it's probably bad to say . . . but while I tend to like the real stuff for most things I actually prefer fake syrup.
Blacknight318
Member
Trees starting to run a little today, got about a gallon from 4 trees, 5 taps. Put three more on tonight after work.
Warm_in_NH
Minister of Fire
drip...drip...drip...drip...drip...
Doing a preliminary boil today of the 8 gallons of sap that I have. Since it's a small set up it's easy enough to do a run through.
The cheapo little camp grill I bought off of Amazon for the boiling came in a crudely taped closed box, with broken parts, pre-cut zip ties, missing screws, but after all that I finally got it together to realize that one of the two burner valves wouldn't let any gas through.
Thankfully found a nice 3 Burner coleman camp stove hidden deep in the bowels of the garage, higher BTU's and more even heat than the cheapo.
Figure today's boil will work out any other kinks that I may find along the way.
So far so good....
Doing a preliminary boil today of the 8 gallons of sap that I have. Since it's a small set up it's easy enough to do a run through.
The cheapo little camp grill I bought off of Amazon for the boiling came in a crudely taped closed box, with broken parts, pre-cut zip ties, missing screws, but after all that I finally got it together to realize that one of the two burner valves wouldn't let any gas through.
Thankfully found a nice 3 Burner coleman camp stove hidden deep in the bowels of the garage, higher BTU's and more even heat than the cheapo.
Figure today's boil will work out any other kinks that I may find along the way.
So far so good....
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69 taps, 32 gallons of sap collected today. Temps are supposed to drop tonight then warm back up tomorrow, hoping for a good afternoon run.
midwestcoast
Minister of Fire
Jealous of you guys making the liquid gold... I had a visit back to the family farm (Ontario) for a visit last week & we could barely even get into the woods on skis. 3 feet of powder over some crusty snow. I was reminiscing on many late winter/early springs spent in the sugar bush tapping, collecting & boiling sap, splitting wood & feeding the fire. If there's a better way to soak in the first few hints of spring I haven't found it.
Our setup is homemade, not the most efficient, but it's worked for 15 years for what we need to make in a year. I'll take a pic tomorrow night.
I have to admit, when we do sap, we don't use wood. We all burn wood throughout the year, and when it comes to sap season, we just don't feel like burning more of the stuff at this point in the season! For the 5 to 8 gallons of syrup we make a year, the propane doesn't cost us much considering the convenience for something that is an "early spring / fun" activity.
Here's the setup. A 5 gallon SS stock pot on a turkey fryer serves as our pre-boiler. Then a homemade SS pot sits above a Northern Tool (or wherever we bought it from 15+ years ago) 3 burner gas range, is the next stage. We boil things down here until we get close, then bring things into the house for finishing where we put them into mason jars.
Smoke Signals
Burning Hunk
Warm_in_NH
Minister of Fire
Pen, nice, similar to our set up.
How do you measure for "finished" syrup?
Last year was my first year, I just reduced everything we collected by 40 to 1. Somehow it all seemed to work out well.
this year I bought a hydrometer, but apparently not a sap hydrometer, so I know the first batch of sap had nearly 3% sugar but I have no Braume or Brix scale on it to measure finished product.
So this year I'm boiling to 7.5 degrees above boiling point of water and calling it "finished".
How do you measure for "finished" syrup?
Last year was my first year, I just reduced everything we collected by 40 to 1. Somehow it all seemed to work out well.
this year I bought a hydrometer, but apparently not a sap hydrometer, so I know the first batch of sap had nearly 3% sugar but I have no Braume or Brix scale on it to measure finished product.
So this year I'm boiling to 7.5 degrees above boiling point of water and calling it "finished".
It's fun. We do the same using a candy thermometer and find that works very well. We go by about 35 to 1 for a ballpark to let us estimate when we are close for bringing it in the house and to make sure we have a big enough finishing pot in use as you need to leave room for it to foam up. We find 3.5 gallons in a 5 gallon pot for finishing is about as full as we go. But, the ratio will surprise us sometimes, last time the sugar content was very high and we were looking at 25 to 1!
Also, the "drip test" works well. When you are close with the syrup, the last drop of syrup to fall from a spoon will leave a "tail" or "string" as it falls from the spoon.
We have a hydrometer but honestly have never tried using it.
Been running OK so far. Collected about 80 gallons since Monday. If we collect another 20 or so today, we'll be looking to finish up the first batch on Saturday.
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bag of hammers
Minister of Fire
I envy all the folks here too. Some really nice setups. And the folks who find a way to make a gallon or 2 on a shoestring - kudos. Unfortunately this will be another year that I don't get to jump in and try my hand at it. But there is definitely an outside fire or 2 on the radar. Maybe we'll manage to get out to visit one of the producers in the area during their annual maple syrup festival. A stack of pancakes smothered in fresh maple syrup - yum.....
simple.serf
Feeling the Heat
Wound up with a ratio of about 34:1 this year and bottled up 22 1/2 pints around lunch time.
Was darker than we were expecting for the first run, but that doesn't bother me any.
We also let things get a bit warmer in the house than we wanted to just before bottling, and wound up with some sugar sand. As my father reminds me , sugar sand is why the commercial guys like to use brown bottles and charge the poo out of anything that goes into glass.
Was darker than we were expecting for the first run, but that doesn't bother me any.
We also let things get a bit warmer in the house than we wanted to just before bottling, and wound up with some sugar sand. As my father reminds me , sugar sand is why the commercial guys like to use brown bottles and charge the poo out of anything that goes into glass.
midwestcoast
Minister of Fire
I prefer it darker too, but usually we get that towards the end of the season, and the lighter stuff comes first. With the weather we've had, this was the first sap could run and just didn't expect that.
Didn't burn anything, but just brought it up a little hotter than we wanted back in the house (up to 210 instead of keeping it under 200 on the reheat after filtering for canning) and think that's why we got the sugar cloud in the bottom of the bottles this year.
As always, we'll try it a little differently with the next batch.
Warm_in_NH
Minister of Fire
Good results yesterday. Looks like a good week or so ahead for the sap to keep flowing.
New set up this year seems to be working well. The step flashing around the bottom of the pan to keep the heat trapped makes a big difference. Will probably fabricate something a little better for next year.
New set up this year seems to be working well. The step flashing around the bottom of the pan to keep the heat trapped makes a big difference. Will probably fabricate something a little better for next year.
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