Maple aint only good for smokin...

[erain]

so not sure where i should post this but because of the pure sweetness Desserts it is...

So spring is around the corner and temps were getting above freezing during the day and below freezing at night. Needed for the maple sap run. So I have 10 trees tapped in the woods.




Here we are going out to collect the sap, these bag systems are pretty neat. the bigest advantage is they dont take up alot of room and are light and can carry a bunch in a bag easily. This was from a week ago and trees were still spotty as far as delivering the goods, note the bag blowing in the wind in the background, nothing in it but the tree in front has over a gallon.


here is a cupla days collection, filtered thru a dishtowel, bits of bark etc removed. is sparkling clear.


i set up a couple turkey fryers and started boiling the sap down, reducing it.




as it reduced...


continually kept slowly adding sap,


which i preheated on a gas camp stove i had set up.


here we have it getting pretty far down there...


combined the two stock pots, and note i added a thermo. also can see it is starting to pick up some color as the water is evaporated out.




want to be real careful so dont burn it,what i am looking for is the boiling temp to start to increase above 212 deg... finished syrup is done when temp of 219 degrees is reached.


when the boiling point gets above the boiling point of water, the boil itself changes. now is the time to be on your toes and dont walk away from it. foaming over-it can double in volume in seconds with all the air bubbles.




here we are moving inside to finish up... 40 gallons of sap will yield aprx 1 gal of syrup. depending on sugar content. the early run is the best, higher in sugar. at any rate, that would be alot of moisture to leave in your house unless you had a very good ventilation system set up which i do not.


and we still boiling away... looking for 219 degrees...


finally the magic 219 deg. is reachedactually looks like i only hit 218 on pic... not sure if angle or i could have went 1 degree more???).


is filtered again to remove the "sugar sand"... it would settle to the bottom of jars if not filtered. sterilized jars and lids are all set and filled. ended up with 3 pints and a bit left extra... think it has a really nice color to it.


the bit extra, drizzled some over some vanilla ice cream... dont know if cause its home done or what, but it is awesome.


so anyway it got cold again this past week and the flow pretty much stopped, i did collect around 10 gal, most of it today so will be boilin down again sunday.

here are some pics of the setup an old fam friend has set up for evaporation... he has kind of taken charge of teaching me the techniques of surgarin...
his home built arch(what they call the heating unit under the pan).


and free heat too... we got lotsa wood to burn.


here is his s/s evaporator pan... it will hold 40 gallons of sap in, thats a nice batch... will yield him a gallon of syrup...


and here it is doing its thing. loosing the water.


hope ya find it interesting, thks for cking my pix.

[Fire it up]

This is one of the most awesome threads I have seen. Great pics of the process and the other 40gal setup!
It sucks most syrup out there is mostly HFCS and so unnatural, homemade has to be amazing

Got plenty of woods and maple trees around here but short of drilling a hole and sticking a straw in it to suck sap out I'm clueless.

for a great post and especially for inspiring me to read more about the process.

[Critterhunter]

Nice work E.That is awesome.

[DanMcG]

Sweeeet!
Never seen the bags before, nice idea

[Fishawn]

Awesome post E, as usual. You do some of the coolest stuff @ your place. Points coming for sure....

[blues_n_cues]

very cool. i gotta try that sometime as i have a lot of sugar maples on my land and in my yard.

[Squirrel]

Wow! Sir my jaw is still on the floor! How amazing is it to see first hand. I love maple syrup and pay big bucks for the good stuff, but I never knew what the process was. Thank you so much for such an awesome thread. The pictures were great. for sure!!!!

[curious aardvark]

. 40 gallons of sap will yield aprx 1 gal of syrup

No wonder it's so expensive !

Fantastic post ! Have some 'really interesting'

So some of that ice caught fish smoked with a homemade maple syrup glaze, Mmmm - damn, need to get a towel to wipe up the drool

[Jimh]

nice post Erain its my favorite ice cream topping for sure.I was wondering where you got the bag system? I have enough sugar bushes to get maybe a samll batch every spring and what did you use for the final filtering? here some for showing us some of natures goodness, have ever maple sugar

[TJohnson]

Brings back memories of when I was a kid and we made maple syrup every spring.

Looks Fantastic!


Todd

[Bassman]

Thanks for the post, Erain. That's sure a lot of work for no more than you get out of it. Maple is some good syrup though and worth it I'm sure.

[Zeeker]

Damn fine job Erain. to you sir. Just beautiful...

[Joneser]

Great job, Eraine! I did a little sap collecting this spring as well. Nothing like your set-up. I really like those bags. Can you PM or FB me a link?
I ended up with about 2 liters this spring and stopped as I had spent well over $40 in LP. I need to come up with a more cost effective method of cooking it down. I like your friends set-up!

[SmokinLee]

Great thread Erain, them bags look like the way to go. I learned alot from this and if I ever try it again now I know the magic # is 218 hehe (219). Thanks for great infomative thread..............................

[IrishChef]

Looking good E! Outta my 3 trees, I've gotten about 2 pints finished so far.