Making Maple Syrup - Boil down pics added

We only have 5 sugar maples. Our maple syrup output is typically 18 to 32 ounces. So it is for our own use.
Fortunately, while my wife and daughter are active "sugarers" they don't actually like real maple syrup. So I get the benefits.

But more than production it is family time. Walking through the woods to the trees each evening. Guessing which tree will have the most sap in the bucket. Talking about how our respective days went. Enjoying being outdoors. Then boiling down on the weekend while chatting and cooking hotdogs over the fire. The maple syrup is almost incidental. we combat "cabin fever" and enjoy a slower pace and spending time as a family.

Phil

Ah very cool! Although, I don't know how one could not like real maple syrup, but hey, to each their own and more for us!

PhilNH5, when you're back in the area, bring me some.

One of my early childhood memories is watching the father of a friend tap their trees in upstate New York and him explaining the science of it. Very cool that you do this. We like the commercial grade B syrup best.

Thanks for the comments.

This past Sunday we boiled down. We had 14 gallons of sap.
We store the sap all week in the 5 gallon buckets we use to collect. I keep them in a snowbank.
Ice may form in these buckets. Again, a good thing, as it is frozen water leaving behind a more concentrated sugar content in the sap.



Toby investigating one of the ice blocks pulled from the storage bucket.




Me playing with the ice. It is actually a hollow cylinder.




This is our rig. A portable firepit with old wood and cookstove parts supporting 2 lasagna pans.
My daughter brought her breakfast out to keep me company.




To make syrup you simply boil off the excess water. There are only 2 things to do.
1. Skim off any foam. This is comprised of niter - insoluble organic material. It is harmless but can make you syrup cloudy.


2. Add more sap.



We always roast hot dogs on a stick.


This year I had a brainstorm. I toasted marshmallow Easter Peeps in the fire. Delicious.



Eventually we are down to just one pan of liquid.


I finish the syrup in the house. It is way to hard to control the temperature over an open fire.
This is my wife ladling the syrup to a coffee filter and into a pot.


You can really smell the maple sweetness in the steam.


In the kitchen we continue to boil down until I deem it worthy of the name syrup. This is a guessing came as I do not have enough liquid to use a candy thermometer. But even if slightly thin it still tastes yummy.

We filter it one more time into a smaller pot.



It gets reheated to a boil and then ladled into jars. I am re-using some decorative maple syrup bottles.


Our output for a week of collecting sap and 8 hours of boiling is about 26 ounces. And we will gladly repeat until the sugaring season is over.



One last pic. Our daughter took this as ML and I came back from collecting sap. I just like it.



Hope you enjoyed the process.

Phil

This was a great tour, Phil. Thanks for taking me along.

This was a great tour, Phil.  Thanks for taking me along.

Completely agree with Freddy - I don't even have much of a sweet tooth and in fact like my flap jacks and waffles on the savory side but would love to try some of your maple syrup PhilNH5 !

Great post Phil. Enjoy!

Awesome set of photos, always fun to see processes like this.

thanks for taking us along the journey, Phil!

go eagles.