Anyone Here Make Syrup???

[firefighterjake]

You will receive some sort of sweet payment for your kindness, no?

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]

Trees starting to run a little today, got about a gallon from 4 trees, 5 taps. Put three more on tonight after work.

 

[johnpma]

Yes sir it's happening now

 

[Warm_in_NH]

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....

 

[pen]

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.

 

[begreen]

Wow, that is awesome. What are you using for an evaporator?

 

[midwestcoast]

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.

 

[pen]

Wow, that is awesome. What are you using for an evaporator?

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.

 

[pen]

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.

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.

 

[begreen]

Has any of that syrup gone into brew making?

 

[pen]

Has any of that syrup gone into brew making?

With beer, yes. Never added any when making cider tho.

 

[begreen]

How did it come out?

 

[pen]

Wow, that is awesome. What are you using for an evaporator?

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]

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.

View attachment 155713

Thats cool! Do you put in the jars hot so they seal?

 

[pen]

Thats cool! Do you put in the jars hot so they seal?

Yes. Hot syrup, hot jars, hot lids.

 

[Warm_in_NH]

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".

 

[pen]

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".

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.

 

[bag of hammers]

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.

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]

Up to 400 taps now, my wife is going up to keep working on it today, I'm on call this weekend.

 

[pen]

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.

 

[midwestcoast]

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.

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Awesome! A lil overheat doesn't matter a bit. The syrup you made yourself always tastes better than anything you buy anyway.
I like it dark.

 

[pen]

Awesome! A lil overheat doesn't matter a bit. The syrup you made yourself always tastes better than anything you buy anyway.
I like it dark.

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.

 

[begreen]

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.

Awesome!! We have to buy our maple syrup. Always try for grade B. It has the most flavor.

 

[Warm_in_NH]

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.

 

[johnpma]

My boys and niece collected about 30 gallons of sap. We did our first boil, and finished on the stove. Had a blast.....


Very tasty indeed