Conference turris::cooks

re .-1
<                            -< Making Maple Syrup >-
<
<    Has anyone ever made it in small quantity?  This is simply for personal
<    use, not commercial.
<    
Terry,
   When I was a teenager (a couple decades ago) my dad made some syrup from
the maples in our front yard...  He just had a large stainless steel stock
pot and filled it with the sap, and let it simmer.  As the water evaporated
he'd add more sap, and let the process go.  After a few days of this he had
a couple quarts of thick sap which, as I recall, he watched a little closer.
As he got what he thought was about right, he used a thermometer (I don't know
what temperature he was looking for).  Then we bottled it and we used it all
in a couple weeks.

   Then the real work began.....the constant steam had loosened all the wall
paper, and the ceiling tiles, and generally made a mess.

If you're in the Central Massachusetts area, Old Sturbridge Village usually
has a maple syrup demonstration going about this time of year...done over
an outdoor fire in a big cast iron kettle (just like in the 1800's).

Al

    Thanks Al.
    
    I'm in Canada..
    
    I made syrup a couple of years ago with the trees on my property,
    and boiled for two or three days steady on the stove in the kitchen.
    I added sap like your father too.
    
    The problem with that method, is that the sap is cooked too long.
    It usually results in a darker syrup. (Still very good though!)
    You just can't get a pan large enough on a stove.
    
    Maybe there is no alternative given the small amounts used in domestic
    production.                                                    
    
    Terry

    Maybe this isn't what you had in mind, but my mother used to make
    syrup from a basic recipe of water, granulated sugar, a pinch of
    salt, butter, and pure maple extract (brought to a boil on the
    stove).  It was always VERY good!
    
    -j
    

  Referring to my entry in re .1  the temperature for the syrup is supposed
to be 212 deg F +/- 1 deg. according to HOMESTEADING ( one of my many 'back
to the land' books that I don't read anymore).  Perhaps one way to deal with
the browning process is to do it all in batches, that is boil down one pot
and remove it from the heat, then do the next batch etc.

Good luck...
Al

    My plan is to do the boiling on the back 2 burners of the stove.
    Sap will be boiled in a long shallow pan. If the sap level can be
    maintained at about a 1" level in this pan, it will boil off the
    excess water quite quickly.
    
    A flow of sap is required into the boiling pan in order to maintain
    this 1" level. So I am placing a 1 or 2 gallon sap container on the
    micro-wave beside the stove. A small plastic tube will act as a
    regulated feed into the boiling pan. I'll need to build a float device
    which will sense the 1" level. This float device will activate an
    open/close valve which will automatically feed sap into the boiling pan.
         
    As the sap continues to boil, eventually the 1" in the boiling pan
    will be 1" of syrup. At that time it gets poured into the syrup
    pail, and the process starts all over again.
    
    It all sounds great in theory. I'll let you know how things turn out.
    
    Terry                          

    Usually the difference in color comes not from the cooking time
    but from the various elements that are in the sap from the soil.
    The early run sap does not have as many impurities as does the late
    run sap.  Also as well as watching the temperature you should check
    the specific gravity as that is how ths sugar content is measured.
    The more sugar the more impurities and sweeter the syrup. 

    We actually did this way back before kids, when we lived in Vermont
    and had a row of Sugar Maples out in front of the house.  
    
    My wife and I tapped each of the trees and gathered 53 gallons of
    sap, which took 3 days to boil down to 1 1/2 gallons of Grade B
    (brown) syrup.  When we sold the house, we still had not been able
    to scrape the condensed sap steam off the back steel tiles in the
    kitchen.
    
    This is a job which takes MUCH patience, a LARGE fan and a MASSIVE
    holding tank, if you plan to do it indoors.  The pros use a special
    4-6' long channelized pan over a specially-built stove in a VERY
    drafty shed.
    
    As the earlier note referred to, HOMESTEADING and other "back to
    the Earth" type books can give you more information.
    
    Good luck.

re .5

    It sounds to me like your valving system is more complex than you need.
If the bottle (milk jug, cider jug, gerry can, etc) is air tight with a hose or
tube coming off it to the syrup pan, you adjust the level of the syrup
by the position of the stove end of your tube,  the theory being you can't get
sap out unless the syrup level is low enough to allow the air to get back into
the jug.

I've used this a lot in automatic watering systems for chicks, rabbits,
and other misc farm animals...  it's cheap, it's simple, and it's reliable.


          ---------
          |       |  upside down gal jug
          |       |
           \     /
            -----
              |       jug cover with a tube through it
              i
              i
               - - -
                   i    tube
                   i
           --------i--+
           |       i  |
           |~~~~~~~~~~|  syrup  pan
           |__________|

I read somewhere that that black walnut trees, like maple trees, can be
tapped and a syrup made from the sap. Has anyone ever tried this? It's
got to be good.