It's Maple Syrup Time

It’s the beginning of March and that means the Maple Syrup season is in full swing. Just this week we have begun to have the perfect weather for sap flow here at the Aerie. The days have inched above freezing (although we are due for at least one more day of below 32 degrees later this week) and the nights have been dropping well below freezing. It is this fluctuation that causes sap to move up the trunks to feed the swelling buds and down to keep from freezing and bursting the smaller branches and twigs.

We once (and only once) attempted to make maple syrup while we lived in New Jersey. There were several large red maple trees on our property and, while not the best source of sap (too watery by some counts), the red maple can be tapped for its sap. After the kids and I spent an afternoon watching a demonstration of the process over at the Great Swamp’s Nature Center, I purchased a few metal buckets and spiles and proceeded to tap my rather small (only six trees) sugar bush.

In a matter of days we had several gallons of sap stored in plastic gallon milk jugs. It was then time for the boiling down. Sap has to be concentrated to become syrup. Straight from the tree it has a faint sweet taste but is almost pure water. It is estimated it takes close to forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of 7% sugar syrup. I didn’t own an evaporator so I figured the 20 quart stock pot would serve and the gas stove in the kitchen would do nicely, thank you.

We poured three gallons of sap into the stock pot and turned the burner on under the pot and proceeded to boil. And boil. And boil. And boil.

A word of advice: Don’t do this.

After several hours of boiling, all the windows in the house were steamed. The wallpaper was peeling. There was a residue of all the cooking oils of years gone past mixing with the condensing water running down the walls. And we had about a glass of homemade maple syrup that was barely tan. But it did taste like syrup not sap.
Took the four of us one meal to use that syrup on our pancakes. Took me three days to scrub down the walls of the kitchen and glue the wallpaper back into place.

The buckets make nice planters if you drill a few holes in the bottom.
All About Maple Syrup