Well, I thought my season was over 2 days ago, with higher temperatures. But last night it dropped down to 29F and the trees rebooted and started pouring out more sap. I’ve about 7.5 gallons to reduce to syrup. And with snow and temps around 30 tonight and for the next few nights, I will probably get another 7 to 10 gallons, if not more. Or not. Often my predictions of what my trees will do are confounded by reality.
Not sure how I’ll keep busy once the sap stops flowing. Maybe I’ll cook meth or similar. Or even better, some semaglutide! It’s plenty popular these days. I hate to waste all that organic chemistry lab training I had back in the day.
Most of us probably have the ingredients for meth manufacture somewhere in our homes; semaglutide, not so much. Maybe call it Ozempick or something similar? j/k
You’ll want to be careful about that. I saw a documentary series about a high-school chemistry teacher who went into the business, and it really didn’t end well for him. Apparently, even if you get a handle on production, distribution can be a real headache.
We’ve had some cold days, but the sap still flows. My wife is leaving in a few days for a multi-week trip. I can only boil on Saturday myself, so unless the season is ending I won’t be able to keep up and I may need to bail. We do have more than enough reduced for the next year, so we’ll see what happens.
@tofor I collected about 10 gallons this morning, then pulled all the maple taps because the trees are just starting to bud, despite the still copious flow and freezing nights. Too many days of sunshine recently, with sun temps in the high 40’s or low 50’s, I suppose. I don’t want to worry about the next batch going nasty, so I’m overcoming my inclination to keep going. The sap I got today still looks good and tastes plenty sweet. But I’ll pour and store it separately to make sure the final batch is OK.
I’m also kinda tired of it at this point.
I’ve left a tap in my walnut as it always buds late.
I too have plenty for the next year, and maybe beyond, even with generously passing out samples to neighbors and kin. On to the next hobby!
Next hobby immersion: continuing to collect dead relatives and add them to my genealogy data base.
Cheese is more a passion for shopping for and eating it. I’m blessed with a ton of specialty cheese stores not too far from my home, where I can find things like 20 year old cheddar, 3 year old swiss, raclette, herbed chevre, gjetost, cheshire, freshly made squeaky curds only hours old, smoked aged gouda, etc.
I’ve now got my most recent 17 or so gallons of sap reduced to about 2 gallons of protosyrup. Tomorrow I’ll finish it, hopefully getting another 1.5 or so quarts of syrup. Then that’s it until next year.
As of last night we had boiled all the sap collected so far, but we are running out of pots and bowls to put the proto syrup in. Too much else going on to get through it all.
All done with maple syrup making now. That last batch today made over a half gallon. I’ve made a tad over 4.5 gallons (including stuff already consumed and/or gifted), which means I gathered at least 180 gallons of sap, and 200 or so is more likely given spillage, wastage, and less than ideal sugar concentrations. So that averages about 50 gallons a tree.
The last batch came in at a shade between amber and dark. I got 3/4 of a gallon of dark in the beginning of the season. The rest is mostly amber with some light golden samples from mid season. All nice maple flavor, most intense in that first 3/4 gallon of the dark stuff.
I’m here online instead of rinsing out all the sap bags; that’ll wait for another day. Same for scrubbing the niter out of the boiling vessels. Fortunately I’m stocked up with ‘Barkeeper’s Friend’ for that task.
I still have about 3 quarts of walnut sap to decide what to do with. I can get maybe half a cup of walnut syrup out of it, to keep up my small stock of that product. Or I can just drink the sap over ice at dinner, instead of my usual water. Might do that. Onward to other things!
Just wanted to chime in with a vote for considering a reverse osmosis system. I’ve got a handful of sugar maples that I’ve “under-tapped”, as it were, due to inability to keep up with the production. I bought a RO Bucket last year, and it’s been a game changer. I tinkered with it a bit, and ended up double-concentrating (so 20gal of 2% became 5gal of 8%). It’s dropped my total sap to syrup time by ~40%. No more late nights waking up my assistant for canning.
I’ve read about them, but with 4 trees that are separated by about 40 to 120 yards in different directions I don’t think I’m quite up for that. I’ve got dozens of maples deep in my woods, but it’d be work to get there thru the mud and snow, and I’m not looking to turn my hobby into an avocation. I do love visiting such larger operations and reading my Roth Sugar Bush catalogue.
Though after looking into that RO bucket, it sure could reduce my damned boil times and cut down on costs. $300 to do 8 gallons an hour. Hmmmmm . . . . I am tempted.
And it’s good to see you back, ellis555! What have you been up to lately, sap and life-wise?
And on further reflection, I think that’ll go on my list for Fathers day/Xmas present suggestions. Thanks!
Ha! I’m surprised that you recognized my moniker. Lurking, mostly, and don’t be surprised when I duck back out of sight. Not retired, but I’m fortunate enough that my practice can be solely volunteer at this point. Medicine is a lot nicer when you get to ignore most of the meetings and paperwork.
I grew up with galvanized buckets on the trees and boiling on the wood stove. I’d wanted to do it for years but hadn’t made the time. My own kids got old enough to help and my parents weren’t using their equipment any more, so I started up a few years back. I’ve moved to tubing leading into 5gal buckets, rather than bags, and a year of steaming up our kitchen convinced me to do an outdoor setup (in retrospect, I’m astounded that my parents’ wallpaper survived all those years). I tinkered with an open fire, which lends an interesting flavor depending on the wood used, but I’m currently pretty happy with a steam pan over a propane burner. I’d really like a proper evaporator pan, but I know that would rapidly lead to my wanting an arch…
One boil ending at 4pm instead of 11pm was well worth the price of the RO bucket for me. It was my Father’s Day gift (to myself) last year. I could concentrate more aggressively, but the instructions warn that producing more permeate than concentrate will rapidly degrade the filters, so I err well on the side of safety, and reduce to about 60% of the initial volume on a single pass, rather than 50%. That being said, my total time to process ~24gal of sap the other day, including flushing the system afterwards, was about 2hr, after which I only had ~6gal to boil. I should note that it was a relatively labor-intensive 2hr; I was checking at least every 15min to change buckets around, though using larger containers would help with that.
I am astounded that you could make 4.5 gallons of syrup from 4 trees. We tap over 40 and have only made around 10 gallons of syrup this year. I suspect it’s largely a matter of shade: most of my trees are surrounded by other trees.
I’m probably a little too late on this reply, just started reading this thread today, but soy sauce and real maple syrup is an awesome combo.
We have a a local maple syrup festival in my area every year and I always grab a jug for cooking.
My go-to is glazed carrots. No recipe, I boil carrots to soften them and boil away most of the water. Then add maple syrup, soy sauce, red pepper flakes and minced garlic. I’ll add a touch of orange juice or zest if I have it.
Reduce and eat over rice.
Used to do a similar wing sauce, when I could afford wings.
Nice retirement income and you might get good money because it won’t be cut with fentanyl. Maybe.
