We fulfilled our dream of tapping our maple trees this year.
The inital tapping was so exciting and the tap started dripping immediately. We tasted the sap right away (It's like water with a slightly sweet aftertaste) and really liked it.
Early in the season, it's not too dangerous to drink it right from the tap, but still has risks. There could be bacteria in the tree. Later, in warm weather, it's more likely, so the sap needs to be treated like milk.
It needs to be cold, either left out in snow, or put in the fridge, and it should be boiled (pasturized). It also will go bad after 7 days, so it needs to be boiled to syrup to stay good for long periods.
If bottled, it will be good essentially for years. If syrup is refridgerated, it will be good for a year.
The kitchen has been full of maple steam. I've found that if I steam the sap shallow in a pan, it goes quicker. If we try to do too much at one time, it's takes all day.
It's a big deal here in New Hampshire.
The hardware stores even have displays with maple sugaring supplies all in one handy place.
It took some experimenting to see what works. Scott got this grill idea from Utube.
Yeah, that did not work, even with the lid partially closed.
What it did do was steam-clean our grill!.....and waste $20 of propane. haha
What works best for us is simply small batches on the stove. I like to boil it and make tea. Scott likes to boil it, chill it and drink it. When I have time, I boil it all the way down to syrup and put in the fridge to eat on pancakes later.
We get about a gallon a day, sometimes more, which makes about 1/3-1/2 cup of syrup.
Oliver and I went on a tour of a farm called "Just Maple" with my friend Lisa.
The guide spent an hour with us showing us how they collect their sap and make syrup. They have quite the set up and taught us a lot!
These two maple leaves show the difference between the Red Maple (left) and the Sugar Maple Leaf (right). Sugar Maples are 40:1 sugar ratio. You can tap any maple tree and even birch, but they are a higher ratio and require even more boiling. Also, she said without reverse osmosis or some special process, the birch have a yucky bitter taste. Sugar maples for the best experience!
She showed us a slice of a HUGE sugar maple they had cut up after it fell. It was interesting, because you could see from this very old tree where it had been tapped through the years.
The kids are showing the plastic tubing the farm uses to collect the sap from tree to tree into a large collection, which they pick up daily.
This is their evaporation set up. They stock the fire in this oven. Once it's hot, they have to time to fill the oven every 90 seconds! It's that hot! When it's really cooking, she said they can make a gallon of syrup in one hour.
This is a smaller set up. They have farms that employ 30 employees and crank out 100 times as much.
Lisa even toured another sugaring farm called "Ben's sugarshack" that uses machines to (not just collect dripping sap) but suck the sap from the tree. They also have a high tech evaporator that uses a huge vat of oil every hour to heat it!
This evaporator is high tech though compared to my pan on the stove. :)
After evaporating, the syrup is carefully filtered and bottled or made into candy.
One of the three collection bins they had.
Once a day, her daughter takes the tractor into the woods and pumps the sap into a large container to take to the evaporator.
Ollie is demonstrating for you how much syrup we got from nearly 2 gallons of maple sap.
I heard about Heritage Farm Pancake House an hour north of us that does tours and a pancake breakfast on Friday and Saturday mornings during sugaring season. I plan to take Ollie on Friday to check it out. If the sap is still flowing on April 10th, maybe we could take Janet and Dan there too!
For some great videos, visit the Heritage Farm Pancake House Facebook page. They have some great videos showing how to make maple candy, videos of their farm, collecting and boiling sap, etc.
