Maple Season 2011 Is Finished!

 Here's our 'sugar house' as we call it....

It has progressed over the years from an open

flame surrounded by cinder blocks and a

roasting pan to a reworked 250 gallon drum with 

an actual finishing pan on top!

You can see Toby, our trusty yellow lab watching. 

He likes to sit half way between the sugar house and 

our house, this way he can 'properly greet' anyone

who shows up in either location and

not miss ANY ACTION! 

A beautiful sight to behold.....



Ethan our nephew, had come over to help hang the
buckets and he came back to help empty them!
He had an eye opening experience as to all the work
 involved in making maple syrup!
He was a trooper and everyone had fun 
showing him the ropes! Yeah Ethan! 

 

 Emptying the hanging buckets of

sap into 5 gallon buckets....

 Carrying the full buckets back to the truck to pour

into the 30 gallon buckets.... (heavy & tiring work!)

 Toby, the ever ready dog!

He was in on most of the action too...

 Our 'evaporator' system!

You can see the white barrel to the left... the guys

lift & pour the sap into this container. The sap then

travels through the orange hose into the pan at a

slow drip or stream, depending on the heat &

quickness of evaporation!

It takes LOTS of wood, time and patience!!

Remember that it roughly takes 40 gallons of sap to

produce 1 gallon of maple syrup!

The guys take it 'off the fire' at about 220*F, strain

it back into the 5 gallon buckets and then bring up to

me. In the kitchen I pour it into my 'soup kettles'

and bring it back to temperature (220*) and then

pour it into the plastic storage containers!

Lots of work, but oh the sweet reward!

     This has also been shared at http://www.sustainableeats.com/
for "Simple Lives Thursday", April 14th edition!
Check out all the other wonderful ideas
shared on their website!

December Can Jam.... Blueberry Maple Syrup (dried fruit)

We have arrived at our 12th Can Jam challenge... DRIED FRUIT! At first my heart lurched, what the heck would one make to can with dried fruit?? But then immediately an idea popped into my head! We've always thought it would be fun to try to add a fruit flavor (using REAL fruit of course!) to our maple syrup!! So, this is my attempt at doing just that... I added dried blueberries to maple syrup, brought it back to temp. and then re-bottled it!!  To check out our family fun of making maple syrup click here, here,  here or here! This has been a learning process over the past 6-7 years!

                 From the tree....

        ... to the bottles!!

Now, from the bottle to the canning jars!

First lesson for me today? READ!! When I bought the 'dried blueberries' I was sooo excited! I checked out Ocean Spray and saw the display... my how they've expanded. I found blueberries & pomegranate... BIG SCORE, or so I thought!! I discovered the day before Thanksgiving ,when I read a little closer, that the package I bought was CRANBERRIES INFUSED WITH THE JUICE FROM POMEGRANATES!!  RRRRGHHH...  Oh well, still used them in the stuffing, not bad at all! THEN TODAY, I discovered that these 'blueberries' that I was so proud to have found are really the same thing... cranberries INFUSED with REAL BLUEBERRY JUICE!!

Since this is a total experiment on my part...  the only recipe is the one I've just made up!

1 pint of PURE maple syrup
1/2 cup of Ocean Spray BLUEBERRY infused cranberries (any type of dried fruit would work)

Pour the maple syrup into a small saucepan and add the dried berries. You could add a bit more if you'd like, and definitely more if you are using more then a pint of syrup!

Bring the maple syrup to a slow boil. Using a thermometer, be sure that you reach 219*. This shouldn't take too long. It is at this point that sap becomes syrup, so since it is syrup already... it really boils pretty quickly.

I let the syrup & berries kinda meld & rest for a short time (15-30 minutes) and then brought it back to 219* and poured it into my jelly jars!

Water bath for 15 minutes and now I can't wait to use it on home made pancakes with fresh home made sausage!! YUMMY!

(AFTER I was all finished, I decided to look up online to see if there were any recipes posted... sure enough, there is. AND... much to my delight, I did it similarly to those recipes! The ones I read used fresh or frozen fruits and had to cook the water content out of it... so, there is one very good reason to use dried fruit!)

Pete's 89 year old aunt has had fun with the challenges too! Each month I'd share with her the topic to be canned and she'd come up with her ideas a few recipes too give me... it's been fun! Her ideas was to use dried apricots with the syrup. I plan to try that next! I will add a picture and update when I get it done!

This has been a wonderful year long challenge! It has been a project that the whole family has been involved in... from brainstorming to sampling! THANKS TIGRESS for coming up with such an awesome project and for all the hours of work you did each month reading the blogs and posting the round ups! God Bless!

Maple Season

It is the sweetest time of year.... time for MAPLE SYRUP!! The buckets are all hung on the trees... I think we have 42 buckets hung and some of the biggest trees have two taps in them!

We've talked about using piping, but I think we really like the beauty of buckets! The sap isn't flowing the best that we've seen, but we have already bottled up 8 gallons of syrup! After straining the sap, it gets poured into the white 55 gallon drum and then is slowly fed into the pan to the evaporator. This is the longest part of the whole process!! Did you know it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup?! Yup, that is true...  that is why the price of pure maple syrup is sooo expensive in the stores!  Pete and the boys are the ones who pretty much handle this part of the job! They feed the wood fire and keep a watchful eye on the pan to make sure it is boiling! Then, when the syrup turns a golden color and boils just right (we can tell by looking now) it has hit that special temperature of 220* and is now offically syrup!!

It is time to take it off the fire and strain it once again and then bring it up to me!! I pour it into my kettles and bring it back to a boil at 220* on the kitchen stove. Then I pour it into the plastic bottles and seal them! Lots of work... lots of fun.... LOTS OF YUM! 

"Collecting..." Part 2

At this point Austin & Travis take the sap into the 'Sugar House' and pour it into the big white holding tank. Pete and the boys rigged up a way to have the sap continually dribble into the arch for boiling (an adjustable flow system). We/they have worked to add & upgrade our system over the past 4 years.


We started with an arch made of cinder blocks, a chimney and a couple of small boiling pans. That was fun but, oh sooo smokey! Since our first attempt we made adjustments until we arrived at the system that we have now.... an enclosed hut (sugar house) with an elevated holding tank, side walls that can be flapped up if it gets tooo warm, inside wood storage, a bench and even a steam escape in the new roof!! It has been quite the family project! I'm not sure what the next upgrades will be... but I bet there will be some!


To answer another question.... weather is a major factor because if the sap gets too warm it will ferment and the syrup will be very dark. The lighter the sap the better the grade and the higher the value! :) A couple of years ago we made maple sugar.... with some of the 'extra' maple syrup. It was similar in consistancy to brown sugar and I used it as such....
it was YUMMY!


Here is a picture of the 'firebox' inside the arch. (the arch is where the cooking happens) You can see the brick lining and grate which houses the fire! In one of the pictures above you can see Austin leaning over the arch making sure everything is ok. You'll see the metal frame over the brick... on top of this hole goes a huge pan (I think it is 2'X4') and the wood is added in through a door on the end of the arch. They use gasket rope (like is used around the doors of a woodstove) to seal the top opening when the pan is set on top. It keeps the heat & smoke in the arch. (the smoke now goes up the chimney instead of
filling the sugar house!) :)

Now.... starts the boiling, finishing and packaging process!

Collecting... Part 1

The sap has been running and the boys have started to collect!! Travis is removing one of the buckets and pours the sap into another bucket to carry to the jeep.


At this point the sap is poured into a large gathering tank (ok, you'd recognize it from Walmart as a trash container).
Austin is doing the pouring. He is filtering it to remove any larger debris such as bark from the tree or whatever...


The kids have used sap in the coffee maker to make their coffee in the morning! Since I don't drink coffee I just take their word on it being good! :) This year they have been using Travis's jeep to collect in!! I guess there is enough room... in years past we've used the family van keeping the back hatch up for easy access.




Here's a full barrel of sap..... isn't it beautiful! Nice and clear... Now to answer to one of the questions from the previous post, it takes about 33-40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup!! (The variance is the amount of sugar in the sap.) After making it... we can surely understand why it is sooo expensive to buy!

From here we head to the arch........

"And The Buckets Were Hung on the Trees With Great Care..."

'Tis the season... no, not for hanging stockings by the fireplace but for hanging buckets on Sugar Maple trees!! Pete and the boys hung 37 buckets and I'm not sure how many spiles (probably around 75) over the past two weekends! We have looked into running sap lines but personally, I like the look of buckets better!! Yes, it is more labor intensive as we have to go collecting and emptying all of the buckets.... but that is part of the fun! The sap has started to run and most likely we'll start the boiling process by next weekend...... all depending on the weather of course! I'll do my best at keeping you all updated as the process continues!


Do you know your maple sugar facts......
1) How many gallons of sap does it take to make 1 gallon of maple syrup?
2) How hot does the sap need to get in order to become syrup?
3) Why is it so weather dependent?