Trial and Error

By now, we've had several short sap runs.  Each time, we tweak our equipment and get alittle more efficient.  We're gaining experience and getting advice from a couple of other sugarmakers in our area.  What a friendly group of people!  On the whole, sugarmakers love to talk to others about what they do and impart their wisdom to folks just starting out, like us.

We've adjusted our evaporator so that we can make the finished product in one less step.  Here's our "magic" temperature.

Now that we can get the smaller runs up to temperature in the evaporator, we'll have no trouble at all with the larger runs to come!

100% pure maple syrup from our evaporator!

We learned that if you touch the boiling, foaming sap with a teensy speck of butter, the foam will dissipate in seconds!

before touched with butter...

immediately after butter...

We had a successful attempt at making maple cream, though it was really hard work to do by hand. We all took turns stirring the thick, sticky syrup for a total of fifteen minutes, giving each family member a good upper body workout! (No wonder early-American women were so strong!)  It was really cool to watch it turn from that translucent amber color to an alabaster cream.

It tastes superb, and we've enjoyed sharing small samples with friends that stop by.  I also used it to develop a maple barbeque sauce recipe - YUM!!!

I am enjoying finding new uses for maple syrup and maple cream for my family, and eventually, I'll post recipes to share.

One night recently, I attempted to make "sugar on snow" with the kids.  You have to heat the syrup to 235 degrees, then let it cool down some before pouring it on the snow.

It should become a stretchy, taffy-consistency that you can pick up and chew.....



I didn't allow it to cool long enough and we ended up with..... maple snow cones. 
Still quite tasty! 
I'll have to try that one again, though!

What we couldn't eat, (in other words, once we were stuffed on snow cones!) we were able to boil the remainder back to syrup for our pancakes, so nothing was wasted.

All in all, we are having fun with this new adventure of ours.  Whether we make 5 gallons of syrup or 25 gallons, we're learning so much....together....

 And, that's what its all about!!



Actually, we've made about 8 gallons so far. At a rate of about 45 gal. sap to 1 gal. syrup, how much sap have we collected so far?.......







That's right!  About 360 gallons of sap from our trees!  God-willing we'll get a great run starting this Thursday when Central New York warms up again....for us, spring has definitely not sprung, yet. :-)