The next morning, more than half had been boiled away! According to the book, we should boil down most of the sap until it becomes syrup-y and the correct temperature, of course! Our family needed to be gone from home for the day, so the pot just sat for the day off the stove. One more night over low heat and WE HAVE SYRUP!!
Pancakes were certainly on the menu for breakfast, and the maple syrup tasted fantastic! Even better than I imagined. There was just one problem. There are six people in our family and enough syrup for just TWO!
It takes about 40 gallons of sap to get about one gallon of syrup - so with just ONE gallon of sap, we got about TWO ounces of syrup! I guess we wait for more sap!!! Please HURRY!
That is so awesome! We've got some maple trees in our yard, too.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering how the sap run was going with all this strange weather we've been having!
I'm with you on the free heat.
Roxanne - the taps were only $1.79 each (I know I could have found them cheaper) and I am collecting in water jugs. You could use milk jugs if you clean them out really well. The book says that ideally, the overnight temp should drop below freezing and the daytime temp about 20 degrees above the overnight temp. Today we collected 5 qts of sap, I'm getting ready to boil it down now! You should SO give this a try!
ReplyDeleteWhen we first moved here, our across the street neighbor (who has since moved) tapped all the trees on our street, boiled it down and then we each got a share of the syrup.
ReplyDeleteThat was fun--No work, yet a quart in return!
Our snow is almost all gone, and it's not even officially spring yet! We've never had it look like spring when the calendar told us it was spring before!