Slow evaporation?

[John c]

My question is, can anyone tell me if it is ok to slowly evaporate sap on an indoors wood stove? I typically go through 5gal of water a day on the wood stove and I've been thinking about making a small batch this way. Is there any issues other than the fact it will take 3 days to make a half gallon?
Thanks!

[wcproctor]

Your walls and ceiling will be sticky.

[500592]

That's what my cousin was doin and I think it worked pretty well

[waysidemaple]

That's how my grandma did it. In the kitchen on our old coal cook stove. We didn't have dry wall in there just pine boards. Worked for her for years until I started tapping a few more trees

[Wardner in Tewksbury]

My question is, can anyone tell me if it is ok to slowly evaporate sap on an indoors wood stove? ?
Thanks!

I've been doing that for the past four weeks in a four gallon SS bucket. Wish I had a copper kettle with a flat bottom. My highest percentage has been 21% because I remove some half processed sap to make oatmeal daily or a bit of candy on the stove. I am also adding daily.

Temperature of the sap probably never goes over 170 degrees. There is no visible water vapor in the room or condensation anywhere, including mirrors.

I can also take the bucket out to the barn shop where I fire the pot belly stove higher. The stove has a removable pot lid and the SS bucket sits over fire. It will boil the sap gently.

I suggest that you empty the pot every three or four days and boil it down on your stove so that you start again with fresh sap. If it is allowed to languish on your stove below 140 degrees, it's likely to develop some off flavors due to bacteria.

[John c]

Thanks for the replys! As for my walls getting sticky. it isn't a problem since it's not really boiling, it's more like simmering and since our little parlor stove is the only source of heat we EVER use we always have a 5 gallon pot of water on it anyway and all I'm trying to do is reduce the water in the sap so it will be a faster way to finish it on the weekend. So far so good, I've managed to reduce 40 gallons down to about 5 gallons since Sunday night. Now I'll only be in my natural gas powered sugar house for about 3 hours on Saturday morning instead of all weekend! Yes, I live in an area where natural gas is a utility and that's what I use, it's very clean and hardly noticeable on my bill!
Works beautiful for me, but I'm just needing to save a bit of time right now!
Thanks guys,

John.

[mike z]

If I remember correctly it seems a couple years back someone was doing this, (real slow like on the wood stove), and made some very, very light syrup.

[happy thoughts]

My question is, can anyone tell me if it is ok to slowly evaporate sap on an indoors wood stove? I typically go through 5gal of water a day on the wood stove and I've been thinking about making a small batch this way. Is there any issues other than the fact it will take 3 days to make a half gallon?
Thanks!

I used to do it all the time in flat stainless steel pans on top of our woodstove but I'd never take it all the way to syrup. I used it mostly to reduce the volume of fresh sap. By morning on a good night I'd wake up to a fourth of what we started with even though it never got near the boiling point.

I was never bothered by too much moisture. It was more like humidification as nothing can dry out a house like a wood stove. Instead of keeping a pot of water on the stove, we kept sap. But once it cooked 8-10 hours I'd bring it to a full boil on the range for at least 10 minutes to make sure all bacteria, mold etc. was killed. Then I'd store it in glass in the fridge until I had enough for a final boil to syrup.

I never made light syrup from it but we were only tapping reds at the time. It still tasted great. At the time a good year was a gallon or less of finished syrup.

I no longer have a wood stove but when I have too much sap to cold store or handle on a camp stove, I sometimes fill the crockpot with sap. turn it on high and leave the lid off. It will usually reduce by half in about 8-10 hours. I end up with reduced and preheated sap to fill the pans for the camp stove.

[John c]

Yeah, I'm using a large stainless buffet pan and it's working very well for what it is! Considering I've reduced 40 gallons down to about 5 gallons it does look very light in color so far! I'm very interested to see the end result.
I am very certain that the temp has been 170 or above since it's our only source of heat.
My guess is that I will have about 55-60 gallons reduced down to about 3-4 gallons by Saturday morning then I'll finish it on the gas stove in the sugar shack!