twoodrum
03-07-2010, 10:03 PM
Well gang.....
I aint a virgin anymore........started boiling at 7 this morning......cooked off 45 gallon of maple sap we tapped from 22 trees in a day and a half. They're runnin good we're yesterday...we got a gallon every 3 hours. Today...they were a little slower.....but 22 taps still got us 18 gallon....probably more but we're usin milk jugs and some of them got full and ran over before we got back too tend the jugs.
I've made sorghum syrup bout all my life but never tried the maple.....maple is a lot easier but alot more juice too boil down.
We used a 15 gallon cast iron round bottom kettle set up in a ring from our apple butter kettle.......kept a good hot fire runnin all day and a good rolling boil......but every time we added juice, she cooled down and took a while too get rollin again. I'm sure our evaporater pan would have been a lot faster but would have taken alot more juice just too fire it up.
Oh well......we all had great fun.......and we ended up with 1 gallon and 1 pint of really nice looking and great tasting syrup. Color is light.
I finished it by eye using my experience with lasses but I also threw a thermometer in it and made sure it was 7* over the boiling point of water......my eye and the 7* came in at exactly the same point.....so we pulled the kettle and jarred it up.......
dont hafta clean the kettle......we licked it clean!!!!! Mmmmmmmmmm.
We've all decided that next year......we're gonna tube up 3 seperate sugar bush's and try too tap up about 150 trees.....then fire up the 3X8 at our cane mill and roll some real steam!.
I aint a virgin anymore........started boiling at 7 this morning......cooked off 45 gallon of maple sap we tapped from 22 trees in a day and a half. They're runnin good we're yesterday...we got a gallon every 3 hours. Today...they were a little slower.....but 22 taps still got us 18 gallon....probably more but we're usin milk jugs and some of them got full and ran over before we got back too tend the jugs.
I've made sorghum syrup bout all my life but never tried the maple.....maple is a lot easier but alot more juice too boil down.
We used a 15 gallon cast iron round bottom kettle set up in a ring from our apple butter kettle.......kept a good hot fire runnin all day and a good rolling boil......but every time we added juice, she cooled down and took a while too get rollin again. I'm sure our evaporater pan would have been a lot faster but would have taken alot more juice just too fire it up.
Oh well......we all had great fun.......and we ended up with 1 gallon and 1 pint of really nice looking and great tasting syrup. Color is light.
I finished it by eye using my experience with lasses but I also threw a thermometer in it and made sure it was 7* over the boiling point of water......my eye and the 7* came in at exactly the same point.....so we pulled the kettle and jarred it up.......
dont hafta clean the kettle......we licked it clean!!!!! Mmmmmmmmmm.
We've all decided that next year......we're gonna tube up 3 seperate sugar bush's and try too tap up about 150 trees.....then fire up the 3X8 at our cane mill and roll some real steam!.