Well, finally caved in and made my first batch of syrup today - from both bushes and am somewhat surprised and happy with the results.

My home bush batch boiled down from 38l sap to an anticipated 1l...but there's still another guesstimated 300ml in the strainer. Colour is a nice clear red amber, which isn't that unusual, but for last 3 years or so the first batch has been pale gold. Still seems to taste of marshmallow though.

Then the virgin bush really surprised me. At just under 20l I was expecting to get 500ml if I was lucky. Well that first jar is now almost full and have a 250ml on standby. I may have overcooked it a little as I wasn't expecting to make anything but nearup today, so it caught me off guard! This batch is the more expected first-batch gold.

So overall pretty happy with this afternoon's work!

Oh btw Big Eddy, I took your advice with the filtering off. What I've basically done is made a couple of baine-maries. I filled saucepans approx 1/3 full of water, then put in a stainless steel bowl, then the jar of syrup with filtering rig atop it. Now they're both sitting atop the woodstove, syrup staying nice and toasty warm though of course the drips are painfully slow now :-)