Maple Sugaring, Part 1

Our good friends, the Lohman clan, decided to tap their maple trees this year. In mid-Februay Todd and I headed out to their home. In the fall Karen and Bob walked through the woods in the back of their property and marked their sugar maples. We tapped 12 of the trees and have been gathering sap since.

3 Saturdays ago Todd and I went back out for our first boil. We had 7 gallons of sap that first week and boiled it down outside on a wood fire. It did take on a smoke flavor from the fire. The 7 gallons yielded 16oz of syrup in that first run.

2 Saturdays ago the weather was too cold and there was not enough sap to boil. Last Saturday was warm enough but there was too much rain to boil outside. I took 10 gallons of sap home with the intention of boiling it outside on my wood burning stove outside. It was too late on Saturday to set everything up so I just put a 5-gallon pot on the stove to cook down. The weather took a cold turn on Sunday so I decided to do all the work on the stove.

My large cookpot holds 5 gallons and is 9" deep. Once it gets up to temperature on my stove the big pot boils water off at a rate of 1" per hour. I boiled it down in the big pot until there was about 2" left. I then transferred it to a 1-gallon pot to finish it. The 1-gallon pot is 4" deep and boils down at a rate of 1" in 45 minutes. Once the 1-gallon pot got down to 1" the sap has become syrup.