Last month we tapped two maple trees in our front yard. We had high hopes, but the weather didn’t cooperate and the sap flowed slowly.
Today we finally had enough sap, and time, to boil!
Forty minutes into the process.
We started with 20 cups of sap. It took about four hours to boil it down to the 219° “aproning” stage.
Checking for doneness. The book says it should slide off the spatula in a smooth sheet, or "apron" when it's done. Not there yet.
Done! I think. Maybe a tiny bit over done.
It goes very quickly from done to candy to burnt. If you don’t watch it closely at the end you can ruin the whole thing. We all watched it together. :-) I think in was supposed to be scooping the foam off the top, but I missed that part so I hope it doesn’t matter too much!
We have maple syrup!
It’s pretty thick and viscous and cloudy. I filtered the sap before boiling and filtered the syrup before putting it into the bar, so I’m not sure if the cloudiness is sediment that will settle overnight or if it’s the foam I didn’t scoop off. Either way, it tastes delicious!
160 oz. of sap and four hours = 4 oz. of deliciousness and a fun family project!
it looks like if you stirred it up you’d have maple cream! yum…..
wow, thats super awesome. What a fun project!
Amazing follow through! We were going to do that once. Collected sap, started boiling it and Dave got called away on a fire call. Luckily I remembered to shut it off before it burnt down the house. Well, the deck first since it was outside on the grill. :D