Get Your Boil On!

20 gallons. What?! Yup that's how much sap we've collected from our trees so far. With all that sap sitting in buckets on our screened porch we decided it was time to start boiling. First things first Marc ordered a stand alone propane burner.

We needed something that would hold his 10 gallon lobster pot that we could use outside. Thankfully we found this contraption online and were able to order it while we were collecting our first gallons of sap. I'm not sure what I expected when Marc brought the first batch of sap to the house, but the sap from the tree is clear and thin as water. If you dip your finger into it there is a very slight sweet flavor to it, this part I expected since you have to boil it down to get the syrup.

The picture above is the propane burner lit and ready to boil. You can see in the lobster pot on the right there is a thermometer. The idea is to boil the sap until it reaches 219F - apparently this is the temperature when you know you have boiled off enough water and have actually turned the sap to syrup. We do most of our boiling outside on our screened porch and then bring it inside to finish on the stove top. Here is Violet helping Marc boil. 

Once inside we use a regular cooking pot and a candy thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature. It's funny to think you have to start out in a 10 gallon lobster pot and finish off in a normal cooking pot. The whole boiling process is pretty interesting when you think about how much you have to boil the sap to make the syrup.

  

After our first boil we were left with this much syrup and boy was it tasty! We also realized that we've got quite a bit of boiling to do if we are going to make enough syrup to last us until next season. After letting our first batch of syrup settle for a day we realized that we needed to filter it to remove the sand from it. I'm not exactly sure what the "sand" is but we'll go with dirt/tree bits.

After a visit to the local feed and supply store we had a polyester filter. The picture below shows the syrup flowing through the filter and into a larger mason jar. This is actually our second boil. We probably got about the same amount as we did in our first boil. Marc says he is still working on his boiling technique. He's trying to figure out just how much to boil the sap to get the right syrup consistency. The great thing about syrup is that if you don't get it quite right the first time you can always put it back in the pan and boil it again.

From here on out we'll have to keep boiling and then we'll have to find containers to store our syrup in. Hopefully we can get at least a gallon from this season.