Last winter, we really didn’t have weather conducive to collecting sap. Actually, I think we may have, but I missed it. We had an unseasonably warm spell, either followed or preceded (I don’t recall which) by a bitter cold snap that lasted a couple of weeks… and then it was Spring and too late. So, no sap or syrup last year.
This year I was prepared for that. Despite the fact that it was only January, I was watching the weather forecast like a hawk. Ideally, for collecting maple sap you want temperatures below freezing at night and well above freezing during the day. I think this expands the tree during the day, sucking water from the roots, and contracts it at night, forcing water back into the roots. When I saw a week of temperatures forecast that looked good for sap running, I got out there and tapped the two silver maples along with one of the two smaller red maple trees in our side yard. Over the could have days immediately following, I was rewarded with a couple gallons of sap, which I boiled down into a not-quite-syrup concentrate that filled a couple of pint canning jars. That reduced the volume of the sap and kept it from spoiling. Those jars have been sitting in the fridge. Then we had a run of bitter cold weather for a week or so, followed by warm days that stayed above freezing at night. There was maybe a quart or so of sap sitting in the bags, not enough to bother collecting as it froze solid.
The last couple of days, though, have been good. Yesterday I had my four-year-old grandson help me empty the bags into the stock pot I’ve been using to boil the sap off, resulting in another pint of concentrate. This morning I got up to find a couple more gallons of sap in the collection bags. I have one more tree to tap, and I’ll do that today after filling a five gallon bucket with he collected sap. It looks like this may be a good year for maple syrup.
A bit before lunch time today I decided to go ahead and finish off the concentrate I’d already collected and boiled down. I started with three pint canning jars full of what I figured was probably roughly half of what’s required to be called “maple syrup”, which is 66% sugar concentration. I was close to correct. I put it in a pan on the stove and boiled it until the temperature of the boiling liquid hit 221 F, testing it a couple of times along the way. Finally the hydrometer read 66% – it was done! I poured it into the freshly washed jars and ended up with about 20 ounces or so, a bit less than half of the concentrated solution I started with, and a small fraction of what I’d roughly estimate to be about 4-5 gallons of sap that went into the initial boil.
Yes, I’m tempted to make waffles for lunch…