Update: April 11 (18 days after initial tapping)
The days immediately following our Easter-away weekend were busy - very busy. The huge amount of sap produced while we were away needed to be processed, and the trees themselves had a couple of subsequent huge days on April 8 and 9, producing in excess of 40 more litres each day. The collection buckets were nearly maxed out, the secondary collection bins were nearing the brim, and the drip-drip-dripping continued on.
I won't say we boiled around the clock, but pretty much we organized our free time around getting the initial 10:1 boiling step done on as many litres as possible. Chris' high-capacity turkey fryer burner and pot were turning out to be a godsend - without it, we would not have been able to achieve the boiling throughput needed to outpace the accumulation of sap. This also meant, of course, repeated trips to refill the propane tanks. Serious business, this sap boiling!
High-speed Boiling
We eventually fell into a good rhythm, collecting sap and processing secondary tubs through the outdoor boiler, then bringing the reduced sap inside for a minor final boil-down before filtering and cold-storing in the fridge. The good rhythm continued... until it didn't.
We miscalculated on one outdoor reduction of a batch of Silver Maple syrup, and when we next checked on that batch, late one rainy night, we encountered not the usual hissing and steam, but flames and acrid smoke. We had allowed the sap to boil away completely, and without a source of coolant to keep things in check, the pot temperature soared. For one brief moment, there was likely a tasty layer of maple syrup at the bottom of that pot, then perhaps a few more moments of maple taffy. Then, as temperatures skyrocketed, the candied syrup began to catch fire, coating the sides of the pot in a sticky burnt crust.
We quickly lifted the smoking pot off the burner and cast it into a nearby bank of snow, where it hissed and popped, then cut the propane on the burner. Surveying the damage, it became clear that the temperature of the pot's bottom had climbed to greater than 600 degrees celcius. We knew this because 600 degrees C is the melting point of Aluminum - and we could see globs of Aluminum on the burner and the ground below. Most of the bottom of the pot was gone - all that was left was thin flakey layers of carbonized stuff.
We were a bit distraught about this, since we had just lost twenty litres of Silver Maple sap, and more importantly, we had just wrecked my friend Chris' gear. With our boiling capacity now reduced to stovetop-only, we decided to call it quits for the night. We'd figure out how to replace the fryer and gets things back on track the next day.
Back in business
Fortunately, Jenn didn't have to work the next day, and she spent a good chunk of time researching for a fryer replacement. She actually managed to find the exact same model. Additionally, I had had a close look at the older burner bottom, and realized that with a bit of heat and pressure, I could probably clean off the melted aluminum and return it to working order. By the end of the day, we had a fresh batch of sap steaming away in a gleaming new aluminum pot. Rev the factory back to full capacity!
A growing inventory
Meanwhile, on the indoor front, we started to make our first batch of actual maple syrup. We had up to this point in time only been doing the initial 10:1 reduction, in the interest of saving space for sap storage. This storage took place in our fridge, and it was now overflowing with bottles of reduced sap. This stuff was actually quite tasty - a sort of "maple juice", if you will. But that was not our ultimate goal. It was time to try our hand at actual syrup.
Categorized sap
We knew that syrup creation was the finicky-iest part of the whole process. One must carefully heat and reduce a batch of sap until it reaches precisely 220F (104.4C). Beyond this, and one will start to get sugar crystal formation. Not reaching this point means you don't get maple syrup. So, watchfulness and responsiveness were in order.
Niter sedimentation
The intermediate step of sitting in the fridge after 10:1 reduction had a useful side effect. A layer of niter (sugar sand) settled down into the bottom of each sap bottle, and we could achieve a large amount of filtering simply by carefully avoiding the pour-out of the last few millilitres of fluid. We then filtered the remainder (in this case, of our oldest batch of 10:1 Silver Sap reduction) into a stovetop pot, which we then carefully stirred and watched. For temperature monitoring, we used a digital candy thermometer that I had purchased a few days before.
Telltale frothiness
I wasn't completely sure what to expect, but the combination of watching for frothiness and the candy thermometer's readout helped. I did briefly go over 220F a couple of times after about an hours' worth of boiling, and we cut the heat and let the pot stand. It looked syrupy and certainly tasted syrupy - kind of a sweet buttery quality, it had. And it didn't seem to have any untoward chunks as I stirred it. Not bad.
Pouring our first batch of syrup
After pouring into a syrup bottle, though, I could see that there were some impurities - not many, but they were there. We didn't know if it was the beginning of crystallization or a bit of unfiltered sediment. It was a good first attempt though. More importantly, though, we stood back and looked at what had been achieved: There it was, our very first bottle of backyard-produced honest-to-goodness maple syrup. Who knew?
Stable until nearing completion
Our first batch of sugar maple syrup
