Update: April 12 (19 days after initial tapping)
Today was the big test - a celebratory brunch with family and friends. Time for folks to give our backyard maple syrup a proper try - poured onto pancakes!
In addition to our brunch plans, the production line continued along unabated. I developed a label, which I started affixing to the formal bottles we were using to package most of the syrup. The final product looks fairly legit, if I do say so.
Official Bottles and Labels
The forecast was for a beautiful, fairly warm day, so we elected to hold our celebratory brunch outside, in the backyard. What better way to celebrate than to eat underneath the very trees that supplied us with the day's sweet and sugary goodness?
courtesy JInnes_3
We also set up our production apparatus entirely outside, so everyone could see all of the steps we had been following these past few weeks. We arranged things so that a batch of syrup would be reduced and ready just as we were sitting down to eat. That way, folks could ladel fresh, hot maple syrup directly onto their pancakes.
courtesy JInnes_3
courtesy JInnes_3
courtesy JInnes_3
courtesy JInnes_3
courtesy JInnes_3
courtesy JInnes_3
Well, that's that. The brunch went off quite successfully. Everyone seemed to enjoy the syrup - or at the very least had no problem with it. It seemed like people had a slight preference for the lighter-colored Silver Maple syrup. Perhaps the novelty of being able to sample syrup from a particular species of tree was the attraction.
I won't post a formal volume tally this time - suffice it to say that we have easily exceeded three hundred (300!) litres, and that is saying enough. Our current total production of syrup sits at around 7.5 litres, and it looks like we are on track for a possible total of nine, perhaps ten full litres of maple syrup. If that number holds, it will mean that we have trees with good sugar content, because that is better than the standard 40:1 ratio for sap to syrup reduction.
One final update to come soon. Thanks for reading along.
