glad to hear from you sprky and thanks for the update.
My 6th grade son and his neighbor buddy got into maple syrup this year. They had a little friendly competition. The weather has been a very long cold spring after a very short winter. We had the pails out early this year and had a little warmup and some flow of sap and then it got very spotty as we had cold days and cold nights. WE quit early as it didn't seem worth it.
WE tapped 30 trees, no fancy vacuum or connected tubing. Just old fashioned empty them twice a day on nice days and once a day on cold days
We used to do this on a commercial gas stove in the basement but this year we helped him build a very crude cement block outdoor wood fired cubicle with makeshift smokestack. This way he got to learn how to split and stack wood, tend to a fire, and all that goes with it. We did buy a large stainless steel pan square pan with tube and ball valve to make it easy to pour off his day's work and start again the next time. Mostly we boiled on Saturdays.
It was great fun for him and good to learn how to be responsible for his 'maple tree' route every day.
We also invested in proper filtering equipment and built a little pvc stand to hold the filters. Finishing the sap is very hard to do on wood heat so we would always do that on the kitchen stove. The clarity with proper filtering is really impressive this year!
He has about 40 pints of very nice maple syrup of varying degrees of color and taste as season changes. He is looking forward to selling door to door but COVID stopped that.
I'd love to learn more about coffee infusion (sounds complicated but sounds good?) and I'm sure there must be some magic in making 'old fashioned' maple syrup. What makes it different? I thought we were doing it the old fashioned way already...
I'm sure you will do well on your test, best wishes on that though!
