Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Making Maple Syrup

Yep. That's why many cringe at the thought of tapping walnuts...perceived loss of timber revenue. We just tapped em' short, close to the ground, below the log.

However I have a customer who has a sawmill, and he sawed the flooring for his home from logs cut out of his grandfather's sugarbush from years ago. The tap holes show up very plain in the flooring, and it's beautiful. He had lumber left over, and it fetched a premium price for flooring in a couple of other homes as well.

I suppose it's all in the eye of the beholder.

We recognize the possibility, and take great pains to try and separate the walnut from the maple. Separate storage tanks for the sap, dedicated filters, etc. We do boil in the same stainless pans, but they are cleaned thoroughly in between batches.

Nevertheless, we tell everyone who wants maple syrup that it was processed in a facility that also processed walnut syrup, and with it being a tree nut....better safe than sorry.

I don't know about the tannins, but the walnut contains a pectin that makes filtering a huge pain. We're getting there with it, one more reduction and filtering and we will bottle in 1.7 oz bottles. Just enough for folks to get a taste of the stuff.

Wow. As a kid, our family boiled down maple sap. Between our family farms, we had about a 1000 acres in Northern Wisconsin. One of my uncles did most of the collecting with the family's team of Belgian horses and a big sled. My dad did our 80 farm (about 40 acres of woodland) with our Farmall H. I can remember my mother and my aunts boiling day and night.

I have no idea how much sap we collected, and I have no idea how much syrup we produced. It was enough for our family, my dad's seven brother's families, and some extended family.

It was all done on a big wood stove in copper tubs. The stove sure burned a lot of wood because it was in an uninsulated 3-sided run-in barn, when it was still getting well below freezing at night.

I'm surprised anybody can still afford to make maple syrup.

Ken you should be dictating this on MP3s so you can write a memoir someday. These memories will be lost unless you old timers record it so we can pass it along to future generations. Those sound like simple, hard working but enjoyable days to me.

Behold.....Black Walnut syrup! Bottled it in 1.7 oz nip bottles, still have to label and dip in wax. It's good...sweet, yet it has a hint of the walnut bitterness?? I know that sounds contradictory, but it's the best I can explain it.

Spark are you selling any of it or is it private stock?

At this point in time, we aren't sure what we're going to do with it. Ended up with 29 bottles, which (depending on the formula you use), equates out to either 90 or 104 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup.

And we thought maple was a lot of work.

Yer opinion Sparkie, which do you like better, the maple or the walnut? Will you make the walnut again?

Curious, how do you know when you have reduced the sap far enough? You got a gizmo that you use to test it that tells you?

I prefer the maple, but the walnut is very good also. As far as making it again, it depends on the feedback we get. If it goes over well, we probably will.

Yes, the density is checked using a syrup hydrometer that is calibrated for the correct sugar content, which is 66 brix. Somewhere in this thread there's a photo that shows it in use....not sure where it's at.

Here:

Never had real maple syrup before bet it's good!

It's actually very healthy as well.

Please tell me it's just the lighting, and that's not a hint of green I see at the bottom of the bottle.

Reflections off of post - I hope LOL

Shhhh...

I'm in awe. That is beautiful. That's all I can say.

Tony, outstanding. This is still one of my favorite threads.

So, how much clean up after all that boiling, and sap moving?

Lots of cleanup, Al. All of the stainless pans that were exposed to the fire get all the soot removed via fine sandpaper, while the "sap" side gets a thorough scrubbing with a scotchbrite pad and hot water.

The storage tanks are all scrubbed down inside with hot water and bleach, then rinsed thoroughly. Same with the sap buckets themselves, all 60 of them. The spiles, or taps, get cleaned with a spile brush, them more boiling water and bleach.

The stainless finish containers, like the filter tank, receive no heavy scrubbing as scratches tend to accumulate debris...just lots of hot water. All of the transfer hoses as well as the pump get broken down, and cleaned with bleach and hot water....more heavy duty rinsing. Approx 30 plastic buckets of all sizes are cleaned and disinfected. Then everything gets dried thoroughly, and put away in the sugarhouse for next year.

We're all finished with cleanup, and the gear is all stowed. Good feeling.

Our season is in full gear right now, freezing nights, 40-ish days. Cannot keep up with only 10 trees!

Have a new Bayou Cooker and 64qt pot that can double for brewing to boil it down.

One thing that has helped is tossing out the ice from the bags before boiling. It takes the 40:1 ratio down to ~30:1. I loose some sugar in removing the ice, but it saves a lot of energy on the tail end of my process so it is worth some loss.

I have about 1 gallon produced so far, and another 2 gallon batch in the works. Just having trouble with wind and the cooker where the wind keeps pushing the flame out making it very inefficient. I have no shelter in which to keep the wind off. So it sits on the porch waiting for a quieter day to boil down.

I really wish an RO system was a bit more affordable to get me closer to syrup with little energy input.

The RO's are nice, and I wouldn't rule a homebuilt system out of the picture for us sometime in the future, but I still struggle with the concept....I know studies have indicated that there is no difference in taste between RO'd syrup and traditional, but right now our niche is "heirloom" syrup, produced the way our grandfathers did it.

I understand the draw, however. Anything that cuts the boiling time is a welcome addition to most sugarhouses.

I think we may dabble in tubing collection next year, and if I can make it work to my satisfaction, then a major upgrade may be in the works. May have to revisit the RO question in a couple years.

Congrats on the production LS! Love the ice trick, we do that also....a poor man's RO! Can you set up a windbreak around the burners to improve efficiency?

The maple sap collecting season was short around here - barely 3 weeks long. I picked up my syrup on Saturday. They said that they don't have enough to fill the existing pre-orders.

Man Sparky your description of the clean up reminded me of how complicated it was for me ta get ready for bowhuntin. The night before openin day I'd have ta dig all my clothes out from behind the seat of the truck. Take em all in to the dryer and put in a couple of fabric softner sheets ta take out the mold. Scroung around and find a clean pair of underwear. Get both my broadheads out and knock off the clay from last yrs misses and run em through the knife sharpner on the can opener and still be in bed by 1:30 or 2. Just a good thing I was dedicated.

Bob-O
You should have been a writer- the picture u paint with your words is , well makes me LMBO





Pat

Indiana's large-scale producers, the ones who count on the income from maple products, were hurt this year. The season was about three weeks short, due to frigid temps in Feb.

Bob-O, I admire your steadfast devotion and attention to detail. That kind of dedication is hard to come by.

You got it it right guys. I can picture Bob walking around his place saying,"Now where do I keep that clean pair of underwear!"