For the past two weeks we have been collecting maple sap for the big boil down this weekend.We had identified two trees that were big enough and tapped them March 16th. Everyday we would go check the buckets and dump the sap into large containers that we stored in the freezer. I had concerns with the sap going bad if I didn't store it properly and freezing was an option that came up repeatedly, so I tried it!
Over the two weeks we collected a total 12 gallons of sap. Our friend Jennifer and her family found us a turkey fryer burner to use. Another friend lent us a pot. Saturday morning we started boiling. It took us 8 hours of evaporation to finally have all the sap combined in one pot! At this point we stopped for the night.This morning I went back out at 10:30am and got it boiling again. By 2:30pm we took it off the burner and bottled it.
After sitting looking at the finished product for a while, I realized I wasn't happy and set about filtering the syrup. After some taste testing we also realized that although it tasted like maple syrup, it was "off" a bit. We figured it probably wasn't completely finished. By this time it is 8:30 at night and I have decided to try and boil again in the morning to get that perfect maple syrup taste.It has been a great first experience and will definitely do it again next year. Hopefully with more trees and just one day of cooking it down.
Thank you for sharing your experience on cooking the maple syrup. I was planning on doing the same but had no idea how to start, but now I can easily start by following the process mentioned here!
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