This seemed as if it's the most likely forum for this. Not exactly smoking maple sap but you are cooking it.......sort of. My brother and I (mostly my bro) have a very small sugaring operation every spring. Attached a pic or two of the arch that he jerry rigged. That coffee can balanced by the chimney holds about a gallon of sap. There is a nail hole neat the bottom that "meters" a stream of sap as it boils away. Work isn't work when you're havin' fun.
Yep. I've got 25 trees tapped already and may be tapping a few more. Waiting for the first run. Trying to get the lighter stuff.
That’s some of last year’s syrup and that’s the evaporator I made out of a 55 gallon drum and wood stove kit.
Yeah, My bro will end up tapping maybe 20 trees. Not quite ready to tap out in VT. just yet. He typically gets about 12 gallons or so. Karen and I get up to "help" on the weekends. We get it close on the arch and sugar off on the stove inside.
Nice set up there! My bros is made out of an old fuel oil tank and the pan was made for him by a local smith.
I don't end up with much, a few gallons. I don't have sugar maples to tap. I just tap other species of maple. I finish mine on a turkey fryer.
Yeah, I have a friend who's using an old oil tank turned on it's side. He has a line ending at what used to be his grandparent's house with 110-150 taps.
We've talked about tapping some of the big birch trees and adding that in for a gallon or two to see how that tastes.
Waiting here. Day temps not getting over freezing lately. Two weeks should be about right. Only tap 4 or 5 trees. Cook on stove in house. I have a nice wood stove just for this and I was going to get a stainless baffled evap pan, but I didn't get a shack built. Maybe next year. I'll still get a few gallons boiled off though. I found pre-heating the sap on a back burner makes a huge difference for final boil. I need to get better filter material to remove the miter. Syrup was good last year.
Does anyone know if pre-filtering works better before or after boiling? Looking for least sticky mess.
The only "prefiltering" we do is pick out the bugs, moths, and leafy bits by hand from the buckets. That second dipper you see in my pics is a purpose made sugaring filter for taking off the scum and any other bits in the pan.....typically sawdust as we are bucking up the softwood logs while boiling. Some folk would frown on this approach. We look at it all as "sauce for the goose". The final product tastes great. Lighter early (pancake syrup) and darker later (baked bean syrup).
Jon, I'm sure a "real" sugaring outfits pre filter the sap extensively. We just keep skimming off the sap as we boil it. Sugaring is going to be a sticky proposition but it doesn't have to be a mess.
Cousin taps a few in hardwick. Screen before boil and felt type bags after boil to catch nider. ok few by VT standards 4-5 thousand trees
I don't mind the sugar sand. When I give it away to friends and relatives, they look at it kinda funny.
I use a felt like cone filter lined with paper prefilters when the syrup is finished. I think this takes care of the sugar sand or the majority of it. There’s nothing wrong with sugar sand in the syrup. Some people like it. But I like to get the color variations and I think if you leave sugar sand in the syrup, the syrup is dark no matter what. I think that’s what I read anyway.