How To Process Maple Sap Into Syrup

Who doesn't love maple syrup? If you caught our maple tapping adventure then you've probably been wondering how you make the sap into syrup. Well here is the next half of our adventure! 

The sap starts degrading as soon as it leaves the tree so you want to keep it cold and proccess it as soon as possible.

The first step is to strain the sap, we used the same method as when we make cheese. A fine grain colander with a clean pillow slip (never used before). This way worked really well for us. 

Outside:

The Plan: 

This method you have to keep a fire going beneath your pan until the sap has reduced into syrup (water has boiled out of the sap). Keep and eye on the sap and make sure no bugs or ash fall in, the ash will make the syrup taste smoky. This method should take between 5 and 12 hours. 

What Really Happened:

The first round we built a fire under the grate of our cowboy grill (by the way this method is makes AMAZING burgers- and smore's). We used cinder blocks to hold up the grill part. Now would probably be a good time to mention I am lousy and starting/keeping a fire going. No seriously I'm horrible at it. Mr. Cottage had mercy on me and started it for me at sunrise- yes it was cold out, very very cold. Thank goodness for hot coffee.

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Because I am lousy with fires it took a VERY long time to get it hot enough to start reducing the syrup. Once my dear, sweet, wonderful, amazing, twin sister who can actually keep a fire going took over around noon then it started actually redusuing. We pulled it off around 11 PM when Mr. Cottage got home- but not before we cooked burgers out there and made smore's with our home made marshmallows.

The next day when I jumped out of bed to start it again, I was startled by how white it was outside my window. It snowed. And was still snowing. So we moved on to method 2...

Result: 

This batch has the most amazing flavor of citrus, smoke and maple! Next time we will use smaller pans so that it will go faster instead of working with 6 gallons at a time. 

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Inside:

The Plan:

Method to is the same basic idea- but without the worry of ash and bugs falling in. Using roaster pans that devide the liqued evenly to make it go faster over high heat on the stove. We read that this could leave a sticky residue on cabinets around the sap so keep an eye on your cabinets. Basically you boil the sap until it becomes amber and syrup like.

What Really Happened:

We used one of our big roasting pans (it held 2 gallons of sap at a time), sat it on top of the stove and turned both the front and back eye on high. For the record this way was WAY faster. In the picture below you can see that it is starting to change colors.

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We babysat the syrup/sap (thank goodness for the window seat in the kitchen) until it was finished. Strained it through a pillow case again, poured it into jars and stored it in the fridge.

Result:

This batch didn't have the citrus/smoke flavor probably because we could see and didn't leave ash in it, however it still tastes AMAZING. It's some of the best tasting syrup I've ever had.