The Boiling

Here's the thing about maple sap: it is much much sweeter than all other tree saps (I think), but it is still 1-2% sugar. There's some information out there that maple trees in the middle of fields without any competition can get up to 4% sugar.

Maple syrup is 66% sugar minimum.

So typically, the ratio is around 50 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. Depending on the sugar content, this may be higher or lower. On a small scale, someone sets up a pan of sap over a fire, sits around and drinks alcohol while adding sap every so often and at the end, you might get a gallon or so of syrup. As soon as you move up in scale, then you move to continuous flow syrup production, where the sap is flowing in all the time and syrup is drawn off every so often.

We have the syrup production set up in the milkhouse of our barn. I found out recently that not everyone know what a milkhouse is, my experiences are not universal! This farm used to be a dairy, so the barn was set up for milking cows and the milkhouse is an attached room or building with cinderblock/stone whitewashed walls, concrete floor and a drain. In the milking days, this is where the milk would be stored in tanks for easy chilling until the milk truck comes to pick it up. It is easy to clean, away from the bacteria of the cows and easy to keep birds and other pests out of. (sidenote: do not ever drink raw milk unless you are the farmer or really really really trust the sanitation practices of the farmer (don't do this, raw milk farmers are fucking wackos) because cows have so much bacteria and poop pretty much on their udders. Pasteurization is a miraculous process to prevent illnesses)

To start, we have the sap run into 250 gallon food safe, cleaned totes with a filter. Once they are full, they get brought from the mountain and placed for gravity feeding into the milkhouse. The setup is beautiful, professional and normal. haha

( lots of words and photos )