Maine Maple Syrup
On the homestead
A few more trees were tapped this year by Jordan compared to our last maple season. We had a harvest of three 8oz jars and two 4oz jars. It doesn’t seem like much, but this was a lot of work and a lot of sap!
We start by keeping track of the maple trees on our land and mark them with a ribbon before the winter season when they still have their leaves and are much easier to identify. Even when it is winter and the trees are bare, they can still be identified by their bark and branch pattern.
You can see a couple more buckets of sap here deeper in the woods. The gallon jug with some sap is in the snow.
Jordan collects the sap into a clean gallon jug. We keep the jugs in the refrigerator until we are ready to boil on the weekend. This year, we boiled about 3 gallons of sap each weekend.
We boil outside over a gas burner in a large pan. When most of the water has evaporated, we move to a smaller pot inside where it’s a little easier to keep track of the temperature and sugar content to know when we are done. Check out our quick little
Video clip here
... showing the whole process from sap collection to the end product.
This new Brix hydrometer has made this year’s syrup even better. The syrup didn’t crystallize in the jar because we had the correct sugar content. When the red line of the hydrometer floats above the syrup level, then we have gotten the correct sugar density.
Hot-fresh-homemade Maine maple syrup.
When the nights are freezing, but the days are warm in the early days of Spring, Jordan will be out there again collecting gallons of sap to be boiled down to maple syrup. If you never saw his 2020 maple syrup project, check it out today. It details his start-up supplies and goals. Jordan’s Maple Syrup Project 2020
Thank you for visiting our blog, leave us a comment below... what is your favorite food to have with maple syrup?
