Well, I've successfully finished my second batch of maple syrup. This time we began with roughly ten gallons of sap, and finished with almost five cups of syrup. Unfortunately I managed to trip into the stove and slop almost a cup of nearly-finished syrup onto the burner. Boo!I honestly wasn't terribly upset, as I'm used to being clumsy when doing things like this, and so I finished with just over four cups of sap. I actually reprocessed the stuff from the other day to get it slightly thicker. It wasn't too thin to be used, but it was slightly thinner than I liked, so the extra from
today's batch went to round out the first batch after reprocessing it.I know we have another 3-4 gallons waiting up at Roheryn, and another warm up early next week so I should be able to get at least one more batch hopefully before the trees bud out!
Looks FAB. Isn't it exciting to finish off a batch. I think I'll get batch 2 finished off today and the trees will start flowing again tomorrow. It got COLD yesterday so they stopped after collecting 6 gallons of sap in the morning. Looks like the weather will be perfect for at least the next 10 days though, so I'm hoping for 2x as much as we got last year!
ReplyDelete@Chiot's RunThanks! It's very exciting. I can't believe how much better the stuff I've made tastes than store-bought maple syrup!
ReplyDeleteThat looks fun! Too bad I have all oak trees!
ReplyDelete@Green Zebra Market GardenDaedre - You should try it! It's not too late to try this year, either. There are tons of maples in the Lansing area. I'm sure you could ask around and see if anyone has a maple or two for you to tap, and most of the local feed mills sell spiles. I'm tapping out in Webberville, so my trees aren't far from you. :)
ReplyDeleteIt seems like there are some maple trees out by the sheep research center on hagadorn road, maybe. I bet if you asked around the ag department or various research farms and I'm sure you could find a sugar maple somewhere!