We tapped our maple trees on February 1st this year, a full month earlier than we did last year. It’s been a mild winter, obviously. The sap started pouring out rather fast then the temperatures did dip and it stopped for a few days. It’s back to running, however; and the temperatures are predicted to perfect for the rest of this week, in the 20s at night and in the 40s during the day.
We don’t harvest gallons upon gallons of sap each day, so we don’t need a giant evaporated to boil the sap down. I boil down sap almost every night on the stove top. As the sap finishes boiling, I keep a close eye on it so that it doesn’t boil down into sugar instead of sap (I’ve done that accidently more than once). This bit of time spent watching a pot boil gives me time to delve into my stack of books from the library – review coming soon.
It feels good to be doing a little harvesting from the land and preserving food again. It might be earlier in the year than usual, but I’ll make syrup when the sap runs. What’s happening in your garden and kitchen these days?
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Hey there! I’m curious, do you water bath your finished syrup for storage? Or do you just stick a hot lid on a hot jar, filled with hot syrup, and let it “pop” closed as it cools? I am going to tap my trees this year, too…but I have to wait a few more weeks.
I don’t water bath it. My understanding is that it’s shelf stable as long as you heat the syrup to seven degrees above boiling. So yeah hot lid on a hot jar (open kettle canning).
What do you use to catch the syrup? And if you’re boiling this stuff down every night, what’s happening to your kitchen ceiling re:the water evaporation? I keep reading about how bad it is for the ceiling to boil syrup in the house.
I use old vinegar bottles to collect the sap the tree. It works like a dream! I cook the syrup down under my stove hood and leave the fan on. The steam goes out through there as far as I can tell. We haven’t had any problems with ceiling paint, etc. Still I’m not doing 10 gallons a day or anything. I’m doing 3 gallons tops, if I had tons of sap flowing from many trees, I’d do it outside.
Kathie,
We are getting ready to tap some box elder trees (relative of maple) in the neighborhood. What is the rule of thumb on timing for tapping? Here it gets below freezing every night and above freezing every day.
Ideal temperatures are in the 20s at night and in the 40s during the day. So you should be good in the range you mentioned, it runs faster when it reaches that 40 degree mark during the day.
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