Clean clean clean that maple machine!
When it comes to boiling maple, one thing that always needs to be dealt with is the sugar sand. It’s basically minerals that come out of the sap in the process of boiling.
As you can see in the picture, the sands build up on the pans and if left can easily lead to burning and a burnt flavour in the syrup. So in between batches we disassemble and scrub scrub scrub. Once the pans are clean and ready to go we fire up with fresh sap. The pans are cleaned multiple times during the season. It’s a lot of work!
So far we’ve got 5 batches and batch 6 is not far off. With the sugar content of the sap being higher on average this year it’s made for more syrup with less sap and less boiling to get to it. That’s a bonus for sure!
You can see in one of the pictures how the colour and grade change as the season progresses. Our first batch was light and the next couple got darker and darker. This has to do with the natural maple bacteria present in the sap that increases as the buds on the trees slowly form. In any case it’s all delicious and we’re very happy with the quality of the syrup we’ve made so far this season!
There’s still a lot of snow in the bush here and some more snow in the short term forecast. It’s good syrupin’ weather for now so we’re not complaining.
More to come in the next few weeks!
ENJOY!
