Sugaring: Amateur Style
(Page 3 of 6)
January/February 1975
By Bruce N. Coulter
Maple sap is 97% water and 3% minerals in solution. Boding reduces the juice's water content and brings out its color and flavor. Since it takes 30—60 (the average is around 40) gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, you have a lot of evaporating to do . . . and you'll need matching amounts of fuel, patience, vigilance and time.
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A hint: Don't boil your sap in the house unless you have a fan over the stove. Otherwise the clouds of steam that billow up will peel the wallpaper and soften the walls. Better do the job outdoors . . . under cover if you can, because you'll have wind, rain and snow to contend with. At least a windbreak is helpful.
For a fireplace ("arch" is the proper sugaring term) an outdoor grill will do, or you can lay up a structure of bricks or cement blocks. I've made one of fieldstone and banked it with sand and dirt. The dimensions, of course, depend on the size of the evaporating equipment you use. At any rate, be sure your arch will produce a good strong draft . . . rig up a stack if you can. I've used a section of draintile for this purpose. (A plan for homemade evaporator and arch appears in MOTHER NO. 14.-MOTHER.)
The evaporating process is the heart and soul of the sugaring operation and your close attention must be devoted to maintaining a strong, steady fire. The big operators use wood, gas or oil for fuel. You'll probably bum wood—well seasoned hardwood such as oak or maple is best—and you must be prepared to use a lot of it. Perhaps you can arrange to feed your arch with scrap lumber and slab wood from a sawmill.
And how about the evaporator itself? The Indians boiled sap by dropping hot stones in the liquid, which was held in a trough gouged out of a log. When the white man came along,
the process was made more efficient by the use of an iron kettle set over the fire on stones or suspended from a tripod or tree branch. A further improvement was the flat pan, which provided a larger evaporating area and thus speeded up the business. Over the years the commercial producers have added still more new wrinkles . . . but until very recently my own containers were much like those the pioneers used.
My first evaporator was a deep copper washtub . . . and, novice that I was, I began by filling the container nearly to the brim. It seemed that my supply of wood was going to be exhausted before the first wisps of steam began to rise from the surface. That taught me to keep the level of the sap low (about two inches deep). As evaporation proceeds, the depth is maintained by adding liquid in small quantities so as not to slow the boiling.
The copper vat was succeeded by a 20-gallon washtub, a slight improvement. Then, when I had the opportunity to make use of an abandoned sugarbush, I had a couple of pans made of heavy-gauge tin: one 18" X 36", one 18" square . . . and both 6" deep.
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