2nd Boil - March 25th
March 25, 2015
My wife reminds me that every year I worry if the sap will come. I can only image how early man worried if Spring would return, or the sun rise again. Well better late than never. Over the past week I collected more than 80 gallons of sap. Having a busy weekend schedule, and an unscheduled sickness, I decided to do a mid-week boil to process some of the sap and make room to collect more.
Being a workday/school day, there wasn't anyone around to help except for my dog Coco, and Henry, my dog-in-law. The dogs didn't offer any advice as to how the process could be improved, and none of us drank any beer, so despite these traditions, the process went smoothly, and I was able to bottle over 1.5 gallons of syrup by early afternoon. I could have done more, but your are really limited by how much time you want to spend boiling, than by how much sap you have.
I got a better yield than the typical 40:1 benchmark, which may be in some part to discarding the frozen sap which is nearly all water, a technique the Native Americans used to process syrup. I also added some intermediate filtering to improve the clarity and flavor.
The sap is still flowing, and I am planning one last boil this weekend which will be the latest the season has gone for me. That is, if the sun comes up tomorrow.