March 23rd, 2015

March Break weather in southern Ontario provided just the right balance of cold nights and warm days to persuade our sugar maple trees to give up their first runs of sap.

Making maple syrup is easy.  Follow these simple steps:

Drill hole in sugar maple tree, tap in spile, hang bucket, and add a lid.

Wait for just the right weather for sap to rise and fill the buckets.

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Convince school kids, family and friends to help collect said sap.

Boil sap in a pot, a pan or a cauldron.  This is our very cool evaporator.

When sap is 7 degrees F above the boiling point of water, it’s done.

Check density with a hydrotherm just to be sure. Maple syrup is 66% sugar.

Filter syrup to remove nitre, or sugar sand (yuck).

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Pour into bottles so it looks really pretty.

 

Pour out of bottle onto pancakes, waffles, ice cream (insert favourite food here _____), it tastes great!!