It Worked!

I know I tend to get excited about any of our new experiences here on our homestead.   But I am so happy to share our latest adventure with you.   Remember when we were doing this a few weeks ago?

Yes, that's Joel collecting the sap from one of our mature black walnut trees.....in our very exclusive sap buckets(yeah, the milk jugs).    We kept checking the jugs everyday for a few weeks until there was hardly any sap to collect as the "run" was over.   Every day we would pour the contents of each jug into the largest pot I had, my canner that we used for canning our veggies last fall.   And when that pot was full we used whatever vessels we could put our hands on to store the lovely clear stuff in our second refrigerator down in the pavilion.

Our icy, sleety, bitter cold weather seems to have disappeared and we've been blessed with some beautiful Spring-like days for almost a week.   Yesterday Joel and I decided we had a great window of opportunity to cook down all that sap as it was an especially sunny and warm day.   We figured that even if our attempt at making syrup didn't turn out, at least we would have learned something from the whole experience.

First, we set up our trusty camp stove and connected it to a propane tank out under the pavilion roof.  Then we brought out all the sap we had collected and poured about 2" into each of 2 pots.   From all I had read about making syrup, it's simply a matter of boiling off the 90%+ water in the sap and bringing the remaining liquid up to 7 degrees above boiling temp to create syrup.   Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

We each brought out some reading material to help pass the time while we watched and waited and tended to the sap.   When the level of sap would get low I'd add some more from our stash and watch it come up to a boil again.   And so it went for the entire afternoon.  With each hour the liquid in the pots slowly began to change from a clear liquid to a light gold to a darker shade by the end of the afternoon.

In between checking on the boiling sap we both did a few chores and all in all we had a very productive day spent outside.  We even got my smallest garden cleaned up and fully mulched.   Whew!   One down, two to go.   But back to the boiling sap.....

Each time enough water had evaporated from the pot, the whole mixture would boil up furiously and we had to quickly add more sap to the pot.   And so it went until the last drop of sap was finally added to the boiling pots and cooked down to a light amber color.  Now it was time to take the remaining liquid into the house to finish off the syrup.

The book I read said to have a pot of boiling water going on the stove next to the cooking sap.  Altitude and barometric pressure can both change the boiling point of water, and we needed to know what our boiling point of water was so we could add 7 to that number.   Now, why, you ask, did we need to do that?   Well, our boiling point was 206 degrees yesterday.   And when you add 7 to that number you get 213 degrees.   For us, that day, 213 degrees was the temp we were shooting for on our candy thermometer that hung in our syrup.   Once the sap reached that temperature and had very small bubbles instead of large ones, we were done!

And this is what that looked like.   How about that?    It was as simple as that.   I had already prepared some Ball jars and lids by scrubbing them in hot soapy water and poured the syrup thru a fine meshed sieve right into the waiting jars.  

We all did a taste test to see what our newest concoction tasted like and it was a unanimous decision that we three loved it!   The syrup has a rich color, is about the same consistency as high quality syrup I've purchased from Vermont in those adorable tins, and has a slightly nutty flavor.   I think we have a winner.  

Once again I am amazed at how hard our great-grandparents must have worked to provide food for their families, and without all our modern amenities to assist them, too.  Here is the tally of what it took for us to create our syrup:
1. About 2-1/2 weeks of collecting sap daily, sometimes twice a day.
2. We collected about 6 gallons of the clear liquid over that time frame.
3. Approximately 6 hours of cooking was required to boil down that liquid into syrup.
4. We netted a grand total of.........wait for it...........2 cups of liquid gold.  

Yes, 2 cups.   Now imagine how much more sap we would have had to collect and how much longer it would have taken to cook it down to produce enough syrup to be one of the sweeteners folks in the 1800's may have needed.   That's a lot of work for just one product in a list of many that we consume over the course of a year.   No wonder they went to bed as soon as the sun went down!

Still glad we did it,
Debbie