The arctic freeze moved on and the sap is dripping again. The snow softened and we can prepare an outdoor fridge to store the sap in.
We prepare a spot in a shaded area; with warming daytime temperatures, we don’t want the sun melting our fridge.
The tree buckets had some sap in them so we emptied them through a strainer
into the big pot that will be stored in the fridge.
We left the chunks of ice in the small tree buckets to keep future sap cold.
We placed the pot in the spot that we prepared in the snow,
and proceeded to cover it up with snow
like this.
The sap is now kept nice and cold and once the pot is more or less full, it will be boiled down.
Soon.
In the meantime, we will crawl back into our igloo 🙂
Stay tuned for our next ‘operation maple syrup’ update.
Yay! You should get lots of sap in the next couple of days. Good luck 👍
Thank you!
Isn’t progress wonderful. Good luck with the weather.
It is! And thank you!
Back in business. 👍
Love seeing this process – thanks for sharing!
Yay, finally!
Yes 🙂
I had no idea there were so many steps to make maple syrup. Hopefully your outdoor fridge lasts. It’s supposed to go up to 17C this afternoon here in Toronto!
Haha, I know! It is slowly melting away. That’s okay though, it means that we can start boiling the sap!
quite informative, but I’m curious why the sap has to be kept cold?
It will spoil. It may also start fermenting, but that for another type of operation and may need a different kind of equipment.
could you use it right out of the tree? I’m thinking of some pancakes with fresh maple syrup…
No, not really. Out of the tree it’s basically water with a hint of sweetness. It has to be boiled down to a syrup.
OK. I guess I just have to be patient and wait for you to go through all the steps! Hopefully it ends with the two of you having a pancake breakfast 🙂
I can see why you would think that. Pine tree sap is so thick and sticky, if maple syrup came out like this it would have so much easier! And, yes, there may be pancakes in our future 🙂
👍
How interesting! Do you do anything else with your maple syrup besides put it on pancakes? I just used maple syrup to make teriyaki sauce tonight.
What a coincidence! We use it mostly for cooking with the occasional pancake or crepes treat. If there is still snow on the ground when we boil it down, a fun thing to do is to sprinkle some of the hot syrup on a clean patch of snow; it immediately turns into a delicious taffy-like candy. We had a bit of a heatwave today so I don’t think we’ll get to do that this year 🙂