First of all, we want to be clear. Even though this incredibly long stretch of
cold weather has extended our season and will give us our biggest syrup haul ever, we
still want spring to arrive NOW just as much as anyone else in Minnesota! We’re willing to call it quits
on sap collection. We’re ready for warmer weather. Any day now, thanks! |
| Sap Delivery & Preheating Mechanism |
But in the meantime, when the world gives us sap, we make
syrup! No matter how cold it gets
inside, it’s toasty warm inside the Sugar Shack. To keep the sap at a rolling boil, we add wood
to the stove every 10-12 minutes. We use a mix of oak and maple. Nope, not for a
smoky flavor, but because our oak is drier and contains more BTUs so it burns hotter, while the maple is
wetter and burns longer. This keeps the
fire burning at 750 to 800 degrees Fahrenheit, as measured by the thermometer
mounted on our smokestack. The
thermometer has an ominous name; “burn indicator” is stamped on the
bottom of it. Boil,
baby boil… syrup inferno! No, no
infernos, please – that’s why we have a panel of cement board mounted between the stove
and the back wall, and a fire extinguisher mounted prominently near the door of
our Sugar Shack. Safety first, syrup
second!
To make sure the syrup keeps boiling steadily as we add more
sap to the pan, we use copper tubing to carry the sap from our 55 gallon drums
into the pan. The tubing has a valve like our house’s plumbing, where we can adjust the speed of the sap
flow. And the copper wraps around the
smokestack twice, so that the sap is already preheated a bit by the time it
goes streaming into the pan. During the
height of the boil, we try to adjust the flow to keep about 3 inches of boiling
liquid in the pan for optimal evaporation.
With this setup, we can boil the excess water off 50 gallons of sap in about 6 hours. Or about fifty rounds of adding wood to the fire. Not that we're counting.
