Simply Living in the Northwoods: Sweet Sunday Syrup

Pete will be today's
guest blogger

With 2 sunny days we had a great sap run on 9 trees, producing 10 gallons of sap. Without more storage buckets it's time to cook it off. Of course it started to sleet and rain so the umbrella was deployed.

The cinder block fire pit.

Our simple fire pit and inexpensive pots do the job. It takes 35 to 40 parts of sap to produce 1 part of syrup so wood is cheap fuel to use.

Two filtering processes are used, the primary filter for the virgin sap out of the sap buckets, and the secondary felt filter for the almost
ready syrup.

The sap is boiling.

Pots are filled and put on the grill. The big pot is the primary boiler pot and the others are for progressively concentrated sap. Sap out of the tree looks and tastes like water, with the tiniest bit of sweetness to it. As the sap is rendered down it caramelizes and gets a syrup color. It takes a lot of energy to boil down the sap. Commercial producers boil it off in a vacuum so it boils at lower temperatures with less energy required.

Despite the weather
differences, this
looks familiar

Retail maple syrup commands $0.40 to $1 an ounce. Not up to par with illegal drug revenue wise, but a large operation either collecting sap and selling it, or rendering it to syrup with large scale equipment can fetch a decent profit.
Our 10 gallons of sap got us 2.5 pints of grade A syrup. That's 3.125% of the sap. Retail this is $20 to $40 gross revenue. We are not rich but home made maple syrup gifts will go along way with the families. Who wants some? The run will go for a few weeks so we should end up rich in syrup for the year.

Breaking Bad

In the last episodes of Breaking Bad they netted $1.3 million for a couple pounds of pure meth. Goes to the point of the underground economy doing so well. If only maple syrup had some rare trait to make it so valuable. We rest well knowing we do an honest cook off of legal food.