Sugar-Bush-It-Old-School: Steps Five, Six, and Seven

Step five:
Every day that it's warm enough for the sap to run, tromp to your trees and pour each jug's overflowing contents into five gallon collecting buckets.  Look at the trunk, wet with wasted sap, and feel guilty that you don't bother doing this more than once a day.  I have no pictures, but I bet you can figure out how to tromp, pour, carry, and feel guilty.

Step six:
Boil down sap all day long on your fancy outdoor gas burner.  See? Fancy.




Also fancy are the storage buckets salvaged from a local bakery.  If you can read the markered sides, you'll  know that our dried beans and brown rice now lie unprotected in the basement until I scrub the frosting and filling from the newest batch of buckets.





When the sap darkens in color and begins to smell like syrup, bring it indoors and finish it off on your stovetop.   (The next two pictures are from last year, but it looks and smells and tastes just like that this year.)



The syrup needs to be boiled until it reaches 7.1 degrees above the boiling point of water.  Too much more than that, and the sugar density will be too high (which only means that sugar crystals will form in storage).  A lower temperature than that results in a lower sugar density and risk of spoilage in storage.  When it's nearly ready, the syrup will rise up, boiling with shiny foam, and not lower unless you stir it constantly, and it will "sheet" off of your utensil rather than drip.

One of these days, I'm going to spring on a hydrometer, but that might make me a real sugar-busher, so I'll make do with hillbilly spoons for now.

Strain it through wool or layers of finely meshed cloth into canning jars.

Admire it.  The first batch of the season is always lovely and honeyed and light.