The current status of weather has my maple tree filling 3-4 gallons of sap each day. How much a task is it to render it down enough to make syrup for pancakes? Is this something I can do relatively easily or do I need to buy a bunch of equipment and prepare to bend over for the gas company? I know what the internet says...maybe someone here knows a better way.
If I fill our huge canner/pressure cooker with 8-10 gallon, I get about a pint of syrup. It takes HOURS to boil it down. Our daughter has hundreds of trees tapped in Michigan. They take it all to a guy that cooks down everyone's sap. Troy
Well, I got hours to kill. I will be R&R control arm bushiings and coil springs on the buick saturday morning, and hopefully attacking some rust at the lace line of the roof. My thought is to fill my 5 gallon steel pot over the fire pit and just keep feeding the fire and feeding the sap until it sticks to the spoon. Do I sound like I'm on the right path?
Yes sir. Also, I did the same thing. I just kept pouring all my sap into the canner as it cooked down. You should see changes in the characteristics of the boil when it changes to syrup.
In new Hampshire and Vermont many maple syrup makers use downfall wood for the cooking fires. The cost of gas or kerosene is astronomical for farmers who make syrup.
I do have a surplus of downed trees that will be used to feed the fire. I was thinking that the gas bill would take a hit if I tried it that way.
I did it years ago in a big iron cauldron over a fire, never again. The better stuff you can buy at the store tasted better than what I made
To it somewhat proper you'll need to measure the sugar content of the raw sap and boil the water out of it. 40:1 is what they teach you in grade school but it's not accurate. Any commercial sugar maker will fire with oil and will use RO machines to pull water out before boiling. Its slashes the boil time. Boiling raw sap will take forever and thr fire needs to be consistent to produce good syrup. Don't do it indoors unless you have a hood. The steam is unreal. You'll fill your house up fast.. Pictured below is a real deal rig..18x6 i believe. The rig is not up to temp yet.
The maple trees near me are apperntly flowing very well this year. I don’t know the exact ratio but like other guys say it takes a crapload of sap to make syrup. My guess is you will do it once. Make sure you got a sugar maple and not one of those invasive Norway maples. I can tell the difference by the bark. They are totally different. It won’t kill you if you use a Norway it just won’t taste good. I got that info from a local maple guy I talked to a few years ago,
Hopefully you've got lots of propane to kill too, because boiling off tens of gallon of sap is going to take a lot of propane. Unless you're gonna just feed a wood fire and drink for 2 days straight.
I hate to boast, but, my best investment EVER was to purchase 3 acres at the back of our property. After the purchase, I sold several black walnut trees and used those funds and some, to clean and line an old natural gas well that was on that property. We have what I call "pre-paid" natural gas and now costs nothing for us to cook down the sap, heat our house and water, cook or grill and dry clothes. Troy
Ken, these wells are very common in our area. My well is 840' deep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trenton_Gas_Field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_gas_boom I've read that Ball corp moved to Muncie Indiana because of the abundance of gas needed to melt the glass. In that area there is a city named Gas City. It was a big thing to industry in the area when the gas field was found.
I'm just jealous I don't have free energy. But, I do have a 350 foot well with pristine quality water.
As an aside on natural gas wells. I am an insurance agent and several years back, we had a guy that was a water well driller. He was sinking a deep well on a livestock farm and struck a pocket of natural gas. He could hear the gas coming up the well and knew what was about to happen. He jumped to the side just as the gas surfaced and exploded into flames, melting the back half of his well drilling rig off. We lost over $400,000 that day....the insured was made whole however, which is what this game is all about.
Sorry to highjack the thread!!! Our well was installed in '07 and have zero leaks at our well head or regulator. Fortunately, our gas has a natural hydrogen sulfide odor and obvious when the gas is on and not burning. I feel very safe with installation. Our well driller is a very hard working man and does great work. He is born and raised in the area, retired armed services where he was helicopter maintenance, a local county councilman, Christmas Tree farmer. I helped him for half a day, they use some enormous pipe wrenches and work hard all day long, I was wore out! Here is what the well head looks like. It is maybe 130 yards from the house. He extracted every pieces of 820 ft of old pipe from the 1948 installation of the original well. It broke multiple times during the pull. He had some special tools and made some grabber tools to get every old piece out. For the new well, there is an outer casing cemented it in place in a large drilled hole. Then a smaller dia. inner sleeve cemented into the outer casing for the well head to attach. We also had a moisture tank added so I can bleed that off from time to time. From the well head we buried a drainage tile 130 yards to the house, then through it we ran orange gas line that was connected to pipe at each end. We also put the locating wire along with the orange tubing. Then we have a regulator at the house. We run around 23 psi I learned low pressure in not a bad thing on our well. We too have a water well. Same guy updated our draw pump to a submersible. We have have had an above ground pool for the last 25 years. I have put the hose into the pool and fill it from empty to full and never fear of running out of water. So, all the gas is pre-paid, so for our heating costs we just have electricity that runs ~240-260 a month. We are also on a septic so no monthly sewage bill. Our property taxes are 1100 a year for our 10 acres, home, detached garage and dairy barn. My next big purchase when I hit the lottery will be a continual use generator ran with our gas. Microturbine? Fuel Cell? I'm leaning toward the Fuel Cell but the costs are still very high and a ROI of almost never. But at that time we would be off grid! Does anyone have Fuel Cell experience? Also, here is the original reason we bought the 3 acres in the backyard. We now have river access. Troy
