Making Maple Syrup by Noel Perrin

Author:Noel Perrin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
Published: 1980-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

It’s Nearly Ready

The process works like this. You keep boiling until you almost have an apron. Or if you did get a hydrometer, until you can put it in the test cup, fill the cup with hot syrup, and it will float up almost to the red line that marks official syrup density. Then you do one of two things. If your pan has a faucet, you draw off as much as you dare without letting the bottom go dry. In practice that means not letting the depth get below a quarter of an inch in the shallowest spot. Then you add several gallons of fresh sap, stoke up your fire, and go on in the house with your quart of almost-syrup.

If your pan doesn’t have a faucet, you get someone to help you lift it bodily off the fire. Then you tip the entire contents into a cookpot, replenish the pan before you put it back on the fire, and go on into the house. Once there, you finish off the syrup on the kitchen stove, as in System One. Be careful not to let it get too thick. If it’s even slightly too thick, it will spend the next three months precipitating rock-sugar crystals on the bottom of the container. The crystals have no maple flavor — they are pure sugar — and they are hard enough to break teeth. You will probably wind up throwing them out.

If you have a hydrometer, it’s easy to stop just when you get to the red line. If you’re relying on aproning or on temperature, your best bet is to stop when the syrup is still slightly thin. It’s not legal to sell thin syrup, but it’s perfectly legal to use it yourself or to give it as a present — and it tastes just as good. Some people claim it spoils more readily than syrup at perfect saturated density, and this may be true. But provided you hot-pack carefully, it will nevertheless keep for many months, or even a year.

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