My Cooking Setup

If you click the picture to the left, you'll go to an album with a few pictures (and even a video) of my sap cooking setup. I built this thing using some of the concepts of a "rocket stove". The main cooker is made of dry stacked fire brick. On top of that, directly in the "chimney" is a steam table pan with a hole in the bottom. Sitting on top of that is another steam table pan. The idea is that the hot gases are forced through the gap between the two pans, allowing for more complete combustion, more efficient use of fuel, and not as much smoke.

The idea worked... sort of. The rocket stove was invented with small branches in mind as a fuel source. I was using nice oak firewood. The oak firewood doesn't have as much surface area as a bunch of small branches would, making it harder to get a good ripping fire going.

I attempted to solve this problem in two ways. First, I had a small fan constantly blowing air under the fire. This was generally sufficient to keep the fire burning well. When it wasn't, I had to resort to the turbo boost. If you look at a larger version of the picture above, you'll see a shop vac hose aimed right at the air intake area of the fire. That hose is connected to the shop vac on the blow side. When the fire wasn't burning hot enough, I hit the switch. It got going in short order.

After it got dark, we took some pictures and video of turbo mode. The pictures with the sparks flying everywhere shows what happens when the turbo mode is engaged after the sap pan has been removed.

By the way, we got about 7 pints of finished syrup last weekend. Not bad for 16 hours of work. Oh, wait...

The First Tap...

The lady at the sugaring supply story said it was a mistake, but I couldn't resist.

This year, Sarah, the kids, and I are tapping 5 trees or so at our house and our neighbors' houses.We headed up to Chardon today to buy some spiles, and, since it was 45 degrees today, I just had to tap one of the trees. It started running immediately.

My father is going to get us some old galvanized buckets (and food-safe plastic liners to go with them), but for the time being I used the first thing that I found that seemed like it might work - a Simply Orange orange juice bottle. It filled up in about two hours. We might even do a mini boil on the stove tonight just to see what it is going to taste like.

It will be cold again by the end of the week, but I should be able to get a few days of sap.

And then, it was over...

The sugaring season is over for my parents. The trees stopped have stopped producing, even though it has seemed like weather for good runs, and the buckets have been taken down.

The final take for this season was over 5 gallons (or, more impressively, 40 pints) from 17 taps. There was a wide variance of colors, as this picture shows, but it all tastes great.

Between now and next season, we hope to figure out how to keep more heat in the evaporator, and less in the stack. We're using a simple barrel stove setup, as shown in a previous post. After the first boiling session, which seems rather inefficient, my dad installed a damper and a baffle which helped quite a bit. However, the stove pipe goes through two clay thimbles as it exits the shack, and the outer one still gets way too hot to touch.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

back to sugaring

We had a good break for a few days here . The weather says cold nights and warm days for awhile so we will most likely boil again tomorrow Sunday . We did a count and found 16 gallons on the shelf and people have taken some so we are half way to our goal of 30 gallons . We are still having trouble getting the evaporator working good . The book says it should talk off 40 to 45 gallons of sap per hour but we are doing around half of that. with the snow down we can now get to better wood (hemlock slabs ) so that might help. Going to get a little sawing done before we gather in the afternoon. Jim

Mid-March Sugaring in Cornish

No sap for a couple of days here . we went around and saved some sap but mostly dumped buckets on the ground . Moths and yellow sap. We have kept no record this year but have around 14 gallons, some lighter and some dark . The dark still has a good flavor and the lighter stuff is not fancy . Silas is firing up as we speak to get rid of what sap we have and so we can start fresh next time . We also not sure how many taps but we think around 150 . here are a few pics of our crew .
Jim

Boiling in Corinth, VT

We have had a good stretch of weather and boiled for a the last four days. Our pan is too small for 80 taps but that's what we have. It's nice to have tubing. Not much trouble gathering. Here is a picture of the evaporator. As you can see we have a lot of company for the boiling. Not much conversation though. I have a 120 gallon tank that stores sap to trickle in. It's fairly efficient for a 40" x 60" inch pan.
Gabe

March Madness

My dad is expecting some strong runs over the next week. Unfortunately, I'll be in Dallas all week and won't be able to pitch in.

I participated in a different Northeast Ohio spring activity this morning - fly fishing for steelhead in the Chagrin river. I didn't catch a thing, but it was a great way to spend a couple hours.

It seems to me that spending hours upon hours boiling down slightly sweet tree sap and standing in a river when it 25 degrees out are both a bit more "mad" than watching a lot of basketball games on TV.