Monday, March 8, 2010

Last of the maple syrup

The last of the maple sap was boiled down Saturday.  My brother made an evaporator many years ago in shop class.  It is wood fired.  I went out to his place on Saturday afternoon and started the process of boiling down 100 gallons of sap.  The container held about 60 gallons at a time so we had to boil down about 50 gallon before all of the product had been dumped into the holding/boiling container.  It took about 8 hours to boil the material down to 9 gallons which would be finished on Sunday.  I ended up giving him a few gallons of the product for him to finish since he provided me with the taps and the boiling equipment.  I brought the remaining 6 gallons back to Glen Echo.  I boiled down the remaining material to about 2 gallons and then Chef Rob and staff finished it off to about 1 1/2 gallons or so.  We ended up with about 4.5 gallons of finished product this season.  Its my understanding that the Chef had a Pork Medallion special which had Glen Echo's homemade Maple Syrup as part of t glaze/sauce Saturday night.   

Water coolers, large white cooler and buckets full of sap waiting to be boiled.
The evaporator full of sap waiting for the heat to come up.  The container is about 2'wide, about 4' long by about 1' deep. 
The sap coming to boil.  Brother Delmar and a great view in the background.  
Getting near sunset with the sap boiling in the foreground.

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