I have been having some thoughts about making maple syrup. The idea has always somewhat intrigued me. I haven’t been too interested until I started reading this book on Food Systems. The idea is to produce as much as possible by yourself or people close to you, so you know exactly what you are eating. Anyway, I wanted to share a few things I have learned in ym readings so far.
The first is not something I learned about maple syrup in particular, but about all things, start off slow. I could go out and buy a nice evaporator for $1000, but what if I find it too difficult to do? What if it is too difficult? If any of these happen, I would have to sell the evaporator at a loss. Instead, it pays to start small. So, I’ve decided to just do a trial run next spring to see where we stand. The most important part will be finding out how much sap we can harvest. My brother has a whole stand of sugar maples, but I don’t know how much they will produce. Since the evaporator size would be based on the amount of sap, it would be good to know how much I am dealing with.
The second thing is about the evaporator. I lerned that there are two basic parts, the arch and the pan. The arch is where the fuel is burned and the pan is where the sap is boiled. The arch can be wood, oil, or gas fired. I don’t really want to pay for fuel, so we’ll be going with a wood fired arch. The arch size is determined by the pan size. The pan is the area where the sap is boiled and can constitute just a flat pan, or more elaborate flue pans. A pan can evaporate about 1 gallon per sq ft per hour. Since 30-40 gallons of sap is required for 1 gallon of maple syrup, you don’t want to be there all day. So, most people go for anywhere between 4-8 square feet. This means that it would take 10 hours of burning to get 1 gallon on a 4 sq ft pan or 5 hours on an 8 sq ft pan. I’m thinking 8 sq ft will be what is needed, but we’ll verify when the sap starts running. This necessitates an evaporator that can hold an 8 ft pan.
So, what am I going to do? I think I am going to build a poor man’s evaporator at first. This is a concrete block and firebrick evaporator that can be placed on the ground. I am not going to mortar it so I can take it apart and sell the components if I want to. This way, I can make it any size I need in order to manage the amount of sap I have. I have some double walled stove pipe I can use for the chimney and some steel plate for the “door.” This way, I can get a good fire going and make most of the heat boil the sap. Also, if I don’t like it, then I can just dismantle the items and be done with it. I am also taking the same approach with the pans. I will be using some stainless steel buffet pans. These are cheap and work well. Also, if things don’t work out, I can sell the pans and only be out a little bit of money. The only thing left to do now is to wait for spring!