Sugar Shack, Sugar Sand and other Sundry Sugarbushing Tales

Okay, so we may have been overreaching with the "pancakes for breakfast" scenario. I went to bed at 12:30 am the last night I posted. I couldn't do anymore reducing on the kitchen stove as the thermometer wasn't taking a reading because the level of sap/syrup was too low. So, we decided to wait until we had more sap reduced down, to bring the level in the kettle on the stove up. The boys stayed up until 3:30 am.

Which meant that, yesterday, I had more reduced sap to work with and so I put a pot on to boil right when I got home from school.


There was a lot of particulates or sediment in the bottom of the storage kettle after I dumped into the pot we already had reduced down, which will become more important later in our little adventure. It looks like calcification which turns out to be be somewhat true in that it is calcium deposits.



It looks like it would be hard and crusty from looking at the picture below, but it actually is more powdery than it looks. It comes off really easily with water. When it is in the sap boiling, it looks like talcum powder might look in a kettle of water when you swirl it around. It's called sugar sand.....our new friend.



So, back to boiling the sap. As it reduced down to a lower concentration of water and a higher concentration of sugar, it started to look different.



If you have ever carmelized sugar, it looks the same. The bubbles break differently, it takes on a thicker, slower appearance.



And......we continue boiling.

Meanwhile, out in the sugar shack, we have a new set up. Our sugarbushing partner decided it was time to use his brew kettle. Bigger. Meaner. And it has a spigot. I just wanted to use "spigot". It's a fun one. We could crank out more boiling in less time. The photos are deceptive. The kettle is pretty big.



This is a photo of straining the raw sap into the brew kettle; I missed taking it the first round of boiling. It is basically cheesecloth in a kitchen strainer to keep the bigger particles like dirt and gunk.



And....we continue boiling. As we got closer to being done, it started to foam. I was really glad that we didn't have much in the kettle once it had reduced down to more sugary than watery. It is at this point tht you really must watch it carefully. It expands quite a bit and you are almost done and cooking it longer than needed will burn it and ruin hours, hours people, of hard watching of stuff boiling.


You can see just how much it expands in less than a minute....I think. It seemed really fast.


It is done when the thermometer reads 104 celcius or 219 farenheit. Or the spoon test if you are familiar with jelly and jam making. I don't have a picture of this as I was too concerned about going past that and burning.

We decided to "can" our syrup in Mason jars as I said in the last post, so at this point when we are getting close to being ready for the jars and hours have gone by, I realize that I have not heated my jars. I quick throw them in the dishwasher and do a hi temp sani rinse. I also put the lids on the stove to heat while the last bit of syrup magic is happening.

We wanted to filter it one more time to get some more gunky stuff out. We tried the coffee filter method. It started out working okay. A pretty steady stream dripping out the bottom.


Look at how beautiful that syrup color is.


It was fun while it lasted. As the syrup cooled, it got clogged in the gunk and the filter. Then, I may or may not have knocked the jar and spilled a bit on the counter, down the dishwasher, onto the floor. Precious moments. Brought to you by me. I don't have a picture of that shining moment for you. But I do have this for your viewing pleasure. The syrup equivalent of getting your car stuck in the mud two blocks from your destination after a cross country road trip.


Eventually, we got it into jars, by keeping the flame just enough to keep the syrup warm, but not too hot. We tried cheesecloth, we tried various methods....but eventually ended up using a super fine mesh spoon, similar to a non-disposable coffee filter. It wasn't fine enough, but it was better than the roadblock we had. Which resulted in cloudy-ish syrup.


You can't really see through the jars as you might with maple syrup. As the jars cooled and things settled, it became clear how NOT friends we are with sugar sand. A new nemesis, in a different way than Doritos, perhaps? These pictures are in the order in which we processed them. You can see how they become progressively murkier at the bottom of the jar.





We have had better luck today and I will try and get the results on tomorrow. I have high hopes there will be no murk. No gunk. No clouds of doom. But apparently there WILL be drama by the way I am talking. Over and out. Gotta go empty the sap buckets.