If you read yesterday’s post (you can scroll down to find it, since A Story of Sap Flowing is a necessary precedent to boiling the sap), you will know that I built a fire and started to boil the sap I had collected. If you are wondering about the cautionary aspect of this tale, we are all right so far – the rocks were piled high enough around the fire, and even with a pretty good wind blowing (east the first day, west the second) I wasn’t worried about the fire getting out of control.
It was a good fire, and I was able to burn a fair bit of the pine that was around to keep the pot on the boil, and midway through the second day I was down from 20 litres of sap in my containers to 10 litres in the pot. And it was a great fire, as you can see, for cooking Smokies on a skewer and then eating them on the deck. We even went away for an hour to photograph crows and got our neighbor, who was outside anyway, to keep an eye on the fire while we were gone so there was no danger from that.
I switched from pine to maple, which burned longer and gave a good heat, and you could have seen me at ten that night still tending my fire and still checking the boil of my sap, and by the time I turned in we were down under 5 litres, developing a good colour, and giving off a sweet smoky maple syrup smell. I went to sleep happy.
The next morning I made the first serious error: I put the boiled down sap into our large Paderno pot, brought it in, and turned on the stove. I was, however, properly cautious. I put the stovetop vent on high, and because it was a warm enough day, I opened a couple of doors to keep a good breeze through the kitchen. So far, so good. I looked up the instructions again right here (you will note if you check it out that the site is named, somewhat ironically in my case, greatdreams), and then got out my candy thermometer and checked the temperature. Still OK.
The sap boiled down and I reduced the heat. It was looking good. I had my bottles out with a funnel and a cloth to pour my syrup through. I checked the temperature again, and it was still fine. Then I made my first big mistake – I went upstairs to send a fax.
This is a tricky operation in our house because you have to disconnect the phone, pull the printer stand as far across the room as the power cord will let it, pull the phone line over to connect to the printer, dial the number, and let it go. It was busy the first time. I tried again, and it connected. I waited for the transmission to finish. Then I waited for my transmission report. Finally I went back downstairs.
My second big mistake had been not to turn the heat right down when I left the pot. I had spent two days outdoors working to keep the thing boiling over the fire, and it never occurred to me to turn it down now. So I came into a kitchen filled with smoke. My sap had turned to syrup, then boiled over, then burned. There was a blackened sticky mess all around the burner, and the pot was filled with carbon ash, like burned marshmallow.
I turned off the burner, took the smoke alarm and the pot outside, and scooped about three tablespoons of maple syrup from the stove top and put it in a tiny jar. It tasted really good, and over the next couple of days as I worked for hours to clean up my messes and the smell of burnt sugar grew fainter in the kitchen, I gave myself a tiny taste now and again to remind me of what might have been.
So if you read a news story like this one about the coming maple syrup shortage, you will know that besides the weather, I too am part of the problem. And the caution is this: stay close to your pot and pay close attention, because that critical maple syrup moment can come and go pretty quickly, and there's no going back if you miss it.
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