Maple syrup: recipe at home + tips

Everyone knows that maple syrup is produced on an industrial scale in Canada. But in the middle lane and even in the southern latitudes, maples grow that are suitable for sap collection.

The only difficulty is to have time to collect the juice. After all, its active movement in maple, when you can collect juice and not harm the tree, is much shorter than in birch.

In Canada, the "Sugar Maple" grows, which is mostly used for syrup production, but red maple, black maple and sharp-leaved maple also make quite good syrup.

Tips before you start

1. You need to find a maple tree that is already 30 years old. The thickness of the tree should be 20 cm.

2. The sugar concentration in maple sap is from 4% to 6% and to get 1 liter of maple syrup, you need about 40 liters of sap.

3. Maple sap begins to ferment quite quickly, so you can collect and store it in the refrigerator until cooking, no more than a week.

Recipe for making maple syrup

1. The juice is filtered, poured into a wide saucepan and boiling begins.

2. A huge amount of water evaporates, so most often syrup is cooked on the street, or in a kitchen equipped with a good hood. Never leave the boiling sap on the stove unattended.

3. Maple syrup changes color while cooking. It becomes significantly darker. Of course, the taste of the product also changes.

4. In order to make maple syrup at home, a "batch" approach is used. This means that the sap is placed in a container for evaporation and actually heated. As the water evaporates, sap is added to this container until the required amount of syrup is obtained.

5. When preparing a maple syrup recipe at home, use a large container, preferably with a Teflon coating, as the syrup can burn.

6. In order to prepare maple syrup, it is better to take a deep container to prevent the foam from "running away", by the way, the foam must be removed regularly.

7. To speed up the evaporation of maple syrup, it is better to use wide containers. If we take into account that the evaporating surface area will be 30 square meters. м. cm, it will take 28-56 hours.

8. The evaporation container must be deep, as the syrup must be constantly boiling. The higher the sugar concentration in maple syrup, the higher the boiling point.

9. At the end of maple syrup preparation, the boiling point becomes 7 degrees higher than the boiling point of water. If the boiling point of the maple syrup is higher than 7.5 degrees, you need to add more juice and bring the syrup to the desired temperature.

10. When the maple syrup has reached the desired temperature, it is ready to be filtered and capped. Ideally, the percentage of sugar content in maple syrup should not exceed 66%.

11. At less than 66%, the syrup will be watery and poorly preserved, and if the threshold of 66% is exceeded, the syrup will become sugary.

12. Maple syrup is filtered while hot to remove sugar and various suspensions.

13. Use a woolen or synthetic filter for filtration. Then the syrup is cooled and stored in the refrigerator.

Update: 29.08.2019

Category: Syrup recipes