Maple Syrup 2021

Another year of maple syrup making! The major project this year was building a new boiler. We’ve had about 1,000 bricks along with angle iron sitting under the deck for around 20 years now and I finally found a good use for it. This summer I began by clearing out the sugar shack and removing the old oil tank boiler. I dug down about 20cm before hitting large rocks. During the construction of the cottage dynamite was used to blast out the basement. The rubble was dumped around the area, including where I some 15 years later, have decided to build the sugar shack. sigh

After clearing out too many large, heavy rocks, I backfilled and levelled the surface then poured the concrete slab. This was my first time bricklaying and it definitely shows, getting the mud to the right consistency is an art I was only starting to get the hang of by the time I was done. The angle iron was cut to length and welded into position. Pro-tip: it’s much faster to cut metal using a cutting disk than with a grinding disk. I chose the slow way. New pans this year as well, standard size buffet trays, I picked up extra deep ones to maximise the boiling volume. I’ll be picking up a regular size one for finishing as well for next year.

The final touches where done on boil day, we welded a plate on top for a sap preheating area/cooking surface and some spacers between the pans for support. As well as adding some extra angle iron and a plate to make a door. I’ll remove the top next season and put some fireplace caulk to seal all the edges.

The weather was a bit all over the place. We decided to tap on the weekend of the 6th. The forecast wasn’t predicting sap conditions for another week but we the following weekend looked too cold to tap so we put them in beforehand. There was much more snow than we expected.

We returned two weeks later to boil. The snow had melted quite a bit and the weather was beautiful. I was very cautious with the fire, keeping it fairly low to prevent boil overs as well as trying to see how efficient the new boiler would be. It works great. A lot less wood is needed to get the temps up and we could get all 3 pans boiling with a good size fire at the front.

Et voilà! The fruits of our labours. After 2 weekends of boiling we ended up with around 5 litres of syrup! Until next year.