After several weeks of hard work carrying buckets of sap, boiling for hours, filtering, and canning – the sugaring season is over. It’s certainly labor intensive and it leads to late nights finishing up a boil just to wake up the next day to start boiling again.
But I love it!
It’s so rewarding to be able to make something tasty from your own land that can be shared with family and friends to enjoy throughout the year. This year I also made granulated maple sugar as a bit of an experiment.
When you boil sap down to syrup then let it settle in a jar overnight, the cloudy mineral substance called niter will sink to the bottom. It doesn’t look very attractive, but it doesn’t affect the taste at all. This year I decided to carefully pour off the clear syrup to be reheated and properly canned for storage, and reserved all of the cloudy niter in another jar.
Once I’d collected the niter from all of the syrup, I put it in a tall stock pot (this is key!) and started the process of turning it into granulated sugar. The syrup (in my case, syrup with niter) needs to be heated to 262 F (128 C) – it’s important to check the temperature frequently with either a candy thermometer or an instant read thermometer. Once the syrup reaches 262 F, remove it from the heat and begin to rapidly stir it; I opted to use a wooden spoon for this task.
After about 15 minutes of brisk stirring, you should notice sugar granules forming and the texture of the syrup will start to change to be somewhat slushy. Continue stirring until the sugar appears fairly dry.
Next, pass the sugar through a metal sieve to make uniform granules. I had to put some of my sugar in the food processor to break up stubborn clumps.
I ended up with about 2 1/2 quarts of maple sugar. With the high niter content that has lots of minerals in it, it’s advisable to limit how much you consume as excessive amounts of niter can have a laxative effect.
I was rather pleased with the amount of syrup I was able to produce this year, and It’s an interesting comparison between the amount collected from the maples versus the black walnuts. Let’s just say that I completely understand why black walnut syrup wholesales for around $300/gallon!
Here are the totals:
- Maple Syrup – 35 Half Pint Jars, 3 Quarter Pint Jars = 2.27 Gallons (8.59 Liters)
- Maple Sugar – 2.25 Pints (1.06 Liters)
- Black Walnut Syrup – 1 Pint Jar, 3 Quarter Pint Jars = .22 Gallons (.83 Liters)
While the black walnuts are not as productive as the maples, I still found it worthwhile because the flavor is fantastic and I’m looking forward to coming up with recipes to utilize it. My first thought is to try it on brussels sprouts, I think the flavors will play well together!