North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Jim Fruth" <jfruth@tds.net>]

Ginda,
   Before I started making maple syrup commercially, I determined the 
boiling temperature of water first.  Then, in case the temperature of 
boiling water changed (if it did), I heated my syrup an extra degree, making 
it 8 degrees above the boiling temperature of water, just in case.  Then, if 
any sugar predicated out, crystals grew at the bottom of the bottle that I 
ate as Maple Sugar Candy.

Jim Fruth
Brambleberry Farm
Pequot Lakes, MN  56472
For jams, jellies & syrups:
www.bberryfarm.com
(877)265-6856 [Store]
(218)831-7018 [My Cell]


Would it be feasible to boil a pot of water next to the syrup, and heat the
syrup until it boiled at 7 degrees more than the adjacent pot of water?
You'd need two thermometers (so as not to cross-contaminate the pots by
moving the thermometer back and forth) and you'd need to calibrate them
against each other (as many home thermometers aren't perfectly calibrated)
but that would be a one-time operation, and then you could just put a cheap
thermometer in each pot and boil away until the syrup was done.

(and you wouldn't need to bother with the pot of water until the syrup
looked close to finished.)