North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[nottke1 <nottke1@earthlink.net>]

Michele wrote;

"So my question is: how can you safely cook down the syrup with standard home kitchen equipment outdoors?  Is it really necessary to keep it cooking through the night, in otherwards, continuously until it is sufficiently boiled down, as opposed to cooking it during the day, letting it cool in a covered container at night, and then resuming the cooking the next day, etc.?  My largest pots are a regular black enameled water-bath canner, and a pressure canner, and if the ratio of sap to finished syrup is 30:1, that's a lot of evaporation. Those of you who have tried it at home-- how did you do it?  Do you mind sharing your tricks of the trade?"

My response - A friend of mine in NY used to boil his syrup down in the commercial kitchen at the high school on weekends as part of a student project - the sutdents installed the taps, collected the sap, and shared the end product.  He said what speeded up the process was using a fan blowing down at an angle into the large soup pot - that pot would lose water twice as fast as one on another burner without the fan - I guess you could call it "wind chill".

Jim Nottke
Zone 7
Pfafftown, North Carolina