permaculture

[Vint Lawrence <vlawrence@nets.com>]

Miekal And wrote:

> Jack Rowe wrote:
> >
> > Whether from beets, sugar cane, cane sorghum, maple or other Acer saps,
>
> dont forget birches, (whence birch beer) & walnut, surprisingly also
> produces a usuable sugar.
>

Actually, box elder, (another Acer) also produces syrup.

> the
> > traditional method is to boil and boil (slowly, of course, since sugar
> > burns easily.

I made maple syrup in New Jersey (no jokes, please) for six years. 275 taps 
and
a production of approximately 70 gals of syrup in a good year. The best syrup 
is
that which is produced early in the year from sap with a 3% sugar content.
Generally, the faster you boil the sap, the better the syrup. On an 
appropriate
evaporator (built for syrup making) there is no "slow boiling" simply boiling
and not boiling. Until the syrup reaches approximately 60% sugar, the boiling 
is
simply boiling off excess water. At about 55% sugar, the temperature of the
boiling sap starts to rise above 212 degrees. At 7 degrees above the boiling
point (219-220 degreesF) you have 60% sugar. Go beyond this point and you will
start to burn the sugar on the bottom of the pan.

> Supposedly Native American settlers made maple syrup by
> > removing pieces of relatively-pure water in the form of ice from the top 
> > of
> > containers left out on frosty nights.
>
> my understanding is the sugar solution freezes at about 28-29 degrees F,
> so if it gets really cold this distillation process doesnt work, but we
> routinely reduce the need for evaporation by maybe 10% by pulling the
> ice out.
>

Sap with sugar in solution does not separate in freezing conditions as you
describe - it stays in solution.Sap must be kept cold and the best syrup is 
made
within 24 hours of collection. Otherwise, just like sweet corn, the sugars 
start
to turn to starches and the flavor starts to sour. If you wait several days to
reduce the water content by taking ice off the top you have sour sap.

> also, in regards to native americans, Ive read, tho not tried myself,
> that in the days before metal, the cooking down was done in birch bark
> containers over hot coals, which I would love to see demonstrated
> sometime...this would seem to be one of primitive techs great
> achievements.
>

Native American technology did use bark containers for sap collection and
boiling, however, rather than being placed over(or on) a fire, rocks heated 
in a
fire were dropped into containers of sap and the resulting "boil" reduced the
sap to syrup.

> Might be some good potential for a
> > solar 'still, at least for early stages.
> >
> > Or (and given some of the recent articles on pollinator shortages, 
> > probably
> > a really good idea), get bees and let them perform their famous distilling
> > act, nearly gratis.
>
> we cook down between 15-30 gallons of syrup each year at Dreamtime, from
> about 25 trees.  if you do yr math that's between 600 - 1200 gallons of
> treejuice.  every year we debate the ethics of running a fire that long,
> all the wood & labor involved, & how unpermaculture this practice is.
> often wondered if somebody had a more conclusive distillation plan,
> either by a controlled-temperature icehouse, or a solor still.
>

When I was making syrup, I often fired the evaporator with scrap wood. Some of
this was taken from decrepit outbuildings that had been demolished, some of it
was from tree thinning operations in my forest. There are lots of sources for
small waste woods especially in the forest areas where sap is produced, so I
wouldn't worry about the energy uses too much.There is a technology used by 
some
commercial syrup producers that utilizes "reverse osmosis". This passes the 
sap
through "membrane filters" that allow water to pass through but not the 
sugars.
These systems are relatively expensive and like to clog up with alarming
frequency (often due to the starch problem mentioned above. They also do not
reduce the sap to syrup, but at best reduce the volume needing to be boiled by
about half.

Hope that these comments are helpful to budding sweettree people out there.

Best
Vint Lawrence
Apache Creek Ranch Permaculture