Moonshine Maple Rum - Is It Worth The Effort?

     Because of the circles I travel in it has come to my attention that it is possible to make Rum, and alcoholic beverage, from maple syrup. There is a person whom I have heard of, who happens to make moonshine on occasion, actually on many occasions. He’s very good at it.

     He’s put a great deal of time and effort into his craft. He studies books and has a fine aptitude for math as well as for making machines - things that do things.

     After the experience of making some really good moonshine whiskey using a variety of different edibles, he spent one late winter tapping trees to make maple syrup. He had great success making syrup so the following winter he moved on to try his hand at making Rum. Whiskey, the most common form of moonshine, is made from grain. Rum is the alcoholic beverage that is made from sugar. Maple syrup is a sugar. So he made Rum.

     It takes 40 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of syrup. He used two gallons of syrup for his Rum run. That means he had to collect 80 gallons of sap from the trees around his hollow. I know for a fact that last winter was a rough one here and there were many days he couldn’t get up the mountain to collect sap from his taps. But he got enough.
     He used two 6 gallon fermenting buckets and dumped a gallon of syrup into each bucket. To each bucket he added 4 gallons of raw sap. Normally, if using a grain mash, plain water would have been added. Sap is mostly water but he wanted to make sure he retained the flavor of the maple for his Rum. So this is what he did.

     Mind you, he had to boil down those 80 gallons of sap to make the two gallons of syrup. This man is driven when he’s onto an idea. Into each bucket of “wash” he tossed a bread yeast specifically made for fermenting. Then he capped the buckets and let the wash do it’s thing - ferment. After it was sufficiently fermented and the alcohol had been created, he ran it through his still.
     He netted 2 liters of 160 proof Rum. Rum that strong would burn your insides out, so this high proof result is generally cut with water to make it drinkable and pleasant. He cut it down to about 90 proof, pretty much what you buy in a bottle of Rum from the liquor store.
He doesn’t have any wooden casks in which to age his moonshine products. Instead, he chars small chunks of wood from the trees from his own land and he adds some of this to the alcohol. He charred maple wood with his propane torch and added these to the bottles of Rum. He let it age for a month or two before removing them.
     So would he do this again? Was it worth it? Although the Rum was tasty, in his opinion it didn’t quite have the maple taste that he thought it would have. There is a really specific taste to maple syrup that is almost poetic. It’s hard to describe - woody, fruity with a hint of vanilla - a one of a kind flavor. He did add some maple syrup to one bottle which technically made that a “cordial,” not a Rum. It was still good. He said he took two bottles to a party and they were drained in a flash.
     There was a lot of work involved in making the maple Rum from the ground up so to say but the final result could have been attained by just adding some good strong maple syrup or maple extract to grain alcohol for maple taste with a kick. As well as I can tell, he’s decided to continue making moonshine, but with grains or fruits, not sap. He’ll save the syrup for pancakes.

A Photo Essay of Sap to Syrup



This is the big kettle used for gathering sap.  Although the top of the Harmon (made in Pennsylvania, USA!) Pellet Stove does not get hot enough to boil the sap, it does heat it up nicely.  Those skulls are from some of the deer I've shot.  The picture of the dog is a painting I did.

I use one of these reusuable coffee filters to strain the sap that is poured from the jugs into the collection kettle.  It strains out flies, bugs, ants, and moths all of which like to drink sap.  It doens't work for filtering the minerals from the syrup, however.  For that you'd use wool.

The warmed sap is then added to the boiling sap on the stovetop.  As it boils down a couple of inches, I add more.  It takes about an hour to boil a gallon of sap to syrup this way.  I gathered three gallons yesterday.  Do the math.

Once all the sap has been added to the stovetop kettle and has started to turn to syrup, it needs to be watched constantly.  This still takes some time, so then I sit on the kitchen counter and play my banjo.  I try not to get too involved with the song in case of a boil over.



Sap is Running at Full Drip!

     Last night went to below frost and today the temperature hit 50 F easy.  Sure enough, the trees are running like crazy.  I have eight taps in trees down by the creek and usually go in the late afternoon to gather sap.  I bring a large 30 quart kettle with me so have to haul the day's take up to the house.  Today that kettle was full!  I had to stop several times to rest and give my arms a break.  But there it is now, boiling and bubbling away.  I'm thinking we'll get about 2/3 of a pint from this today's yield of sap.
     So far, there are two quarts of syrup in the refrigerator.  Maybe a little less than that, because we've been eating some.
     The first quart is a medium amber color, not quite as light as the first quart from 2011.  Maple syrup is graded by color and I'm wondering if I missed the golden amber opportunity of tapping this year.  The winter has been very mild and although January seemed like the right weather, it was still early by the calendar.  Whatever.  Back to syrup...  The lighter in color, the higher the grade.  The lightest is called Grade A.  They say that the lighter syrup is also sweeter, but I don't notice much of a difference in sweetness.  As the syrup gets darker, the flavor also gets stronger.  I happen to like a full flavor, really mapley tasting syrup with a bit of the wild in it. 
     It is time to stop tapping a tree when the tree buds and the buds start to crack open.  At that point the syrup has a little too much woody taste to it (it's called "buddy") and doesn't taste as good as a full flavor medium amber syrup.
     By the way, if you've been following this blog, the syrup that I had overcooked and had all that sugar in the bottom half of the jar was successfully reconstituted into syrup!  I spooned the sugar into the boiling sap last night.  It dissolved and this time I didn't boil it quite so long.  I still can't read that thermometer worth a tinker's damn though, and also wonder if it's giving me a true reading.  I'm still going by size and amount of bubbles for figuring when to take it off the stove.
     PS  Had steel ground oats with maple syrup and butter for breakfast.  Yo, Boomers - d'ya remember MAYPO?

     Here is a link that will help all you budding sugar people to predict maple sap flow.  It's very helpful.
http://www.goshen.edu/merrylea/sugar/flodict.htm
    

Sap's Running Once Again

     Friday, the weather turned from cloudy, misty to cold and windy.  The trees hardly dripped at all!  On Saturday we woke to a dusting of snow which was very pretty.  By noon, it was all melted away.  It was once again very cold and windy.  Clear blue skies.  I don't think it made it out of the thirties.  The trees didn't give forth one drop of sap.
     This morning I wanted to check to see if any of the sugar maples down by the creek were running at all.  Normally, I would have just waited till late afternoon and brought my collection bucket.  Good thing I checked!  The wind had blown two of the jugs off of the trees and there was the sap - drip, drip, dripping onto the ground. 
     At around three this afternoon I collected about three gallons of sap which is now boiling away on the stove.  I'm going to have to add the syrup that sugared to it once it boils down.  This will reconsitute the sugar crystals into syrup.  I think tomorrow will be a good day for sap to run.  It's supposed to go below freezing tonight, then sunny and 50 F tomorrow.

Groundhog!

     Very disturbing.  As much as I like Punxsutawney Phil and Groundhog Day as well as the movie, I don't like to see a groundhog in my yard.  Yesterday as I was pulling in to the lane, I spied a very fat groundhog out by the old barn foundation.  It looked to me to be a pregnant female. 

     A groundhog, especially one that takes the kids out for breakfast lunch and supper, can devastate a garden in no time flat.  We had this problem two years ago.  My old dog, who died a couple of years ago, couldn't tolerate the sight of a groundhog.  He also liked to eat them.  The dog I have now doesn't usually go after them, but last year she did manage to take one out.  She doesn't eat them, however.  On the other hand, I have heard that a groundhog skin makes a good banjo head.  Maybe the next one she gets will end up on my banjo.

     We have trapped them in live cages and relocated the critters.  I'm going to set the live trap.  This coming year the price of food, on account of the price of gas, is sure to go sky high.  The yield from the garden will be very important to us and I'll be darned if I'm going to feed it to a groundhog.

     Mind you, I have no problem with Punxsutawney Phil.  He lives a couple hundred miles from our garden and is well fed by the people of Punxsy.  It's the rest of his ill bred kin that I don't much care for.

Slow day for Sap and Sugar Crystals in the Jar

     It did not go down to freezing last night.  Today hung in the high forties with a misty rain.  Very slow sap day.  I maybe got a quart of sap from six trees.  No matter, boiled it down anyways and added yesterdays partially boiled down three gallon take to it.  I netted about a cup of syrup.

     However, and this disturbs me, there is a lot of maple sugar at the bottom of the second quart jar I have.  I thought it was just minerals that precipitated out, but when I took the jar out of the refrigerator and took a good look at it, I realized it was sugar!  Not a disaster, mind you, sugar can be reconstituted into syrup.  But I just don't know where I went wrong.  Maybe boiled it a tad too long. 
     Professionals and people who rely on what pros say and do, take the temperature of the syrup as it boils.  When it hits 219 F degrees, it is taken off the stove.  I have tried using a candy thermometer, but find that it is hard for me to read.  The steam gets on the glass and as soon as I take it out so that I can read it, the temp starts to drop so I don't get a true reading.  Also, when there is only an inch of syrup in the bottom of the pan it's hard to keep the bottom of the thermometer off the metal.  This is why I have been relying on the bubble method of telling when it is ready as well as relying on when looks like syrup, feels like syrup (on my tongue,) smells like syrup, and tastes likes syrup - then it is a duck!  Just kidding.  Therefore, it must be syrup.
     I'll reconstitute the sugar this weekend.  So far, the first quart looks fine.  It's a nice amber color. Nice and clear.  Minerals at the bottom of the jar.
     We have a cold front coming in tonight.  I'm curious to see how the trees will react to this.  I really like my trees.   

The Mathematics of Sap to Syrup: Is It Worth It?




 

     In a good year it takes about 40 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.  There are 64 ounces in a gallon.  Using this ratio that means that one gallon of sap will net you about 6.4 ounces of syrup.  That's a little more than 2/3 of a cup.  I don't know how much that costs in electricty.  I suspect it costs something, but I haven't figured that into it yet.  Last year when I boiled enough sap to make 1.25 gallons of syrup our electric bill did not increase.  However, I took great pains during that time to turn off anything electric that we didn't need on.  Lights.  TV.  Other.  I also employed the top of our pellet stove to heat the sap to warm before pouring it into the pot on the stove top.

     Now let's get back to that one gallon of sap.  If you boil down one gallon and end up with 2/3 of a cup you run the great risk of burning the syrup to the bottom of the pot.  It's best to have at least three gallons to boil down to syrup.  When I only have a little bit of sap, I only boil it down partway.  It's not syrup at that point, but has genrally taken on an amber color and tastes pretty sweet already.  I let that cool, pour it off into a Mason jar and stick it in the refrigerator.  The next time I boil sap down, I add this too it.  This way enough is in the pot so that it can be boiled to syrup stage without being so little that it burns to the bottom of the pot.

      If there would be a day when the sap is flowing like crazy and it would mean 24/7 in the kitchen boiling sap, I would (and did, last year) fire up the wood stove that sits in our yard.  Last year I burned scrap wood in it, but this year we have a birch tree all chopped down, cut up and ready for splitting and building a fire.

     Is it worth it and why do I bother?  This question has been posed to me by several people and I am going to wax a little philosophical here.  Is art worth the effort?  Seriously, consider all the time and effort that an artist takes to learn a craft and then create a work.  Will that artist (I include musicians here) ever see all the time spent come back as cash money?  Is money earned or not spent, the only thing that makes any work worth doing?  And syrup of all things.  We're going to eat that.  It's not even like it will hang on a wall somewhere or be recorded for generations to come.  So why bother?

     I bother doing this because it is the season of sugar.  The year goes round, the earth gives us her stuff, and this is the season to get sugar from the maple trees.  I also happen to like the taste of real maple syrup.  I suppose I could just go to the grocery store and buy some, but there stand the trees - all full of sap and ready to give us some.

      In the time it took me to write this, the sap I collected this morning has pretty much boiled down to where I'm going to pour this off into a quart jar and save for later to add to another batch.  Not much sap this morning.  Although it will be very warm today - 60 F - it did not go down to freezing last night so the trees are running slowly.  Also, the Norway Maple that I had two taps in has now budded.  I'll be plugging up those holes today and moving the jugs down to the sugar maples by the creek.