Annual maple sugaring thread - More pics added!

Get that hot dog out of my sap ya sap!

Hahahahahaa. Just kidding.

Creme Brulee on a stick! I like that!

That truly is a labor of love to do that.

Nice. I've been watching 'Battle Creek' on Netflix. One of the episodes was about the maple syrup cartel in the upper mid west. Gotta love Hollywood and the ideas they come up with.

For those not near the sugarbush the real deal (grade A) is available on line. It is definitely not your "pancake syrup" that's available at your local market. FWIW, my nephews who are city born and bred don't appreciate it or like it, so I stock pancake syrup for them (it's their preference) and the adults get the real stuff. In fact I just recently fed the bugs in the septic system with that "pancake syrup". I assume they also liked it.

I thought Log Cabin - colored sugar water with artificial maple flavoring - was da bomb until I tasted real maple syrup. Oh wow, is that ever good! Nothing better than real maple syrup on sourdough pancakes, IMHO.

In case anybody is interested, here is an Amazon store that sells maple syrup, including grade B:

Coombs Family Farms
http://amzn.to/2IGY8Yy

I was amazed to find out that syrup can be made using sap from our local West Coast maple, the bigleaf maple. http://www.ravensroots.com/blog/bigleaf-maple-syrup

Grade B is my preferred; by far. It's darker, and it's also more flavorful. It isn't always available and that's a shame IMO. But like you Tbone, I like any maple syrup over pancake syrup. I even saw sugar free pancake syrup at the store not long ago. Now that's just flat out wrong! That's maple syrup in dire need of a gender change (or something). Amazon also has maple sugar. That's syrup taken to the extreme of dehydration. I use it when I make a specific type of sausage. It supposedly will reconstitute into syrup but I never did that.

Interesting article. As far as I know any maple will produce syrup (as will fruit trees), but the % of sugar in the sap varies. The sugar maple has 3% sugar, red maple has near 1% last I knew. Nut trees? I simply don't know. Watermelon is another item that will make syrup. Just juice and filter before boiling and the starting % is somewhere near 10 -12%.

The pancake syrup in the Army of 50 years ago was neither the real stuff nor pancake syrup. It was just dark water from what I could figure. I never did put a spoon into it to see if it even had maple flavor. Just horrid stuff. But the pancakes were good despite it.

When driving through the sugarbush if one looks quickly, every once in awhile someone will be seen to have tapped a telephone pole just to be funny.