The Travel Chica

Live Simple. Consume Less. Experience More.

Ice Cream Crack (or making maple syrup)

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When friends invited me out to their home to help them make maple syrup, I jumped at the opportunity.

First of all, it is something interesting to do during the dreary, never-ending Ohio winter.

Secondly, these people have automatic cool factor.  They know how to make something completely from scratch, something that is not easy or quick to make.

The day was nothing like I expected.

I learned that I am not cut out to make maple syrup, and I will gladly pay a premium for the real stuff.

It is really hard work.

We started by gathering buckets of sap.

Out in the woods near the house, there were dozens of buckets that had been collecting sap.

They were not light.

Did you know that sap can freeze?

 

As you can imagine it takes a while to melt down the ice and boil it.

Making maple syrup requires a lot of patience and a lot of time.

It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.

I couldn’t believe my friends actually do this.

While the sap was melting, we went out to tap more trees.

I got to use a drill.

And an axe.

My reward was tasting the sap straight from the tree.

I was surprised by how much it tasted like plain water with a barely detectable sweetness.

Although we did not complete the full process of boiling down the syrup, we did taste it at its current state of the process.

A shot of sap.

It was pretty amazing.

I decided they should sell it not fully boiled down.  It would be perfect heated up and poured on ice cream.  And yes, I did that.

My new business idea is called Ice Cream Crack.

Comments

  8. I had no idea it took so much raw sap to make syrup! I guess that does justify the high prices, although it’s still painful to see what they charge for it in Chile, and I tend to settle for the somewhat similar flavor of “miel de palma.”

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