Boiling.—The cold sap enters immediately over the fire from the store-troughs, through an inch rubber hose or tube. Its rapidity of flow is exactly adjusted to any rate of boiling, no matter how variable, by an automatic float-regulator. a little device that sits in the sap at the front corner of the evaporator and never fails to do its work well. The writer's evaporator, 4 x 16 feet, has two corrugated pans which are together ten feet long, instead of one, and there' are three narrow syrup pans, six feet in all, each with three compartments, instead of two with two compartments each. The sap thus enters at one corner (right-hand corner in the writer's), and is pushed slowly forward by the incoming sap under the force of gravity as it lowers toward the rear by evaporation. It passes thus, in the writer's evaporator, back and forth through fifteen different compartments and four siphons until it is drawn out at the left-hand rear corner as finished syrup. The writer strains this syrup through flannel or felt to take out all the malate of lime still held in suspension, and then it is canned air-tight in self-sealing, gallon tin cans. Some persons think that it retains its peculiar fla vor better if canned at boiling heat, but it does not seem so to the writer and hence he usually cans it cold.
A saccharometer or a pair of scales tests the thickness of each gallon drawn off. If a full gallon weighs ten and one-half pounds when hot, it shrinks in cooling so that a full gallon when cold weighs eleven pounds. The experienced syrup-maker's eye at once tells. When it "aprons off" from the edge of a dipper (empty except the drippings) in drops nearly an inch wide, it is ready to draw off for syrup.
"Cleansing" the syrup.—A careful sugar-maker does not cleanse the syrup; he keeps the syrup clean from first to last, and there is not the least need of "cleansing" it with milk or eggs, as in the old times. The bucket covers, gathering-cask or can, covered store-troughs and straining as it enters them, exclude practically all dirt, and the skimming while boiling, and straining the syrup take out any that might remain.
Color of the syrup.—The verybest and most delicate flavored syrup is a very light amber color, as light colored and clear as white clover honey. The writer gathers as soon as the sap is fairly out of the tree and boils it all rapidly before stopping for the night. All buckets are washed usually about once a week, and always as soon as the least white film of sourness begins to form on the bottom. Hot water is drawn around to the trees, and the buckets are washed and wiped. The spouts are pulled and scalded, or new and clean ones are used, and the holes are rimmed every two or three weeks. This keeps the sap sweet and the syrup light-colored and delicate-flavored through the entire season.
Sap soured so that it has even a slight filmy white ness makes dark-colored, rank-flavored syrup, greatly inferior to the best in flavor and in price. By washing buckets and spouts and freshening the holes whenever they need it, it is possible to make fancy "first-run" syrup the entire season until the buds begin to swell. At this time the syrup. though often of very light color, has a "buddy," sickish flavor, very different from the rank taste of the dark syrup made from souring sap. Then the season is over for making first-class syrup, although in Ohio there is sometimes another excellent run. Soft maples bud and spoil the sap much earlier than the hard maples, and are seldom tapped in Ohio.
Quality.—Only the very best syrup pays a good profit. Maple sweets can never compete in cheap ness with the refined sugars and syrups made from sugar-cane and sugar-beets for simple sweetening purposes. But for syrup as a table luxury there is nothing to compare or compete with it. For a strictly fancy article, in the writer's opinion, the price will increase year by year because popula ti at and wealth increase and the maple-groves diminish, and are not being much replanted, though they might well be. Some twenty-five years ago the writer planted about two hundred young trees along the roadsides, and now they are nearly large enough to tap ; and, with clean turf to the edge of the stone pike, they make a beautiful boule vard out of a common country road.
Closing up.—At the close of the season all vessels and utensils should be scalded, washed and wiped, and stored " in the dry," the buckets not "nested," so that they will not rust. Then the large shed should be filled with fine wood for the next season's boiling. Thus stored, old rails, limbs and partly rotten wood, unfit for sale, will do very well with a little sound wood. Such wood dried ten months under cover makes the most rapid boiling and the best quality of syrup.
Utilizing the product.—Nearly the entire Ohio crop is made into best syrup with apparatus much like that described above, and is sold as a luxury costing the consumer $1 to $1.40 per gallon. Per haps one-tenth of the crop is made into "maple cream," a delicious, almost white, soft, creamy candy, that sells at twenty to thirty cents per pound. It is made by boiling best-grade syrup a little less than it is boiled to make the hard, coarse grained cake sugar. While hot it is rapidly stirred till it comes to a thick, whitish, creamy condition and is poured into molds when as thick as it will pour. It never becomes very hard and brittle, and dissolves quickly in the mouth with a most deli cious flavor.