Mann Rink - Backyard sugarin : a complete how-to guide

Foreword copyright 2016 by Michael Farrell
Text copyright 1976, 1978, and 1991 by Richard E. Mann, Jr.
Photos copyright 1976, 1978, and 1991 by Daniel Wolf

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, The Countryman Press, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at or 800-233-4830

Book design by Ellen Cipriano

The Countryman Press
www.countrymanpress.com

A division of W. W. Norton & Company
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
www.wwnorton.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Mann, Rink.
Backyard sugarin : a complete how-to guide / Rink Mann ; photographs by
Daniel Wolf. Fourth edition.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-58157-340-4 (pbk.)
1. Maple syrup. I. Title. II. Title: Backyard sugaring.
TP395.M36 2016
664.132dc23
2015037138

ISBN 978-1-58157-552-1 (e-book)

I got my first taste of pure, delicious maple syrup while on a class field trip to central New Yorks Heiberg Forest in 2002. As a graduate student at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, I couldnt believe it had taken me 24 years before I got a chance to see firsthand how maple syrup is made and enjoy it right off the evaporator on warm pancakes. I was hooked. One class field trip certainly didnt qualify me as a sugarmaker, but the next weekend I went home to Lake George to start tapping a dozen of my parents trees. Over spring break, I spent my time collecting sap and trying to boil it down into syrup. After burning my mothers two best pots, she banished me from the kitchen. I had to try boiling the sap outside over a fire. To say my first batch ended up with a smoky flavor would be a vast understatement!.

If I had known about Backyard Sugarin then, things would have gone much better for me. While youthful enthusiasm is a great thing, its also important to do your homework and be fully prepared before taking on a major project like this yourself. Having a step-by-step guide outlining the various materials you will need, advice on how to source them cheaply, and instructions on how to proceed in tapping, collecting, and boiling is invaluable to anyone getting started. To that end, reading this book is a great first step to ensuring your backyard sugaring operation will turn out much better than mine did!

I now manage Cornell Universitys Uihlein Foresta maple syrup research and education center in Lake Placid, NYand have spent the last decade immersed in the maple industry. From my impromptu backyard set-up, I jumped right into a 6,000-tap commercial operation with research and extension responsibilities. While I love my job and truly enjoy sugaring on a commercial scale, I fondly remember the days of tapping a few trees and trying to figure out how to make syrup myself. In my duties with Cornell, I work with a lot of beginners and people thinking about getting started in sugaring. I often recommend Backyard Sugarin to them, as it is a valuable resource that can save people a great deal of time, aggravation, and money.

The focus on homemade evaporators and backyard boiling set-ups is particularly helpful to anyone contemplating building their own rig. The pride in making your own syrup is one of the main things that draws people to sugaring in the first place. If you can also make your own evaporator, using salvaged material that you didnt have to pay for, that is something to be even more proud of. Backyard Sugarin has plenty of time-tested advice for making this happen and is the best resource out there in this regard.

It is important to remember, though, that food safety protocols and regulations have changed a great deal since Backyard Sugarin was first published back in the 1970s. Thus, there are many recommendations throughout the book that may have been acceptable then, but dont live up to the standards we expect today. In particular, it is important to realize that pure maple syrupand the sap that goes into producing itshould only ever come in contact with food-grade materials that dont impart any potential chemicals, flavors, or odors to the finished product. There have also been tremendous improvements in sap collection and processing technologies that are just as applicable to people making syrup in their backyard as they are for commercial operations. Therefore, although this book is useful as a starting point and you could certainly make delicious syrup following the advice outlined in these pages (indeed, many people have), always remember there are countless ways to make your sugaring operation more efficient and productiveno matter how small an operation it is.

In short, Backyard Sugarin is a great introduction on how to make your own maple syrup with a limited budget and a lot of ingenuity. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did, and I wish you the best in all of your future sugaring endeavors.

MICHAEL FARRELL

Lake Placid, NY

June 2015

Backyard Sugarin

I suppose I got involved in backyard sugarin the day my determination to make maple syrup ran smack dab into my good wifes determination that the boiling down not be done on the kitchen stove. I must say she has a point. You see, the main thing about making maple syrup is you have to boil off about 32 parts of water in the form of steam to end up with one part of maple syrup. (This is a reliable ratio for my part of New Hampshire, but 40 parts could be closer, depending on the location, weather, time of the season, and other mysterious factors.) That means that if youre boiling down a batch some Saturday afternoon on the kitchen stove and are aiming, say, for 3 quarts of syrup, youre going to put about 24 gallons of water into the air in the form of steam before the boilings done. Unless youve got one awful powerful exhaust fan, you end up with water streaming down the walls and enough steam to impair visibility across the room. And, when things finally do clear, youre apt to find the wallpaper lying on the floor. Then too, even if the batch doesnt boil over on you, which it can, the sugar in the spray from all that furious boiling gets all over the stove and is harder than blazes to get off. So, if you want to maintain a measure of domestic tranquility, the best thing is to do your boilingmost of it anywayoutside, or in a garage or a shed if youve got one handy.

Anyway, the day I lost my kitchen privileges was the day I started figuring out in earnest what I might need to set up a proper evaporator in a little sugar house and get the equipment necessary to do the job right. I was soon up to my eyebrows in catalogues and books on the time-honored equipment and methods used to make maple syrup. This all made good reading, but the smallest evaporator I could find at that time was designed to handle up to 250 buckets, capable of producing about 75 gallons of syrup during the season, and it cost better than $600. When I went to figure out the buckets Id need to collect enough sap to make it worth while to run the evaporator, plus the holding tanks, instruments and other gear, not to mention building a small sugar house to house everything in, I was looking at an investment well up into four figures. It became clear Id have to get into the business of selling syrup just to make ends meet.