So we finished 24 gallons of sap down to 5 pints of beautiful syrup; however, I didn’t get the sugar sand out. I didn’t know (from lack of reading close enough I guess) that you have to use a different filter for filtering the syrup to get the sugar sand out of it. I just used a nut milk bag that I used to filter the sap with. That obviously didn’t do the job. Now what? Can I just dump all the syrup back into a pot, heat it up to 200 degrees and then re-filter it? Are there any alternatives to the filter paper? I’m going to be boiling again on Saturday and can’t get any filter paper from Amazon in time and don’t really know where to find the stuff.

Hi Steve! Thanks for all the info. Unfortunately, I did end up dumping what I had. I was trying to boil it down using wood in my outdoor fireplace but it was windy and I ended up with lots of ash in my sap from the wood. I figured I’d just start over using propane cookstoves instead. I collected 28 gallons of sap yesterday so I started my stoves at about 6 this morning and I have sap boiling now. Hopefully I’ll be able to boil down a lot of what I have so I can go get more!

Hey everyone. I’m making my own maple syrup for the first time and I have a question. I boiled all day yesterday and had to shut down before finishing my batch because it just got too late. So I covered my pan (with about 3 gal of sap still in it) with aluminum foil and let it sit out on my outdoor fireplace. It got down to 37° last night so I figured that was fine. Today however, it’s about 60° right now and it’s still sitting out there. I was just about to start my fire back up to finish it but I wanted to ask…..is there a problem with doing this? I’ll be boiling it so if any bacteria formed, it would be killed as soon as I boil it again. Does anyone see a problem here or should I just get my fire going?

Thanks!