Propane burners work good to finish sap that's already 3/4 boiled down, but it would take a awful lot of gas and boiling trying to map syrup from raw sap. 40 to 1 ratio with "high-test" hard-maple sap, and 60 t0 1 with red maple. I keep a close eye on the water content because I sometimes truck and sell raw sap, and I get paid by the sugar-content, not the actual gallons. I've had hard-maple sap that was 30 to 1 and also as bad as 50 to 1. Depends on the season, snow melt, etc.
A lot of places use propane-fired finish rigs since it's easier to conrol the flame and get the syrup just right without burning it or turning it into candy.
The reality is, you can boil sap with anything, and in anything and eventually it will turn into some sort of syrup if you don't burn it up. But, doing it in a deep pot or pan results in a long boil time and very dark and strong-tasting syrup. High quality syrup depends on very fast evaoporation in a shallow pan with lots of surface area. 6" deep and 6 feet long works much better then 12" deep and 3 feet long. That's why they are called "evaporators."
All depends on what you like and expect. Some people like dark-strong syrup, but it doesn't sell very well to the general public. Most of mine gets sold at 1/2 price as "B" syrup.
Many people have done it small scale in an old kettle or pot, and liked what they got. Pros try to get the syrup as clear as possible because that brings the "Grade A" fancy price. That means getting sap from the woods fast, sterilizing the sap with ultraviolet lights, then running through a reverse-osmosis macine to get half the water out, and then boiling down to syrup fast in a large evaporator.
If you do it for the first time, get a good thermometer or refractometer. It's easy to be out in the cold, standing over sweet hot boiling sap and think it's turned to syrup - when it's not. Don't trust your taste-buds. The stuff always tastes and looks better then it really is - when you're out in cold, standing over a hot rig.
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Today's Featured Article - Good As New - by Bill Goodwin. In the summer of 1995, my father, Russ Goodwin, and I acquired the 1945 Farmall B that my grandfather used as an overseer on a farm in Waynesboro, Georgia. After my grandfather’s death in 1955, J.P. Rollins, son of the landowner, used the tractor. In the winter 1985, while in his possession the engine block cracked and was unrepairable. He had told my father
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