We ’re not quite at the cusp of The Singularity yet , but technological progress touches just about everything around us . This fact was drive home lately when the Geeklings and I chatter a local sugarbush . For the naive , a sugarbush is the term for a maple syrup harvesting operation , which includes the trees , collection apparatus , and processing equipment .
The basic melodic theme behind maple sirup product is simple : in the spring , when the tree are impress sap up from their root word to budding leaves , thump a yap in the trunk of the tree , collect the refined sugar - rich sap , roil the sap to evaporate body of water and concentrate the boodle , bottle up the result , and dismiss up the flannel-cake griddle .
Traditionally , sap was collected by just hammer a cylindrical tap into the tree diagram and hang a bucketful below . As the sap dribble out of the tap , it would shine into the bucket , patiently expect the paying back of the farmer . The capacity of the buckets were collected at a central positioning where it was boiled in large cauldrons , like the ones shown below . The sap was seethe to vaporise out most of the pee , get out the concentrated sugary syrup behind .
Over time , production method of maple sirup have evolved . One of the first limiting was the insertion of wide , shallow , ridged - bottom stewing pans . The larger surface area and good heat transfer of these cooking pan resulted in faster evaporation of the water , which was the most prison term - run through pace of production .
Other , more recent refinements to the boiling phase of production admit the borrowing of instinctive gas pedal burner . The general idea is still the same – use a boiling cooking pan with a large airfoil domain and flute bottom – but natural gaseous state is a lot more convenient than a wood fire . This also mean that it was potential to scale - up the sizing of the simmering pan , and to contribute automatic temperature control . As well , the whole system was strike into a covered anatomical structure to protect it from the extremes of springtime weather . The resulting “ gelt shanty ” tends to be a very steamy location at the peak of the time of year , as you may see below .
The most meaning innovation in the production of sirup is the change in sap collection . The old bucket - based system has generally been supercede by a serial of tubes that are all routed to a central vacuum - ticker . And yes , the internerds among you may joke off about that “ serial publication of tubes ” in the input section below – sheesh .
Back at the sugar - hut , there is a big vacuum pump that describe the sap from all the tubes , into a central containment watercraft ( okay , a liberal bucket ) . From there , it ’s easygoing to transfer the raw sap into the steam boiler , and start out the inspissation .
The last interesting innovation in New maple syrup output is the use of areverse osmosismachine to absent 75 % or more of the H2O before the boiling step . The sugarbush we visit this yr does n’t practice such a machine , so I have no picture for you . If you ’re curious , hereis a characterisation of just such a magical equipment .
Of course , the end end of all of this is the breakfast table , and that has n’t changed at all …
Image byKitch Bain / Shutterstock
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