Brad and Chrissy Make Maple Syrup | It's Alive | Bon Appétit

good for the bees plant to maple if you can plant them if nothing else and there's nothing else planted go out there and plant a maple yeah absolutely wrap it up hey guys dan it's live we're here in beautiful underrated connecticut and i'm here with the lovely chrissy christie what are we what are we getting into today so happy you're here today we are going to uh tap some maple trees all right and then after that we're gonna boil some sap show everyone that process and then uh make some vegan blueberry pancakes a little maple syrup here today and it's a lot [Music] so first let's uh let's get to it let's make some let's collect some sap yeah so this is a pretty old maple this is a this is a good maple it's a sugar maple it's really cool to kind of get into this this year and uh just learn how to identify maple trees so like for example you can tell with this is a maple because it's got like a shaggier bark which happens as the tree ages and then it's like very straight and then brooms out at the top um and that's a good way to kind of identify them a few friends have taught me too with like it'll look like this up top on this bigger older maple is these buds on it where like where they have if you can see here kevo oh if you get that fancy lens or zoom in but you can see how it does like a little split there and then when it goes up again it does another split if you look around here not not a lot of trees do that and that is a really good indicator that and these buds they look like little upsize down ice cream cones right that's absolutely well it probably turns out it's not even a baby maybe it looks like it right from i'm not expecting we're no experts we're learning together exactly i had to put my money down i'd say that was a baby it might they grow it might even feel gross maybe chrissy before you start drilling holes i got to ask because i've never done that absolutely not to put you on the spot no that's totally a certain height or thickness of tree i mean i'm assuming we're not getting much sap out of this little guy a tree has to be at least 30 years old to be huh did you say three or four 30. okay in order for you to tap it for syrup so how you know or sap so if it's more than 10 inches in diameter that's usually a good indication that you can tap it yeah just to know like when you drill a hole as small as we're doing today to tap into the tree it doesn't hurt the tree actually once we remove the taps at the end of the season uh the tree will heal itself in the in the in the year and be good for the next year so you said you go in about three inches two to three inches okay and uh you want to drill in at a slightly upward angle put a little pitch in it yeah that way the sap flows out a little bit easier what kind of degree it doesn't matter just a little bit that's a little bit of an angle 12 degrees industry standard i ain't no professional i'm an at-home at-home mapler all right i drilled it seen some better days huh if anyone's watching we need some new drill bits actually what's happening here is because we're tapping later into the season the sap's already flowing out if you can see that so it's harder to drill in at this time of the year because usually you want to tap uh end of january early february it's drier it makes a lot of sense i always just bust in your chops that's okay you can bust my chops because if you think about it right we're collecting when you look at a log right there's the center of the wood which is the heart wood yeah right and then the outside is the sap wood and that's basically the highway exact carrying all this this the sap up to the trees which is it's life force it's food right and the reason why the spring is so the time to do it is because you need temperatures where it's below freezing at night and then warm like this you know it's like 50 to 50 degrees out yeah yep 40. that gets everything going just flowing nice and we're just tapping in and drawing out a little bit i mean it's already leaking out of the chair it can't even help itself and you know thinking about it as you describe that drilling into wood that is saturated with moisture does make a little bit more sense i think to to cause a little bit more binding especially a one that's full of sugar as well as that's heating in the drill bit and i take it all back chrissy [Laughter] look it's already dripping down it's already dripping let's see if you taste it not yet look at that you're like a pro fifty yeah man your turn yeah yeah now how many do you know how many taps you can do in a tree this size this one could probably you could probably do two taps i'm just using a bamboo skewer to clean out the hole here because it's all munged up it's best to get all of that uh i like that little details yeah yeah it's best to get all of all of those shavings out yeah go ahead taste that it tastes like it tastes like slightly sugary water that's all i mean it's gonna sound silly but it does taste like a you don't get much of a sweetness but it does taste like it's drinking water out of a wooden cup it sure does yeah all right so this is the next half you got the little save a tree tap got the little save a tree tap let me take a look at that yeah man okay yeah kevo you're gonna want you're gonna want to see that but mm-hmm so look at that little guy that one that part goes in little all right and i'm assuming these little things here stop it from being pushed out absolutely i'm just guessing here no you're right with my wood knowledge as that hole starts to want to close on itself it'll bite those little teeth and prevent this from coming out yep so i'm just kind of uh gently pushing that spile into the tree what'd you call it spile smile yeah i don't know those are the two interchangeable names for it is that oh that's a real that's a real spy yeah i like that is anything else a spiral i don't i don't know that's a good question let me just get this kevin smile nice pile kevin yeah so you want to kind of oh and that's the little hook there to hang your butt and you can see oh it's looking coming out already and you don't have to go too far into the tree just about five or five to seven taps will do and it'll stay and there's no leakage look it's already flirty flowing well don't waste it yeah no wasting all right so i gotta put that zip tie this is a zip tie we're just it's a handy dandy way to hold these like zip ties i do oh i knew i liked you all right because these were just cleaned with like soapy water soapy hot water well you can use a little star sanity or something if you want to geek out you know i mean you want that thing clean out of them you do exactly we're going to cook the hell out of it yup just to like stop any like additional bacterial growth as much as you can now i'm assuming once this thing starts filling you don't want this stuff hanging out for a couple weeks in a bucket like this stuff goes bad so like today like if this were yesterday we would want to collect this um because a day because it'll go bad with the heat yeah let's think about it it's warm sugary fresh water it is the perfect petri petri dish for growth yup now that i've showed you how to do this you want to go tap a tree put me in coach all right let's go well this is the tree we picked out before yes fine this is a good one fine looking maple actually looks a little bit older a little bit thicker a little thicker yeah so did you say it had to be a certain height they say it's better to be a little bit closer to the trunk just because that's where a lot of the concentration yeah so like right there is perfect this is good yeah yeah i feel good about that all right ready all right get it brad all right look here that one's already flowing yeah look at that it's a good tree i know it's a good treat cam the best i've seen my whole career spans decades kevin all right here we go let's see yeah we'll screw this up brad and just try to keep that straight yep when you hammer it in and you got it you know it's good when it starts like spewing all over your face there you go would you need this one the zip tie is uh for you want to put it on first okay behind that little shark tooth looking thing yeah behind the hanger yeah perfect and then you can just don't i hang this on that yep so what's that thing for that thing is for hanging the top oh oh and then that little bar goes yeah so you pull that bar out i see there you go some old school stuff man hey those are the best ones though you know less things to break chrissy absolutely there you go tap my first maple whew look at that baby there's a thumbnail get your head in the background [Music] all right so chrissy we're over here at some other trees that you guys had tapped yes buckets presumably full of sap and uh and we're gonna be collecting we collected some of these buckets yesterday so we're just gonna collect some more because we had good conditions last night so some of them are gonna be pretty full today this one's this one's a good maple it's gonna be pretty full oh yeah it's we're about we're good we're good uh we're good halfway through that those ones those are yeah yeah they've got the built-in oh i like that that'll cost you a dollar more look at that come on that's what i'm talking about right yep right oh that's got weight yeah we could have put that on the ground awesome look at that huh i could see how this could uh you get 25 30 trees a bunch of these and this is why people use the tubes the tube system i kind of i like this one you know what listen i'm never oh let me put this back i'm never gonna be doing this for money or something right and you know what i know what i would much rather all right look all right imagine this okay so you can put the bucket down let's go somewhere all right we're sitting up there all right the fire's going right you want to look out the window and see all these blue spider webs of plastic tubes now you want to see this cute little canadian bucket i want to see the buffer i'm going to cute canadians every day of the week laughing is good for the soul oh my god it's medicine talk to me what's going on here come back and we'll come back tomorrow we'll check this one tomorrow yes it's not good i mean we can take it because you know what it shouldn't sit long right yeah no it's better to just collect it look at that there we go now you know this one's flowing nicely today so it'll definitely be full tomorrow oh big time how are we looking this one's also like a half wow we should take it though yeah and actually you could just like i'll hold this and you can just grab the bucket i would hate to if any of this went yeah i would just go home wouldn't even say bye i wouldn't look anyone in the face all right so uh that one's how you doing on that bucket this one i think we're good with this we're good on that let me carry my little muscles are in uh thank you you're probably stronger than me i don't know why i'm carrying this thing that's what we need christy we need a couple a couple donkeys all right so we got our bucket of sap and uh you know i'm i reckon the next step is to evaporate it right boil it down get it to where it starts to become maple syrup so you guys set it up we've got some going already let's go check out where it's at check it out oh it's our resident sugar shack operator the handsomely mod hey levon how's it going so you got some sap for you awesome ivan is my boyfriend he has actually grown up doing this maple process so he's he taught me everything about mapling this year and it's been awesome so [Music] so what we're doing here is uh just getting that fresh sap into an evaporation pot and that's just going to allow all the water to evaporate out and keep all that sweet sugary syrup at the forefront so i'm just going to put that on medium heat or high heat actually just let that go over here we've got our pre-boiled sap going and this once it reaches 216 degrees you want to do a midway filter if you take a look here there's a lot of maple sand and cinnamon in the syrup so you want to question what's maple sand maple sand it's like hard sugar that forms during the boiling point outside of the river yeah yeah it crystallizes as it just crystallizes just kind of describe to me how you do this in stages you mentioned like a pre-filter or a post filter we started this this batch early what was that seven a.m yeah and uh now it's finally close to the finishing stages i love that it just becomes this like if you make it and you want it to be this like this ritual this activity this spring celebration you know they can only do once a year kind of thing i dig that even it takes all day like my imagination just roams like building like a little thing where you could you know like a little wood fire kind of thing you know and make make a day out of it you know i might be too short for this actually let's see if i can do it yeah i'm too short for this i'll do it that's sad you know it's one of those things here you go oh these are cute you guys are just full of all the cute stuff in this house you'll notice it's going to start collecting in the it's a pretty good poor job brad i got it sure was sure was oh that smells i wish you guys i say this like all the time in the show i wish you guys could smell that so that's our mid filtration we're getting out any impurities and crystals that might have formed in this process right that's exactly the side like you said and then at that temperature after this how much more do we have to do you guys evaporate it'll probably be 15 to 20 minutes before it's completely done yep you want to hold that oh let's get a shot of those impurities yeah get in there kevo so now from here we're just going to put this into the little finishing pot so now you do this just like kind of a medium low just like enough to where it's kind of just simmering bubbling i don't think it's lit again well no you want it you want to still scorching so you want it you're going you want it hot you because we're trying to get this up to about an hour all over 20 219 220 okay so we're at uh 217 degrees you can see it's really boiling up getting really bubbly once this hits to 19 220 it'll it'll be at the proper sugar concentration we need so after this it's final filtration and then yeah chill chill and eat 218 219. in a submarine yeah well once it hits it it's fine right yeah you just can't go you want to keep it as warm as possible for the filtration yeah mit you want to do it yeah i want to do something do the honors grab that bad boy filter it into the little i'm gonna filter it my best you got this right in here so we've got a heavy weight filter and a lightweight filter on top um that's just gonna make it you know as clear and as clean as possible all right well watch that sweet syrup just pour through oh yeah that's what's up huh yeah yup isn't that beautiful it's beautiful look how clear and clean that is i noticed my first couple batches were a little bit lighter now we're like at the second stage which would typically be grade b it's got more of that deep maple flavor i'm glad you brought that up because i wanted to ask and maybe you guys knew well you see different grades of you know grade a grade b darknesses robust you know is that just in the process oh swapper good t you guys are a good team vermont actually changed the standards for um the grading system the reason why was a lot of people were viewing the grades as like a as like bad yeah b is bad c is the worst but really the only difference is that different parts of the season you get different colors syrup and they have different properties so earlier in the season you get a very light delicate syrup now we're at kind of like the midway point so this is like used to be considered grade b syrup because it's got more of that mapley flavor the tree changes throughout the season as it gets closer to budding right and that changes the flavor of this and the color or no and the color yeah and it's gonna be b's gonna be a little bit more mapley tasting whereas your a's a little lighter okay um so that that's like what this is i would say so this is what a i think it's actually flirty think about the ones we did earlier in the season and then uh grade c is usually your really dark robust end of season yeah maple sometimes you do yeah it's really strong i have mixed feelings on it but it's it's definitely good for like baking sure maybe i've never had it then it's harder to get because um it's so strong that they usually use it for like more filling maple candies and stuff oh okay all right guys we got our our finished product we went through you know the evaporation cooked it down maple syrup final filtration it's cooling down a little bit i you know i'm trying my hardest i've it took me everything i have to just not you know i'm very i like to i'll put my fingers right here but you know uh i'm holding back and you shared your recipe with me it was a vegan pancake mix batter that we used some of my sourdough starter too and uh i whipped it up yesterday i brought it here why don't we make a little sourdough let me make you guys the sourdough pancake let's do it well we're gonna have some can we use this yeah we'll use this absolutely look at us huh all right so i'll uh i'll clean this up if you want to grab some of the pancakes yeah and then uh let's cook it out let's go let's go i'll be right back so we're gonna make some vegan blueberry sourdough pancakes and actually brad brought some sourdough starter of his which i'm so lucky to have because my sourdough starter is a baby it's only about three months old so as the base we have two cups of organic all-purpose flour a cup of sourdough starter two cups of buttermilk which is just oat milk with some apple cider vinegar and we have some brown sugar and we'll start by making our flax egg so we have two tablespoons of flax seed here what we're gonna do is just pop six tablespoons of water into that and it's gonna gel up and like turn into an egg like substance after a couple of minutes we've got a half teaspoon of vanilla extract we've got some cinnamon so i'm just gonna hit this with a little cinnamon you like cinnamon i love cinnamon good all right cool i didn't ask you before it's okay and we have a teaspoon of baking soda and that's just going to aerate our batter a little bit and a little bit of sunflower oil for now i'll just give this a good stir once over and it looks nice look at that yeah right it's super bouncy so now our you can oh yeah look at that the flax egg it's like nice and thick it's like a broken vinaigrette yeah exactly so we're just gonna pop that right in that was an equivalent of two eggs last but not least we're gonna add these blueberries a couple blueberries i hate blueberries no i'm just kidding i love blueberries but you asked about the cinnamon you just i did it i assumed you liked blueberries brad i thought you were a good man and that's it folks we got we got our batter now chrissy are you what's your you pancaking right you kind of you wait for the bubbles i wait for the bubbles and for the edges to get a little bit a little bit of looking done on the outside yeah yeah yeah it's not the best shape job i've had but that's okay it's thick too so it makes it a little a little patcharoo brad you were very kind because you know as the great hostess you are you gave me the better setup i mean i mean i brought my own skillet because you know it's the kind of guy i am but i got the better burner you're sitting in like mud over there using a camping stove yeah and coke let's blame kovid please well it don't look bad i've made worse you know it's not the prettiest but she'll taste good here we are that cute little spatula i got it's made of titanium kev lightweight doesn't doesn't slow me down and it doesn't rust that's a good little setup i can do a little service here kev what do you want short snack you got it babe [Laughter] hey pancakes look great yeah sourdough pancakes what could be blueberry berry cakes with maple syrup that we just made yes fresh oh and you put butter with a little butter on top yeah i feel like that's like a real classy move huh those look great we did a great job we did this reminds me of like school right and like chrissy you are obviously the girl i would have been talking to and like trying to cheat off of 27. she put c totally look at this thing where'd you get this i want one except it needs like a little i'll use my legs stabilization this is great spring has sprung we made maple syrup sourdough blueberry pancakes well let's eat shall we let's go i'm gonna taste the maple syrup i'm just gonna wet the fork by it by itself i feel like we kind of have to yeah that's true yeah come on taste this batch it's delicious you know the first thing i think of when i taste it is how bad that like fake maple syrup is this is so good it almost is like the way it fried up in the cast iron it almost like the edges of it almost with the syrup it almost tastes like a donut i get why people like pancakes i'm glad because back in the day this is the only type of pancake so chris do you find much of a difference in i mean other than the color but when you like say like a grade b or grade a like this is like has a really nice clean sweet flavor but it's not like robust overpowering like like molasses right like you were kind of describing that you would get with like grade c and as i said earlier that yeah as the season continues like every batch is slightly unique and you find variation in year to year not even uh and just during this the changes of this in the season in there yeah okay and i think it's just so neat to be able to do it yourself if you have you know a few trees and that wasn't a major operation you know as far as right very respectful to the trees kind of very minimal footprint i like it it's cool chrissy thank you again you and levon for having me out to to make maple syrup with you guys and just sharing your property and your trees and your setup with me you know it's something that i've been wanting to do my whole life i've never actually tapped a maple tree but it's something i'm going to carry on and and do with my kids you know for for as long as they want to do it with me seeing how it's really done and what goes into doing it uh it's inspiring it's it's so much fun and it makes you get outside you know what i mean it gives you a reason to always be out in nature and i i really like that about about this activity 100 and it helps you respect it right like you know what i mean like do you want to go drilling all these holes in your tree and killing it no of course not well thank you christy come in yeah thank you and like i said i put my finger in that jar of maple syrup so i'm gonna have to bring it home hey it's yours it's for your safety all right chrissy these outros are getting you know it's me i'm awkward let's get these out the way i wrap it up is i usually just go bone appetit please do it for me bon appetit it was awesome thank you so much cool thank you i'm getting out of this desk chair yeah i failed i don't give a the test is over that's it that's dismissed you

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 468,772

Rating: 4.9303126 out of 5

Keywords: alive, bon appetit, bon appetit brad, brad, brad and chrissy, brad bon appetit, brad it's alive, brad leone, brad leone 2021, brad makes, brad makes maple syrup, brad makes syrup, brad maple syrup, fermentation, fermented, food, how to make, how to make maple syrup, how to maple syrup, it's alive, it's alive bon appetit, it's alive maple syrup, its alive, live food, make, make maple syrup, making maple syrup, maple syrup, maple syrup recipe, probiotics, test kitchen, what is

Id: wb36EGecVms

Length: 22min 56sec (1376 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/FishyCase]

Headphone users beware, the audio-levels are all over the place. The intro song made me jump.

[u/apfeiff19]

I feel like their strategy is just put Brad with everyone and hope they stick.

[u/exkon]

I love Brad's energy and personality.

I really like Chrissy's vegan methods as well. I have a son that's allergic to eggs and her flax egg substitute works really well!

[u/Testicklish]

I liked this video. Brad is great as usual. Chrissy seems to still be getting comfortable but I like her personality and thought she did a great job.

[u/MonkeyManDan]

Break my bon appetit boycott for Brad?

[u/turbo_22]

Their first video together was not very good. It just didn't seem natural. I'll give this one a chance.