Well done, a good start by the look of things.
My only ?'s would be why heat the honey ? when it's already natures most anti-fungal, anti-bacterial substance and heating it only removes aromatics and volatile flavouring elements. Honey doesn't routinely ferment on it's own and if you're happy with the quality of the water that you're mixing it with to reduce the gravity down to a level where it will ferment, then that doesn't need heating either - though there can be a number of reasons why you might have heated just the water (calcium harness or tap water that regularly has a hint of chlorine/chloramine in it, etc etc).
I don't heat any of my honey, even if it has crystalised some. I just use a by weight method to measure it, then put it in a sanitised bucket along with the required amount (or close too) of water that I'm using (I prefer reverse osmosis water). Honey is hygroscopic so will take up/absorb enough of the water to make it "mixable", when I just blitz it with a stick blender (sanitised of course), which mixes the honey and water consistently as well as aerating the must. If the honey is too cold, or crystalised the honey and water just sit in an airlocked fermenter over night, or even for a day or two if I'm busy, before I make sure it's ready to go and can take a reading etc......
I can see what appears to be yeast nutrients in your original pick, but you make no mention of adding it to the mix. Are you aiming at making a "show Acerglyn" ? or is that just an oversight ?
As for the possibility of the maple syrup needing sanitising ? Well, if it's stuff you've prepared yourself (being lucky enough to have the maples to tap in the first place is wonderful ;D ). So I'd have presumed that it would have already been sanitised during the preparation/making ?
Hence, the heating of the must was an unnecessary stage.......
Of course, older recipes that abound the interwebs say about heating musts, though I'd have thought that'd be more about the recipes being developed when they had little or no understanding of how "clean" honey actually is, or even from when it was more about sanitising from the point of view of the water, when that was untrustworthy and needed sanitising (why beer was safer to drink than water, certainly back in the victorian/pre-victorian early industrial era etc etc).
As for the yeast, I can see it's a redstar pack. Which is fine. Just that I prefer to use the Lalvin stuff, not because it's necessarily better, but they provide much better and more extensive data about their products so it's easier to make the appropriate choices of which to use. There's also the matter of nutrients, when it's handy to know exactly how much nitrogen they provide, so you can work out pretty accurately how much too use etc..... A lot of the available stuff doesn't give you that level of product data, hence I try to use the Fermaid stuff for that reason.......
Anyway, well done again, getting your first batch underway.......
