Sistersville tapping

[Edward Howell]

I am pulling tubing as we speak , about 700 gallons on 175 taps but sugar only 1% We are using the leader ck valves new this year, curious how they work out ......

2/21 what a nice run , 450g on 210 taps and still coming in ........ woo hoo , same here on the dry ground thing , this rain will help :) still only 1.2 on the sugar , thank God for the ro ......

[220 maple]

Ed,
Hows the season so far, Jim Fergerson at Bridgeport is having a good season, I talk to him on the phone a couple times a week. He has had some decent runs and has a new RO that is making his life easy, he said he probably will tap more trees next year because of the RO. Sistersville is in Tyler County? I believe the TWOLYNNS camp is in Tyler County also they are located at Shirley West Virginia. They probabaly are having a simlair season as yours, I don't think they have a Vacuum system, which can make a big difference.

Mark 220 Maple

[Edward Howell]

Hi Mark ,

We have a love ,hate year going here. The new tubing system is producing 1 to 2 gallons per run , but the sugar is 1% and we are stuck at grade dark . Many of our customers from ohio are calling but we made no medium. In our defense we did not start tapping until 2/14 and by that time we already had some 60 degree days which always drives the grade darker. This is my first year in WV and we are learnind alot about this area in regards to syrup.Next year I plan to be tapped by feb 1 to make some lighter syrup. We rarely saw 60 degree in northern ohio , the temp swings are amazing , it is common to see 25 at night and 55 the next day. It is a challenge to keep the sap cool with 55 , 60 air temp. Also i am going to install the old style piston pump to move the sap from the pump house to the 1000 holding tank in the sugarhouse . The ceterfug pump thrash the sap and heat it much more than the old style pistion pump. The vacuum is working good and we just had a 2 gallon run per tap 3/7 with 3 week old taps so it appears the leader ck valves are working .

Enough about me how are u doing ?

[Edward Howell]

Ps , yes we are in Tyler county about 3 mile from the ohio river . Sistersville is 10 mintues from the farm .

[220 maple]

Edward,
I have had a semi-good season, I've made over 200 gallons and hope to make a little more the warm days played havoc with the tapholes that was tapped early I still have some holes with three weeks or less time on them and have high hopes of getting some more water to boil? We finally have the moisture and have been getting some good freezes. I had one day when the temp hit 70, I thought the check valves could handle that but apparently not?
We broke some camp records this year, we got over 1000 gallon of water one day and 8000 gallons in the month of Feb. Both new records since we started keeping detailed records. Usually the first two weeks of March had been very good to us in the past, not working out this year. I'll keep you posted if things change.

Mark 220 Maple

[Edward Howell]

Hi Mark ,

If I may ask , How many taps are running this year ,and what is the elevation of your woods ? Again 3/12 we went from 27 deg last nite to 63 deg @4pm .

The sap is clouding up ask we speak and the run did not start until 10:00 am ...:cry: Six hours old and the sap is already turning , at this rate we will have to add a meat locker to cool the sap. I ck the records and we have had 16 days out of the last 32 with 50 deg or better with two @ 68 deg .

[Maple Hobo]

Tapped begining of Feb?... Taps still running good after what, about 5-6 weeks now?

No check valves in the taps, just regular tree savers and a few of the stubys with the non-check addapters.

Keep your bacteria down.

Clean your equipment if it gets buildup in it. Just rinsed things out a second time this season.

Clean your taps before they go in the trees...

[220 maple]

Aaron,
How many bottles of Bourbon does it take to do 3000 taps? Do you put it in the holes as well as dipping the tap? I have never tried that before but I would say your taps are proof that it works!

Mark 220 Maple

[220 maple]

Edward,
I believe you asked how many taps I had this year? I had 1060 on Vacuum an 789 on gravity. The vacuum system out ran the gravity system 4 to 1. The sad part of that story is the fact the trees on vacuum are nowhere near the quality of the trees on gravity. I basically missed 5500 gallons or more of water because I don't have vacuum on them. I always said I couldn't afford to put vacuum on them but I believe the math would show that I couldn't afford not to. The sugar content on the gravity system was 2.4, vacuum 2.1, so I could have made at least 120 gallons more syrup with vacuum.

Mark 220 Maple

[Edward Howell]

I have good news and bad news .....

Tapped 2/11 last boil 3/12

Off 250 taps , 4051 gallons of sap came with 15 inches vacuum.

This is excellent I think considering the veins died on the delaval 75 and we had a 10 days out of 33 days with no vacuum.

Also the first 2 runs were only 125 tapps. All tapps were in by 2/21

The runs on the gravity days were 1/2 the vacuum days.

I was careful to stay 75 feet max from the main lines and 5 tapps max per lateral on the new setup here ,also we have a lot of drop on the laterals 100% grade or a 45 degree incline. Fun for tapping and washing ....:lol:


Leader ck valve results
The following were the largest runs

2/21 543 gallons 10 day old taps 2.172 gallon per tap
2/25 509 gallons 14 day old tapps 2.036 gallon per tap
3/12 426 gallons 28 day old tapps 1.704 gallon per tap

Considering 17 of the 30 days were 50 degree or better with 6 of the 17 were 60 to 68 degree the ck valves worked very well in my opinion .

Now the bad news .... 31.375 gallons of dark or b syrup , thats right :o

4051 / 31.375 = 129.11 to 1 boil rate = .666 percent sugar

I use to cuss the woods in chardon Oh because it ran 75 to 1 .......

We put out 8 test tapps in 2010 and the sugar was 1.5% to 2% in this woods in Sistersville . No clue what is going on with the sugar here .

There u have it Gentlemen , next year I plan to 750 tapps

[220 maple]

Edward,
I've got to quit complaining about making syrup in the West Virginia Desert, I have never heard of sugar content levels that low before! I gathered a load of milk (actually sugarwater) last tuesday and got brave enough to check the sugar level before boiling, usually it is eating up the sugar in the water at the end of the season. I was shocked it read 2.1%. The final load of water friday read 1.7%. Was it rainy and cloudy last summer?
I suspected I would have good sugar because of the semi-drought we had last summer and fall. Do you check the sugar content before boiling?

Mark 220 Maple

[Edward Howell]

Mark ,

Ye did ck before boil and the reading was 1% . I have never heard of the sugar being digested by the bacteria but that makes sense now that you mention it. Just another reason to boil as fast as you can. I think it has to do with the sap always being 50 to 60 degrees. I never had this set of conditions in ohio , sap was always high 30s rare to 50 . I have a therometer on the feed line just before the sap goes into the preheater. I was hoping when i posted someone would shed some lite on this phenom . I do tx you :D

Got to get the sap cooled down somehow ......

Ed

[Maple Hobo]

Aaron,
How many bottles of Bourbon does it take to do 3000 taps? Do you put it in the holes as well as dipping the tap? I have never tried that before but I would say your taps are proof that it works!

Mark 220 Maple

Honestly guys, I was running behind this year and we taped all 3000 trees in 2 days... didn't have time to set up Vodca spray bottles.

The taps were bleached and steralized last year when I rebuilt. We tapped when it was still freezing outside (low bacteria).

I did put the sani tips over the tree saver taps on the trees I tapped... Its a pain butt I'm pulling all the sani tips off as I detap now. Not sure what to do about the stubby's with the leader tips on them (no check valve). But I'll boil or weak bleach solution them and use them next season.

Anyone ever research Dr. Lister? There are many differnt ways to be antiseptic. :twisted:

[Maple Hobo]

I haven't tried to look it up yet... how does brix convert into percent of sugar?

If I read 2 brix... what is that as percent?

The sugar seems to drop faster the longer between freezes. The rain under vacuum makes for a lot of water but at a declining sugar level as the rain lasts for days, BUT for the amount of water it still is better to be under vacuum for the sugar you get.

<100 gallons at 2 or >200 gallons at 1.5 to 1.8.

I don't think the water levels affect the amount of starches the trees store. Root balls seem to follow canopy/branches. The more branchest and leaves the more starch/sugar potential is stored.

[Maple Hobo]

Ed, how cold is your ground?

Insulate or put the holding tank in the ground might help?

I collect in an uninsulated tank but store the concentrate in an insulated tank.
Could put hay bales and a shade roof over your tank to help?

Pressure wash your tanks as needed to keep the bacteria build up managed.

Just my opinion, you know how that goes...lol

[Edward Howell]

Hi Aaron ,
Role of 86 86 gallon of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup = 1% sugar content

If u have 2% the boil is 43 to 1

I am going to insulate the holding tank in the boiling room .

I am going to install a cooling coil in the 50 gallon dump tank in the pump house and circulate the cold creek water thru a copper coil to cool of the sap before it is pumped up to the 1000 gallon stainless holding tank.

Thank you for your previous advise about flusing the system during the warm spells.

I am going to setup a 500 poly tank to hold the ro permate and use it to flush the main lines.

I watched your video you did a nice job there. I always tell people it is important for all of use to make good product and teach people about maple.

Unfortunally if one person puts out poor syrup we all suffer :cry:

Hope to visit your place one of these days , I see u have syrup sickness also , (No know cure or treatment) Yes it is just a hobby :cool:

I know your is syrup is good , but mine is a little better :D

I maintain my member ship with the ohio maple syrup producers asscoation
They do a great job with shaping the laws in regard to syrup in ohio and the
foresty phd's in the ohio state universty are also syrup makers .

It would be a good thing for us here to setup , The wv state tree is the hard maple but hardly any syrup is made in this state. How did this happen .....

Tx ED

[Edward Howell]

I neglected to state in regard to the last post .

(If the Lord is willing ) , I will do all those things

Ed

[Maple Hobo]

Just let us know when you'll be in the area Ed. I look forward to meeting you. :-)

I think some maple regulations would be good for general health, safety and quality of WV syrup. Certainly if people are selling their syrup.

Private and personal use is one thing... selling it is a whole other ball game.

The cooling coils might help in the 50 gallon holding tank but how long will it be in there?
I'd try to cool the tank holding the concentrate instead. A 50 gallon tank is pretty small and if your RO-ing, would be moved out to the other tank pretty quickly.

The concentrate would have the higher potential to be held a little longer for a boil batch and more food potential (sugar) for the bacteria to work on.

A little bacteria conversion seems to improve the overall flavor, but too much seems to make the syrup darker.

Personaly I think the local FFA and agraculture education schools are missing the boat on promoting the Maple industry.

Its a very flexable industry... A bucket and a hand make spile on a single tree for a little personal sugar on the stove, up to a large sugar farm under vacuum with industrial level equipment...

Only cure I've found for this Maple bug is to tap a few more trees...lol

[Maple Hobo]

PS: I wouldn't mind getting to see your Sugar camp too.

[Edward Howell]

Aaron ,

Lockstep with you on the personal \ public issue.

The personal use should have no oversite but the for sell syrup must meet the min regs of 66.6 brix , well filtered and no contamanation and in clean containers.

I puzzle with you over the usda on the mason jar issue :confused:

Gear change

The ro puts out about 200 gph to permate and 100 gph to concentrate .

The contrate is pushed into the feed line to the 3x12 which has a boil rate of 160 gph .

There is no concentrate tank in this setup .

This creates a 100 gph of 6% with a 60 gph of 2%

Understood that this reduces the efficenty of the ro but by mixing the concentrate and the raw sap we cure the sometimes problem of ro syrup which will not setup when making candy.

Agreed the holding tank must be cooled also

If you are this direction please do stop and visit :)

Tx ED

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I usually average sugar content in WV of 1.75% for the season and this year it is about 1.5%. I would guess the vacuum is really making your sugar content a lot lower. So far this year I have got about 5100 gallon of sap from about 630 taps on gravity but would guess with a properly designed vac system, I could have gotten 12,000+ gallon of sap but expect the sugar content would have been 1% or less. I would guess the vac is contributing to the low sugar content at least this year. We had an absolute ton of rain for 3 weeks in the prime of the season and they trees were drinking up all the rain water with just a few very minor freezes and the vac was probably just sucking up the rain water.

[Edward Howell]

Bradon ,

Tx 4 the info , it helps a little to see other are seeing similar conditions with the sugar content. This has always been a hot topis , does the vac lower the over all sugar level? I have listened to a lot of people who claim it makes no difference but I always see higher brix with the vac off. Twice the volume and half the sugar , what is the point in boling twice as long for the same amount of syrup .....

There was a lot of rain for sure :o

ED