Anyone boil any light syrup this year yet?

[hispls]

Nothing but dark for me so far. Keeping around 1.9 to 2.0 brix at least.

[Cider Hill Maple Farm]

Averaging 2 brix, day before yesterday I had between 2.5 and 3. But everything we've finished off is A Dark. I don't mind It's super sweet and it looks great on the table waiting for another stack!!

[TapME]

I had it change to a med and then back to a dark. Sap here seens to b super sweet. It's taking 25 to make a gallon. This sure different than past years.

[abbott]

made 20-25 gallons medium, 65 dark, and was making extra dark yesterday because of the warm temps turning the sap. Just cleaned the entire evaporator with acid yesterday and hope to make dark again. Last year i started out with 40 gallons of light. Brix has been good - 2.5% or so.

[hispls]

I envy you guys who are boiling < 40:1. Still I squared away my vaccuum the other day (wind storm beat my lines up pretty bad) plus found some other things and am holding 24"

Really if I keep up this pace for another 2 weeks I could care less what color it is, still, last year we started with light, then went to medium, then dark, them medium, then dark to extra dark to commercial. I know a couple other locals have only been boiling dark so I guess in this area it's about par for the course.

Wish I had a source of clean water here to really douche out my tank and pans. Next year will solve that with steam hood I think.

[Revi]

We went from medium to dark yesterday, but I'm sure that was because Friday's high temps made the sap go cloudy. We boiled off everything, so maybe we'll be back to medium with the next batch. We'll see... We were boiling every day, so it's not like the sap sat around any the past week or so.

[jdsr]

I have a question maybe someone can answer. I know this time of year the suger will be higher than towards the end of the season but can it be as high as 3.5 brix? I dipped my tank that feeds my evaporator on a fresh fill and got a 3.5 brixs reading on my refractometer. Didn't think it could ever get that high but syrup is definetly lighter than last year.

[BryanEx]

I'm averaging 3.6 on sugars and 2.4 on silvers. Way cool and I'll take it as far as I'm concerned.

[abbott]

3.5 Brix is fairly common for open grown trees with healthy crowns. I have a couple in my yard that get ~4 Brix. I'm happy to get 2.5 in the woods, though. If your tank had a big chunk of ice in it, that could also account for a high reading as very little sugar would stay in the ice.

[Tithis]

My first batch was very light. I don't have any official equipment to really test it, but it sure looks it to me.
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a270/Tithis/maple/first_bottle.jpg

[Maple Ridge]

Boild 2 weekends now. First weekend 1.5 gal light. Last weekend 4 gal. of light, 2 gal. med. Hope to start again Thursday. Tonight is clean the evaperator night.

[MainelyMaple]

Made 20 gal of med so far. Sap doesn't seem so sweet from my trees, I'm running my numbers and coming up with around a 52:1 ratio. I don't have a refactometer but running the numbers puts me just under 1.7% is that right?

[Revi]

I think the vacuum makes for lower sugar content, but you get twice as much, so it makes sense. With the RO to take it back to around 10% it makes a lot of sense. For us little guys we get a little better sugar content, but there are days when it doesn't run at all when you are getting lots of sap. We got 3 and a quarter percent yesterday from the buckets, but that's a little misleading because we dumped all the ice, so the real percentage was probably closer to 2 and a half or so.

[JuniperHillSugar]

I'm getting 2+% with the sap hydrometer, but overall its much better then last year. The syrup is getting darker. I'll clean the evaporator before Sunday and keep going. The trees have just been loving to run so far. With 130 taps, I'm keeping up quite well.

It's funny, sometimes in the sugarhouse I don't count what we've made for syrup, just what we have boiled away. I think some of us would boil straight water, just to have the chance to MAKE BIG FIRE.

10 gallons bottled so far, shooting for 25. Maybe?

[champ181]

4.5 gallons light so far got another 3-4 gallons to go pulled half my gear this week going to end up with 8 plus. better than the three quarts made last year on 10 taps.

[gmcooper]

Wed night I started out the night making dark and 15 gallons later I was drawing light off. I ended up blending everything together and still had med that was very close to light. Thursday night made all medium about 15 gallons.

[adk1]

producers around here are scratching their heads while smiling ear to ear. this week has been unconventional. everyone is making "ultra light" syrup here. Put it this way, even the glycerol grading kit "light" is too dark!

[abbott]

producers around here are scratching their heads while smiling ear to ear. this week has been unconventional. everyone is making "ultra light" syrup here. Put it this way, even the glycerol grading kit "light" is too dark!

Just so we're on the same page here... The "light" on the grading kit is the darkest allowed for light, so of course it is too dark.