Hoping for one more draw off.

[GramaCindy]

Hello everyone, I am wondering if someone can answer something for me. I drew off my last batch by chasing the sweet with water. I have a Mason 2x4. Drew off about 1.5gallons, so there is about 10 gallons of some sweet and a lot of water in the pans. We are due to get some great sapping weather this weekend, Fri, Sat, and Sun continuing on into next week, (if the forecast is right that is! LOL) What I am wondering is, it took soooooo many gallons to get the pan sweet, that I know I won't have sap like that again this year, and I have some bottles of syrup that need to be filtered again, could I open some of them and add them to the draw off side in order to establish a gradient again? I know, crazy idea. Again, there is some sweet in the pan still, has some color. Any ideas?

[steve J]

what I normally do is I have an old fashion perk coffee pot that has never perk coffee. I bring the pan up to temp and let it get a good boil going while open the preheater valve. then I will draw off 4 or 5 pot fulls of sap and pour back into the start of the middle row. Wait five mins or so and repeat procedure you will find that your pan will reorganize its self so that the dark is now in your last channel.

[PerryW]

I wouldn't pour finished syrup back in unless you were trying to put on a good show for some visitors. If there is still some sweet in the pans, it will not take as long as it did the first time. I too am hanging on here in northern NH. The latest forecast show 25 tomorrow night and 24 the next night.