Well, we're off and boiling!

[chevypower]

We had our first boil ever on the 23rd. We ended up with around 3500 gallons of sap which we concentrated down to 5% to start and finished up at around 8%. We only ended up with around 13 gallons of syrup, boy does it take a lot to sweeten a 5x14 evaporator! We had a few issues but didn't burn anything up and made some pretty tasty syrup. Thankfully our uncle was there to help out when things got a little hairy (our temperature gage at the drawoff valve stuck and wasn't reading correctly :o). Hopefully our next boil will be a little less stressful. It looks like we won't be boiling again until next weekend so we'll try to get our buckets tapped this week.

[John c]

Sounds like you did good. I cant imagine working with such a high volume. Rock on!

[chevypower]

We got a chance today to tap 340 buckets today, hopefully we'll get the other 500 or so done before this weekend. We got our barrels yesterday now we need some good weather to fill them up!

[chevypower]

Second boil went alright on the 4th. We made around 42 gallons of fancy would be my guess for a total of about 55 gallons so far. Things went a little smoother and hopefully our 3rd boil tonight will go even better. Saps running pretty good right now, wish us luck...........

Well the sap didn't run as well as we were hoping it too. We ended up making around 41 gallons of the sweet stuff last night with our third boil. No major issues and I think we're getting the hang of things (knock on wood)! We just need mother nature to co-operate now.

[chevypower]

We had our 4th boil last night..... a night I'd rather forget! We ended up with a bunch of syrup basically at our first draw off, I think my brother dumped in 15 gallons of syrup within 2 minutes while I was struggling to get the **** filter press to run clear. Before I caught up I had managed to get the hose to somehow fly out of the barrel spraying me with nice hot syrup on my crotch and stomach (luckily the sugarhouse isn't heated and I was wearing two pairs of pants which saved me:lol:) not to mention the floor, barrel, etc. We got it under control and managed to barrel around 55 gallons of syrup. We were concentrating at around 9% this time. We picked up a different press today (10 inch) so hopefully we'll be good to go in that area now. Definitely a learning curve but were getting there. Looking like the next boil will be Sunday night. Good luck this weekend.

[Mapler Jim]

Lets see. Your saying that it took 250 gallons of sap to get 1 gal of syrup?

[chevypower]

Jim, we made 55 gallons on our last boil. I tried to see where you came up with the 250 gallons to 1 gallon of syrup but can't see it??

[wnybassman]

Jim, we made 55 gallons on our last boil. I tried to see where you came up with the 250 gallons to 1 gallon of syrup but can't see it??

I think he saw 13 gallons out of 3500 gallons of sap in the first post, but didn't take into account a ton of sweet left in the pan(s) for the next boil.

[Mapler Jim]

Yep, thats what I did.

[chevypower]

Yes, it took a lot just to sweeten the pans. We boiled again last night and made 73 more gallons and then again this moring where we made around 66 gallons. We'll be boiling again tonight after I get done work (midnight) as it is still running pretty decent (the buckets not so much).

[chevypower]

So here are the results of the rest of our boils so far. Despite the poor weather and the fact that our 900+ buckets not producing much of anything we're not doing terrible... Making commercial but it still tastes pretty good.

7th - 37 gal
8th - 62 gal
9th - 43 gal
10th - 65 gal
11th - 44 gal
12th - 67 gal
13th - 25 gal
14th - 46 gal