PA 2013 Season Totals

[Paddymountain]

Hey all you Pa Mapletraders,
I'm starting this thread so we will all be on the same page with our totals and stats.
I think it will make it easier for everyone to be able to look at what others have produced in Pa!!!

I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel yet, but til the end of next week I think it will be over for us.
thanks

[psparr]

I think I'm done. Syrups getting real dark. Made 20 gal on 150 taps. Tapped the first week of Jan. Never had great runs, but it worked out good for me. Could only boil on the weekends so the colder early weather helped with that.

[Abdo18_m]

Im am on the boarder of PA/NY (shinglehouse) This was a bad year for us . 785 taps only made 24 gals ... Not good still finger crossed but I thinking it's over

[Dennis H.]

Had 222 taps, all on vac.
Collected 4835 gals of sap.
Made 56.5 gals of syrup.
Tapped Jan 14th turned off vac for good on March 13th. I ran out of firewood.
The season would be still going if I had the energy and firewood!

[Jim Brown]

You guys who are finished sure like to 'rub it in' to those of us who have barely started.(LOL)Last year at this time I had the evorator clean and was ready to pull the taps.What a diffrence a year makes!

Jim

[psparr]

Update to my earlier post. Went up to the cabin to pull the rest of my taps. I had already pulled about a third of them. Well the buckets were full!

Weather forecast was supposedly bad. Guess not. Gathered 70 gallons of poor mans RO and made 3 gallons. Go figure. Will see what this week brings.

[Springfield Acer]

Tapped Feb 1, 2 & 3 and had 250 taps on buckets and gravity almost 50-50 reds and sugars.
Boiled 2500 gallons for 40 gallons of syrup all LA or MA.
Giving up on my reds today as I suspect they are causing the syrup to get a strong smell and taste.
Will see how the sugars perform but one or two more boils will tell if I'm done now or not.
Have used 2-1/2 cords of wood with lots left for at least the next three or four years.

[Paddymountain]

Well...my goal was 80 gallons. But the final total is 101 gallons 6 pints!!!!!!!!!
We are very happy with what we were able to make this year.
Here's the breakdown:

439 taps----- 5100 gallons of sap

bucket bush 1: 70 taps 1282 gallons 18.3gpt
bucket bush 1: 71 taps 786 gallons 11gpt
gravity bush 135 taps 981 gallons 7.2 gpt
vacuum(reds) 78 taps 702 gallons 9gpt
friends buckets 85 taps 1349 gallons 15.8 gpt

vacuum volume is probably more,lost track a couple of times running other sap into the same tank(maybe 50 gal)
double the taps this year, more than double the syrup!!!
we are excited!!

[Dennis H.]

That is excellent Paddymtn.

[Abdo18_m]

Well I'm glad I was wrong about the season ...I thought it was over two weeks ago and for some reason (thank you maple God) we took off 60+gallons since the last post !!!!!

[sandman6921]

Well -- not to rain on the parade, but from Clearfield County, worst year I ever had. Temp's just to cold. Tapped beginning of Feb., and only got 450 gallons sap off of 75 taps! The forecast should have been favorable, but it was not. Most we got was 55 gallons 2 different days. Went from to cold to to warm the only moderate temps and tress shut down. Mother Nature got me this yr. -- Only ten months to wait now.

[molineutu]

Boiled 940 gallons sap this year from 140 taps. Made about 17 gallons of syrup. My best runs where when it was about 38 degrees and lightly snowing. Sap did not flow good on sunny days. Weird season....

Sandman how was your syrup color? Mine was all dark. Looks like we had almost the same gallons per tap of sap.

[cur dog]

We ended up with 17 gal. plus 1 quart. On 38 buckets. All big roadside sugars. The last 2 weeks it finally ran good and saved our year.

[mapleack]

Finished and drummed the last of it tonight. Season total of 321.5 gallons of syrup. 27,100 gallons of sap. 821 taps. That equals 0.391 gallons of syrup per tap. Average vac level of 20 to 22 inches. Check valve spouts on tubing ranging from brand new to 9 years old. I'm going to do the sap per tap calcs on my different bushes to compare tubing age versus yield, will try to post those results. It looked like my older tubed bush fell off at the end compared to the new one, what you'd expect even with the CV's.

[Gary R]

I finished filtering and bulking tonight. A total of 69 gal. and three pints. A total of 5155 gal of sap for about 74 gal sap per gal of syrup. Sugar content was actually better than most years.

Vacuum bush tapped 1/7/13 and first boil on 1/10/13. Vacuum pulled 3/30/13. total of 3158 gal. on vacuum for 23.2 GPT

3/16" tubing tapped on 2/9/13 and last boil on 4/7/13. 1997 gal. of sap for 33.3GPT.

34 boils on the season. January was great. February was cold. We went through many 7-10 stretches of no boils. Incredible season that lasted almost 3 months. I am finally tired of maple for a few weeks anyway:) Time to cut more wood!

[Dave Y]

While everyone is totaling up there syrup, I continue put more syrup I barrels. We still have 5000 gal to boil.

[Gary R]

Dave, you might be the last one standing, again:lol: Keep going, I bet that 1000 gal is pretty close now. Good luck!

[Jim Brown]

Finished off the sweet in the rig yesterday. Season total 147 gallons.
Tried the RO water thing to clean the evaportor, left a water pump running 24 hours to stir the water in the flue pan.
Put the acid to it yesterday about noon-NUF SAID!
Will rinse the steamaway this morning and wash the rig tomorrow.
DONE!!!

[unc23win]

291 Gallons of syrup 12,875 gallons of sap. 650 taps on vacuum @ 20" and 706 on gravity. Lowest sugar content was the last day 1.5. A stretch of 11 days from March 13 to March 24th no sap ran at all.

[Sugarmaker]

Ok see If I remember some of the numbers:
Tapped Feb 8th, Finished April 7th
600 taps on gravity, road side hard maples.
Sugar content low was 2% high was 2.8 (only one day)
Gathered 9150 gallons of sap (I think 29 days of gathering)
Made 204 gallons of syrup, Ultra light syrup was made after the B syrup was made!
I think that's .34 gal of syrup per tap avg.
Boiled about 25 or 26 times (records need to be looked at)
Had very light amount of sugar sand most of the year. Except for that ultralight syrup, sand that day was worst I ever saw?
300 plus folks visited March 16 and 17 for the Taste and Tour.
Regards,
Chris

[Springfield Acer]

I finally took the info off my calendar and here's what my season looked like:
My taps went in Feb 4,5,&6 and the last ones came out 4/7 for a 60 day season with an average of 240 taps.
3745 gallons of sap collected ranging from 1.4 one day but otherwise 1.8 to 2.5.
68-1/2 gallons of syrup.
54.67:1 sap to syrup
15.6 sap gal/tap
.286 syrup gal/tap
21 boils for 83 hours at full boil plus another 1/2 hour front and back for heat up/cool down = 104 hrs in the shack +/-.
Never made B grade and my darkest was in the middle of the season.
The sugar sand was terrible at the end.
I scorched the pan once because my advanced age allowed me to forget to open the valve between the pans.
Cleaning season has not ended yet! 10 months to go.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Springfield, if you take your 54.67 ratio and divide it by 86, you sugar content for the entire season average was 1.57. See others post on her about sugar ranging from 2.0 to nearly 3 for the entire season but when you use the rule of 86, it shows totally different. Just trying to help you, not criticizing you in any way.

[Springfield Acer]

Springfield, if you take your 54.67 ratio and divide it by 86, you sugar content for the entire season average was 1.57. See others post on her about sugar ranging from 2.0 to nearly 3 for the entire season but when you use the rule of 86, it shows totally different. Just trying to help you, not criticizing you in any way.
Yeah, I know. I did not try to see where the difference is. My sap and syrup totals are accurate. I use a hydrometer for my sap % which could be the issue. On the other hand, when I am boiling for a longer period, the number of gallons run through my head tank suggests I am just slightly lower than 2.0. Maybe a 2nd hydrometer next year or a refractometer.

[spud]

Is there anyone out there that has heard from PATeron? I have not seen him on Trader for a long time. I hope all is well for him.

Spud

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Talked to him yesterday. All is well in Pa.

[slammer3364]

In St Marys Pa made 7.75 gals on 90 taps tapped Feb 17 pulled April 6.We do have about half the firewood left though,found sugar content low also. Some really nice syrup though Waitll Next Year Still it is alot of work but some GREAT TIMES

[SunGiant]

Made 10 gallons and 1 pint from 16 taps here in Britton Run (about 30 miles east of Meadville) Best season yet. About 5/8 gallon per tap.

[travisdirtbikemiles]

Tapped here January 12, 445 taps on vac . Pulled them April 13. Made 103 gallons of syrup. Very happy with the outcome just added vacuum this year, think it would have been very poor year without it.

[emericksmaple]

Well I will put in my 2 cents for the year. First off let me say that we were very blessed, all we did was tap the trees and God did the rest in providing the sap. We tapped Feb 6,7,and 8th.
We have two bushes one has 2400 and in this bush we used lapierre Clear inserts. In another bush we have 1200 and in that bush we used leader black check valves.
The 2400 bush avg 43.2 gal of sap per tap.
The 1200 tap bush avg 34.8 gal of sap per tap.
We ran through 145,200 gals of sap making 2435 Gal of syrup boiling 38 times finishing on April 7th.
This was the best year we ever have had.
Around 1000gal was light around 1000gal was medium and the rest was dark and B.

My neighbor has 1100 on vaccum and 230 pasture trees and made over 800 gal as well.
Two other neighbors with around 2000 taps each on gravity and bucket made around 500gal of syrup each.

For us this was the perfect season lots of snow and rain and all but about 10 nights where it did not freeze.
WOW what a year!!!

[Z/MAN]

Thanks to the extra weeks we got this year this season was our best.Tapped on Feb 10th and did the last boil on April 7th, 8 weeks and the taps flowed right till the end. Until those last two weeks we were doing terrible. We ended up making 17 gallons of syrup from 66 taps. We collected 737 gallons of sap for a ratio of 43:1. Now this is surprising to me because my sap hydrometer always read between 1.5 and 1.75. I guess the calibration might be off. We made .25 gal of syrup per tap. We boiled 58 hours over 13 boils. Everything is cleaned and put away. Pan is soaking in vinegar and will be cleaned this weekend. Flushed and blew out my lines and will plug and take down the small section of lines that cross the yard in the next few days. I don't have specific numbers but my 20 taps on 5/16 line with a steep drop out performed my 30 taps on 1" mainline with average slope. All in all it was a very good season but boring with at least 2 spans of 7 to ten days with no sap at all because cold weather.