frozen buckets

[Wells maple]

The weather here in upstate NY has been rough, getting small runs of maybe a gallon in a bucket if that! My question is, when it freezes in the bucket due you boil the ice with your sap or discard it? If it freezes for a day and then thaws on it's own before I collect is that the same as boiling it?? Thanks for your thoughts.

[psparr]

If there's only an inch or two of ice and sap underneath, throw the ice out. Its just water.
However if the whole thing froze, and starts to thaw. Theres sugar trapped in there.

Not sure about the same as boiling it question though.

[maplerookie]

Try and let the ice thaw a little and most of the sugar will leak out. if you can catch the ice in the bucket that generally freezes around the outside and the top you can throw that out . if it is frozen solid then do what I said in the first sentence. just letting it freeze and then thaw will not make maple syrup.

[Wells maple]

So the theory is there is no sugar in the ice? If that's the case what happens when the whole bucket freezes and the thaws?? Is the sugar concentrated? Sorry for all the questions, I just been dealing with a lot of ice and didn't want to waste it or waste wood boiling it.:)

[Run Forest Run!]

[QUOTE=maplerookie;249799]Try and let the ice thaw a little and most of the sugar will leak out. if you can catch the ice in the bucket that generally freezes around the outside and the top you can throw that out . if it is frozen solid then do what I said in the first sentence. QUOTE]

Because I'm completely bored with waiting for this season to start, I've been messing around with the measly 15 litres of sap that I have collected. I have a sap refractometer, so I used the below freezing weather to my advantage.

After one night below freezing, the 15 litres of sap (at 2.6%) was half frozen by morning. I drained off the liquid sap and put the frozen sap into another bucket. As the frozen sap thawed I kept adding the melted sap into the main bucket. As the block of sap continuted to thaw, the sugar content in the melting sap got lower and lower. By the time the sugar content from that melting sap got to .75% I dumped the rest of the ice. I was now left with 10 litres of sap measuring at 4%.

I put that bucket outside again last night and it partially froze again. By repeating the same procedure I now have 9 litres of sap at 4.8%.

The bucket is going outside again tonight and I do it again tomorrow.

Did I mention that I was bored?

[maplerookie]

do what Karen says. if it is totally froze...then it got real @#$#@ cold . You don't want to waste that good sap. And yes Karen you did say you were bored. Maybe the last weekend here as the trees look like they want to bud out. gonna reach 50 2 whole days in a row..

[lyford]

Bill I'm seeing the same thing right down the road from you in Hamburg, trees looking like they wanna pop. They buds def. appear to be swelling and the forecasted warm stretch may just end our season. I hope not. Good luck to all!

[maplerookie]

hey Lyford what kind of a rig do you have? I have made about 2.5 gallons of good syrup plus a small batch of lousy burnt syrup. I am up here on feddick road just above zenner rd. yes I know pretty small time but having fun atr least. no flow this year at all an now I don't know