Tapped in Princeton [Archive]

Biz

03-09-2015, 09:43 PM

Tapped 85 on 3/16" tubing and a few buckets in Princeton over the weekend. First time using tubing, hope I did it right. About 25 buckets in the woods left to go. Nothing running today but soon! Hey why are last years tap holes at knee high, weird.

Dave

Biz

03-12-2015, 08:26 AM

First run of the year yesterday, about 45 gallons of sap from 85 taps, not too bad. Sugar content was the lowest I have ever seen, 1.5% from the sugar maples and 1% from the reds. Hardly worth boiling, if it was like this at the end of the season I would have dumped it out. Four hrs of boiling and not even a hint of maple smell. I also found out that wet pine does not burn well :( Time for a new woodshed.

But the good news is my new sugarhouse, new 3/16" gravity tubing, and new transfer pump setup are all working great. Rigged up a small 12V pump powered with a with motorcycle battery to transfer sap from the collection barrels to a tank in the truck, then from there to a tank in the sugarhouse. Seems like cheating not to carry all that sap by hand!

Dave

eustis22

03-12-2015, 09:23 AM

do you have a 275 in your truck? I'm mulling a small 3/16 setup for my hill maples but still puzzling how to get from the staging barrel to the driveway for the tractor to haul up.

where did you go for your how-to on the tubing?

Biz

04-08-2015, 12:05 PM

Hey eustis22, I only have a 55 gal barrell on my truck. Well until the truck died anyways. That's what I get for 250,000 miles I guess. I kind of figured out the 3/16 tubing myself and from reading on this forum. Seems to work really well, it outruns the buckets.

Sap is still running! Collected 80 gallons yesterday. Froze lightly last night so maybe another couple days of running.

Some general comments on my season so far.

Boiling: In the past 10 days I have boiled 72 hrs! Couple 10-12 hr days. Firewood is gone and I am resorting to scrounging and stealing from next year's stash. I have not been able to keep up with bottling so I have a backlog of syrup to bottle. 10 gal so far, a 6 gal backlog, still running. Other than necessities like sleep and work, pretty much every spare minute of my time lately is spent on collecting, boiling, bottling, firewood.

Tubing: My first year on tubing has been a huge success. Sap is cleaner, runs much better, easier to collect, I don't have to dump buckets due to rainwater, no insects or moths, cheaper. I am a believer! And this is coming from a guy who still likes his wooden buckets and sap yoke :)

Reds: A run of all red maples on gravity 3/16 tubing is running almost as well as the sugar maples, while the reds on buckets are well below average, some have not given a quart total all year. Seems like it is not worthwhile touching the reds unless I have some vacuum, natural or pump. I had not tapped many reds before this year but this year I have about 40% reds. A gauge placed on the top of this 3/16 run, about 12-15' drop, showed 11 inches of steady vacuum.

Shurflo 4008 vacuum pump: a short run of reds on a Shurflo pump is outrunning the 3/16 gravity reds by a factor of 2 or more (depending on whether my battery dies from not enough capacity). One day the vacuum outran the 3/16 tubing on a per-tap basis by 4 times: 10 gallons of sap from 26-taps on gravity, and 20 gallons of sap from 11 taps on vacuum. Amazing. Pulls 24 inches of vacuum when sap is running well. I am going to fine tune my pump and homemade controller/valve unit, who knows, I might offer some units for sale.

CDL 18x48 evaporator: plusses and minuses. The grate has warped badly this year. Can't get a batch to finish off due to mixing from the flue pan. Wood supply was wet so I didn't get good boiling rate, averaged about 10 gph. Still happy with it overall. Not really big enough to keep up with my 120 taps on a good running day. Need to figure out how to get it to boil faster.

New post and beam sugarhouse: worked great! Had an open house with 50+ people showing up. Project for next year is building a woodshed.

Collection barrels: used 20 and 30 gallon food grade barrels that contained ginger ale or root beer concentrate. Still some slight smell in the barrels despite weeks of soaking and rinsing, but no noticeable effect on syrup taste.

Syrup: still going. Color started off medium but the past week it has all been dark amber. Tasty though!

Dave

OakCorner

04-08-2015, 12:25 PM

Ravenseye

04-09-2015, 07:13 AM

Hi Biz,

I'm over in Oakham (so not too far) and my sap has definitely been cloudier the past few days. Are you seeing the same? I boiled some down on Monday night and it produced a nice dark with good flavor. I'm guessing it's ok to keep going with it until it starts to get an "off" flavor but since this is only my 2nd year I'm not sure. Just wondering what other people from around the central MA area are doing now that the weather is starting to turn.

I pulled my taps yesterday. A couple were running strong and clear. Most were cloudy. Some had nearly stopped and a few were dark brown. Actually had a good year. It seemed like the sugar content of the sap was up quite high so I did well. For a while, I couldn't keep up with the boiling. I was thinking of hanging in for another week but I caught a cold and decided to take it easy.

Biz

04-09-2015, 07:57 AM

My sap has been OK. A tiny bit cloudier than normal but nothing to be concerned about. My sugar content has dropped from 2.5-3% a week ago, to just over 2% for the sugar maples and 1.5% for the reds on Tuesday. I'm at 1000' elevation on the shoulder of Mt Wachusett so we are a week behind some neighboring towns. Light snow this AM and a good freeze so I have a couple more days of boiling ahead of me. If I can find some firewood!

Hey Oakcorner, my friend John C. has a few buckets in Oakham. Need to check and see how he did for the season.

Dave