Eastern Ontario 2016 [Archive] - Page 2

Galena

03-11-2016, 05:55 AM

...Susan, I love your unions and keeners talk! We do become attached to our trees 

Heh, all too easy when you only have 6 trees...and I hug them and kiss them and squeeze them and call them George :-) Last night made 1500ml of a nice light amber with the telltale first batch notes of vanilla and marshmallow at 222-223 (will probably get a digital therm as steam makes it difficult to read the older kind), was anticipating more like 1200ml...but then, I didn't filter it.

So this morning there is a nice little nitre mountain sitting in the bottom 200ml of the jar! So this means that my educated guess of 4% sugar is on the money. This amber is unusual for my first batch, but I've had it before...in fact last year's first batch was also a light amber. I'll probably get a pale gold batch somewhere along the line.

ETA: Just very carefully poured off the 1200ml I was aiming for, but I still have about 100ml syrup left sitting atop 200ml nitre...letting that muck go cold through a paper coffee filter, but will probably reheat it later and put it through cloth. Anyone have any other ideas? I hate to waste any syrup!!

jeffwills

03-11-2016, 11:33 AM

MaxJ

03-11-2016, 11:52 AM

Everything is dripping again today, so it's still good. How long it will last is another thing.

Lespetras

03-11-2016, 12:01 PM

Some people who don't filter tend to siphon. That could work.

On a different note, I'm not seeing the panic on here that I'm feeling. It seems to me (and theweathernetwork.com) that syrup season is pretty much over before it really got started. I've only been at this for a couple of years so PLEASE, someone with more experience, tell me not to worry. I'm in Inverary (North of Kingston). Anyone close to me feeling the panic I am?

Hi Jeff,
I'm also in Inverary, and yes I am a little panicky. Like u, This is my second year at it. Last year seemed a bit more predictable weather wise. These warm days and positive temp nights are means for concern.. Like I've mentioned, I've already noticed 3 moths in my buckets so far, a bit early I think. As I remember that didn't occur until April last year. That accompanied by a later tapping start means prob less syrup but who knows.. It's very hard to predict the weather. 😆

Galena

03-11-2016, 01:00 PM

Thanks for the siphoning idea, Jeff, I'll look around and see if I have something suitable. A turkey baster could work, or maybe that syringe thingy from my icing kit.

In terms of the weather and the season, we all pretty much knew that it wasn't going to be nice and predictable like last year's run. I would not waste time and energy panicking, just...literally...go with the flow. Don't go yanking spiles just yet. If your trees have an off day (most of mine took yesterday off and at 2pm today, are only just waking up again) with little or no production, just deal with the sap you already have or bottle up the syrup. If you pull spiles now (I've heard of impending 'reverse weather' patterns next week, whatever that means) you could miss another good run or two. I can tell you right now that each year that my season realky kicks in between March 19-23 and stays strong til I pull spiles, usually mid-April.

Big_Eddy

03-11-2016, 01:48 PM

On a different note, I'm not seeing the panic on here that I'm feeling. It seems to me (and theweathernetwork.com) that syrup season is pretty much over before it really got started. I've only been at this for a couple of years so PLEASE, someone with more experience, tell me not to worry. I'm in Inverary (North of Kingston). Anyone close to me feeling the panic I am?

Jeff - I'll tell you not to worry - you can't do anything about it anyway. Make syrup while the sap runs, and gather wood otherwise. There are good years and bad years and this may be one of the latter, but until the buds open up, it's anyones guess what will happen.

As an example, in 2013 I was done, cleaned up and ready to pull taps on the 29th of March as the forecast for the next week was hot and rainy. At the last minute, I had to travel over the weekend so the buckets stayed out until I could get to them the next weekend. The kids collected a dribble on Saturday before the heat. However, late Wednesday it cooled off, so we dumped the rain (and moths and bugs) from the buckets to see what would happen. We made almost as much syrup that weekend as we had the whole month before.

Leslie - leave those poor moths alone!! They just want a snack. Scoop them out and send them on their way. And NO - moths do not mean the season is over. Moths just mean that you have enjoyed a couple of nice warms days. In previous years, we have made syrup 4 weeks AFTER seeing moths. I'd much rather have moths in my buckets than buzzy flies and ants.

ennismaple

03-11-2016, 01:55 PM

We got our first boil done yesterday. Not a lot of sap but enough to fire up the RO and the Beast. The sugar was weak but using the RO to re-circulate back into the raw sap tank we were able to get decent concentrate fed into the evaporator. It was very noticeable when the high test sap started to run out and we were boiling stuff that had only been through a single pass.

My uncle came in and joked about all the boiling we were going to do and not get any syrup today. I told him we'd have syrup coming off the end in under 2 hours from the time the fire got lit. He didn't believe me but guess who was right?!?!? I love boiling concentrate! 5 hours total firing with only 3 where we're getting runoffs and we made 275L of Amber - Rich. Still feels weird to say the light syrup we made is Amber.

It had a beautiful sparkle and looks great in the glass. The Hannah Checker said it was 68 LT.

Galena

03-11-2016, 03:41 PM

Thanks for posting your chart, Big_Eddy! I remember seeing last year's visit and thinking that was precisely what needed to be posted here :-) Going to go walk the trees now and see if they're all still lazing around. Pretty sure they'll be busy tomorrow.

ETA: Yep, even the keeners were hanging out with the Union slackers round the water cooler all day. Time to give em the old 'Smarten up or you're firewood!' speech.

MaxJ

03-11-2016, 06:31 PM

Not much happening today even with the sun, couple of buckets produced and a couple of lines did a dribble, 30 gallons for the two days of collection and it tested out yesterday to 3% so that's pretty nice. I'm not too worried as I got the big tote for collection now if it gets busy in the collection tomorrow. I hope to get my pan back from the repair shop in the morning as he's try to make it flat again, I've been cleaning and fixing things up for two days now since the burnt pan affair.

Galena

03-11-2016, 06:35 PM

Ah feel yer pain...we had sun today too, temps of 7 degrees, but it was pretty much cancelled out by the 20km wind from the west. Didn't even collect today.

Maplerock

03-11-2016, 06:45 PM

Hi All,

I took yesterday (Thursday) off and my Dad and I boiled off the 200 litres or so in our tank. For us the timing was good although the weather sucked (rainy and cold) and there was very little new sap for us yesterday. The boil gave us 5 litres of light/amber syrup, plus some concentrate we left in the pan as the evaporator cooled down. For us this was the first year to draw off as we boiled which was quite rewarding. We played around with the final filtering and bottling after some hard lessons from the last couple of years and have no nitre at all this year, which is great. Overall a fun day in the shack. I was hopeful that we'd have something in the buckets today but there's very little so a weekend boil is not looking that promising unless it picks up big time on Saturday. But ... I have March Break off ... and I am not out of province for once .... so there is hope! MaxJ, you're nearby and you mentioned you've got sap today (Friday) ... how was it looking by end of day? Good luck everyone: May the Force be with you.

Jon

MaxJ

03-11-2016, 07:21 PM

Hi Maplerock
There was a few dripping very slowly by the end of the day, I'm not sure what happened if the trees are in a rest mode still from running hard for a few days, or like Galena mentioned the 20km wind would of been a big factor. The temps dropped 5.5c in a little over a hour and 90% humidity it was feeling chilly by 6pm, it's at zero now again. So if we get the 25-30km winds tomorrow it'll throw a wrench into the gears once again, my trees don't much care for the winds.

DrewCP

03-11-2016, 07:37 PM

Spent the last couple days at my parents getting ready for our first boil. Looks like we'll start boiling on Sunday. Unfortunately for me I am on 12 hour night shifts Sat-Sun so I'll miss all but the last however many hours on Monday. My 5 year old will be taking my place and spending a couple days helping "Gramps" keep the fire and steam rolling (oh poor Gramps.....) Considering where we were with my son this time last year, it's safe to say every second will be appreciated a little bit more than usual.

Collected less than 100L today. It was Sunny but the wind was cold. We still have a lot of snow in the bush so maybe that's against us too.

Total for the week is around 500L. Sap is weak at only 2.4-2.5% pretty much .5-1% off what we are used to seeing. Not too happy. Lots of wasted btu's in our future.

DrewCP

03-11-2016, 10:00 PM

On the plus side, for the first time in a while there's frost on the vehicles! That's gotta be a good sign.

JeffB

03-12-2016, 06:36 AM

Good morning all,
Well in 3 days and 100 taps collected 4 gallons that's it sad sad sad.
I have about 85 gallons in the storage tank I'm going to boil today and see what happens , I have a feeling that amount is just going to sweeten my psn and that's it. I'm not sure if it's even worth firing up for that !
Any thoughts on that it doesn't look like favorable weather for a good SAP run till the start of next weekend. I guess I can boil sweeten the psns then drain and freeze it till the next run if we get any then dump the sweet in the pan to start the boil with .
Anyone else having this same problem on what to do?

Big_Eddy

03-12-2016, 07:03 AM

Jeff. If you run shallow enough with 85 Gallons you should get syrup off. Just keep the level low and try to be steady with your firing rate. Better that than letting it spoil.

I'm taking the opportunity to clean my tanks today and then going to hope for a bit more of a run over the next couple of days. If nothing, I'll drain the flue pan and finish it and start again later when we get more sap.

Clinkis

03-12-2016, 07:21 AM

I'm about 10 mins south of Havelock and it went down -4 last night hear so hoping for a decent run today which should give you more sap. Weather forecast has also improved somewhat. Looks like by this Wednesday night we could be back down below freezing at night again (although I'm sure it will change again).

Lespetras

03-12-2016, 07:37 AM

Leslie - leave those poor moths alone!! They just want a snack. Scoop them out and send them on their way. And NO - moths do not mean the season is over. Moths just mean that you have enjoyed a couple of nice warms days. In previous years, we have made syrup 4 weeks AFTER seeing moths. I'd much rather have moths in my buckets than buzzy flies and ants.

Your right, I shouldn't be so pessimistic, especially with my lack of experience😉
Completed batch #5, made 2750 ml from 94 litres of sap. Sap/syrup ratio 35:1, sugar content 2.5%

Looks like a me a good day is ahead weather wise and with our freeze last night, we're hoping for a tsunami!

Galena

03-12-2016, 11:56 AM

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I've got the floaties on, rolled up my towel and starting to stroll up the beach to the nice dry hills above...19l by 11am looks pretty good to me. I dread to think what the pails will look like when I get home from yoga class!

Also made some charts this morning ('cause I'm easily amused) of all the collections from 2011 on. Pretty eye-opening to see the vast stretches of absolutely no sap in March of both 2014 and 2015, only to be followed by gigantic spikes in flow all through April all the way up to April 20th. Previous years when weather was warmer all winter long, still had periods when no sap at all appeared but for only a few days as opposed to, say March 13-30 last year, when I got virtually none. Then got slammed!

ETA: Inverary-ites...wait til the sap either stops all together or starts to turn sour/cloudy on you. Then pull spiles. Meantime, don't waste time panicking - it's pointless and unproductive.

Clinkis

03-12-2016, 12:12 PM

Things sure exploded here today too. Most of my buckets are 3/4 full already. Probably will have to do a collection this afternoon.

maple75

03-12-2016, 05:24 PM

Finally a decent run here today, got up to 14C. Collected 75litres from my 40 taps, mostly from the tree on the edge of the yard. The tree in the bush aren't doing much, lots of snow around them still. Hopefully they all produce eventually. First boil tomorrow.

Galena

03-12-2016, 05:59 PM

Well got a grand total of 42l today, so very happy...don't think I've ever collected that much this early in the run, will be interesting to see what happens over the next week or so.

Oh and I now have a 4th pail on #9...I was collecting this morning and was just getting rained on, steadily, from 2-4 natural spiles of bark...so I got some baling twine and tied another pail onto the tree...and got about 2l from all this new natural spile setup, about 50% increase over what that tree normally produces now. Only drawback is I can't have a lid on it, so there were some bark bits floating around, but it's definitely sap and not water or squirrel piss as my best bud already suggested :-)

Bruce L

03-12-2016, 06:06 PM

Got a big surprise run today,squirrels have hopefully called for a ceasefire,finished repairs this morning,got the vacuum running,then found more leaks.Left the bush at noon,maintaining 24" vacuum,started picking up sap after lunch,came back to the main bush after picking up sap from the bush up the road to find releaser overflowing the tank,pumped that tank up along with the tub of sap from other bush,then found another tank ready to go over in the third bush.Guesstimating around 900 gallons came in today

Run Forest Run!

03-12-2016, 06:39 PM

Got 85L from the ten sugar maple taps down the street, and most had overflowed a long time before I got there. 70L made it home, 15L decorated my pants and boots.

MaxJ

03-12-2016, 06:57 PM

Got 85L from the ten sugar maple taps down the street, and most had overflowed a long time before I got there. 70L made it home, 15L decorated my pants and boots.

That's a lot of decorating, I had a face plant and a on the arse plant today as well, came in and the wife said your all wet.;) Gave the trees a little hug today for producing 124 gallons (well that's what made it to the tote) The wind slowed down some of the trees this afternoon, but this morning I timed one tree and it was dripping 2.5 drips per second. I was happy to see a half dozen produce the 2 gallon mark today and they were still dripping at 6:30pm.

Galena

03-12-2016, 07:45 PM

Just did night check on the trees, and they're bushed after all the work they did today. Even the keeners had slowed their drip rate to 1 drop every 5 seconds, while the Union trees were already in bed snoring their heads off...but, after collecting 42l as an all-day total...can't complain :-)

Lespetras

03-12-2016, 07:47 PM

We collected 190 litres today! Now I'm starting to remember all the aches and pains of last year's collection.. yay!
Glad to see everyone else's trees have finally woken up! Maple season has officially started!

Run Forest Run!

03-12-2016, 07:49 PM

There's a lot of sweet steam over Ontario tonight. :)

5050racing

03-12-2016, 07:56 PM

Glade you all are full on hope it last for you all,done down in N.J.

cheesegenie

03-12-2016, 08:14 PM

There's a lot of sweet steam over Ontario tonight. :) and the smell of burnt pan,oops. Didn't lose too much but still a lot of work.

JeffB

03-13-2016, 06:03 AM

Good morning
Yesterday went well all for a little evaporator problem I can't get my front pan hot enough to draw off .(look at my thread maybe you can help it is named ( "Need some advice") on the tapping Canada screen.

Any way had about 85 gallons stored and started to boil then to my surprise was flooded with a run uf SAP 65 gallons in about 6 hours my main !ines ran like little streams WOW ! ! ! ! . I collected that liquid gold at 3pm and hope it ran into the night to collect this morning. I ripped those those gallons really quick , the new pan works better then I though in the drop flue section.

Did anyone else get a good run in yesterday's sun soakecd day today should be good as well if not no cold temps forecasted till mid week so will boil and drain flue pan and finish in the garage.
Hoping for 2 or more gallons when all said and done today.

Clinkis

03-13-2016, 06:45 AM

Had a great run yesterday too. Collected around 250 gallons. Should have been more as 2 of my tanks and several pails were overflowing. Today will be a busy day getting through all that sap. Went down to -2 here last night so I imagine it will run again today but I doubt we will get the flood we got yesterday.

BrutemanAl

03-13-2016, 07:25 AM

My day sucked !!! Reading all these people near by me in Campbellford and area, I'm in Codrington and only got 20 ltrs sap !!! Not what I was expecting to say the least.

Galena

03-13-2016, 09:21 AM

That is annoying when others in your area get more sap than you. I wonder how Kyle is doing down near Smiths Falls, he's only 40km away but could be getting tons more sap as he's further south than me. On the other hand, people more north of me by the same approximate distance, could be getting very little as they did in 2014. Microclimates, lay of the land etc etc...the only other bush I can compare accurate notes with is 5min drive away.

Busy finishing off yesterday's sap, checked the trees in my jammies and wellies this morning and temp outside already 7 degrees or more and everyone's got sap. May be making another batch of syrup tonight!

Clinkis

03-13-2016, 09:42 AM

My day sucked !!! Reading all these people near by me in Campbellford and area, I'm in Codrington and only got 20 ltrs sap !!! Not what I was expecting to say the least.

Surprising....but often seems the same to me! Maybe not quite as cold at night being a little closer to the lake?

SPM in King

03-13-2016, 12:55 PM

Yesterday was very good. Not the best ever, but not bad at all. We had frost on the grass in the morning, then it ran well into the night. Likely 300L on 85 taps.

Today...nothing!

Not a bad week, though. Sunday to Sunday - 1000L - just finishing my main boil on that. Shureflo pump helped on some days.

Galena

03-13-2016, 05:00 PM

Spent a couple of hours at the sugaring neighbour's today, getting caught up on local gossip, drinking Timmy's, standing around the arch getting a nice steam facial, bringing in armloads of firewood as needed, watching how they collect/transport/store/move their sap through their little system to their shack...and on weekends they always have about a dozen or so people around from their own adult kids in their 40s and 50s to their kids and the the kids' friends, so a diverse bunch to talk to and enjoy :-) Got just under 8l today, only 1/5 of yesterday's yield, but still enough to give my big stockpot something productive to do this evening.

And bottled up my first batch of 1250ml, great colour, usual marshmallow/vanilla notes...I love sugaring :-)

MaxJ

03-13-2016, 08:17 PM

Got about half of what yesterday produced 61 gallons, it seemed that the trees that were sheltered from the breeze were producing better. Got the front pan finally all cleaned up again and ready to start boiling again in the morning, another attempt to produce some syrup.

Run Forest Run!

03-13-2016, 08:46 PM

Yesterday was very good. Not the best ever, but not bad at all. We had frost on the grass in the morning, then it ran well into the night.
Today...nothing!

Same here Steve. I'm glad you chimed in today as I was wondering if you were experiencing the same conditions.

Lespetras

03-13-2016, 09:28 PM

So I see a lot of eastern Ontario taps slowed down today.. Us too! We collected a total of 323 litres in 2 days but most of that was yesterday. We are currently working on boil number 6! It's gonna be a late night tonight only half way through!

Next year.. It's gonna be a big a__ arch with lines! Enough of this luggin buckets of sap around.. I'm in it for the smell and the booze.. Forget the excercise!

DrewCP

03-14-2016, 12:15 AM

We still haven't had a huge run yet. Less than 2L per tap per day average for the last few days. Not really concerned at all. We only need enough sap to do 2 boils. That always gives us enough syrup for our family and some to give away.
Everyone was pretty impressed with the young lad. He is now able to collect his own trees! No help at all!

1376413765

Cant wait to get out and boil for the next couple days!

Run Forest Run!

03-14-2016, 01:32 AM

What a great little worker Drew. Do you rent him out by the day or by the hour? He'd sure be a big help around here! ;)

BrutemanAl

03-14-2016, 05:30 AM

Awesome pictures Drew, I love it when the boys come to the forest to help, my oldest at 6 is my runner, if I need something from my atv, he goes and gets it. My other boy at 5, sticks by my side and helps where needed, or he walks behind my atv and brings me the buckets when I stop so I can empty them into my container.

So far this year it has not been great so not allot of help has been needed, but it is the time spent with them in the bush that matters, I try showing them different things to look at and try to teach them things like.... what made that foot print? no its not a robin... its a deer lol. What made that foot print? Nope that's not a deer !! That's a bear lol. They will get it one day I hope lol

Vandy

03-14-2016, 11:10 AM

That is annoying when others in your area get more sap than you. I wonder how Kyle is doing down near Smiths Falls, he's only 40km away but could be getting tons more sap as he's further south than me. On the other hand, people more north of me by the same approximate distance, could be getting very little as they did in 2014. Microclimates, lay of the land etc etc...the only other bush I can compare accurate notes with is 5min drive away.

Portland Reporting in:

March 7 = 136L on 104 taps
March 8 = 138L on 104 taps
March 9 = 157L on 121 taps
March 10 = 50L on 121 taps
March 11 = 203L on 121 taps
March 12 = 385L on 121 taps
March 13 = 89L on 121 taps

Today nothing, time to jar and get a new fan for my arch.

ennismaple

03-14-2016, 12:36 PM

Saturday was our biggest single boil ever. 12 hours from when we started up the RO until we left the sugar camp. It was a high to mid Amber-Rich all day but we were not able to get it to Golden. Sugar content was not great but OK - better than Thursday's first boil. We've now walked all our lines and found the worst of the leaks plus the "hangers" (mental note - need better training program for volunteer tappers). All systems are running at 20" Hg or better.

Yesterday was disappointing. It froze Saturday night but we got not much more than 1/2 gallon of sap per tap. We had to wait to fire up the RO until mid afternoon because there wasn't a lot of sap ahead of us. It was a decent run but not what we hoped.

From 3 boils we're at about 25% of a crop. This week's weather looks much better considering 5 days ago it was forecasting double digit highs with no freezing at night. What we really need is 8" of wet fluffy snow!

Galena

03-14-2016, 01:47 PM

Today's nice and cold and rainy so all the trees are just shut down, saying they worked hard giving up 50l this weekend, they'll be back at work Wed or Thurs :-)

Quabbin Hill Farms

03-14-2016, 04:43 PM

Yes Sat was a good day i gathered 1,200 gal of sap ran it through the R.O. It was 2.9% coming in my R.O. took it to about 6.0. Not as good Sunday but left my vacuum running over night and got another 100 gals. overnight Sunday.

Bruce L

03-14-2016, 07:16 PM

Marty,are you getting any freezes?It came close here last night,was down to 36 at 8:00, little bit of ice on the puddles this morning,but too light a freeze for too little a time to start anything

Lespetras

03-14-2016, 09:00 PM

Whew..
Batch #6.. 338 litres made 10.7 litres of syrup! Sugar content 2.7% sap/syrup ratio 32:1, longest boil we've done.. So dark!!but good for my family as they love the dark stuff.. I'm a bit more partial to the lighter syrup with vanilla undertones
13799

Clinkis

03-14-2016, 09:26 PM

Just got in from another long day. Collected about 45 gallons today, RO'd and boiled it then drain evaporator and boiled off the concentrate. Evaporator was filthy and it's time to start fresh. I have everything completely finished off and the evaporator is soaking. Have 17 gallons of syrup so far. If weather forecast is right then looking like we should have at least a couple more weeks around here and this season might just turn out ok.

ennismaple

03-15-2016, 11:05 AM

Marty,are you getting any freezes?It came close here last night,was down to 36 at 8:00, little bit of ice on the puddles this morning,but too light a freeze for too little a time to start anything

Bruce - if the forecast says +1 or +2 C overnight we will typically freeze because we are right beside the lake. All that ice creates it's own micro-climate! It froze Saturday night but not hard enough. Sunday night was likely the same. We still have snow in the woods so that helps too.

ennismaple

03-15-2016, 11:07 AM

I forgot to add that we got just under 0.4 GPT yesterday. Assuming today is the same we'll boil tomorrow.

Galena

03-15-2016, 08:23 PM

No sap for 2 full days now, bored bored bored bored bored...but hey, I am now an official Maple Addict!!!! :-)

And made pretend I was doing something useful...tomorrow I am picking up an order of some watchcap-style toques I had made up with an askew maple leaf and the words Tap Me inside them...so as partial payment for them I am giving the owners of the embroidery shop 1l syrup to defray the cost a little...so pulled together some syrup from last year's remaining batches, sterilized a jar, heated syrup to 185 and made a nice little blend for them.

Clamer33

03-16-2016, 09:06 AM

Marty we are just 5 minutes north of the Ten Acre Truck stop in Belleville and I have had the Vacuum running since Sat morning and things are still running. We had a good draw Sat and Sun. Then it has dropped to 0.4 GPT every day since. I finished RO'ing the last tank last night at 7. And when I left at 930. There was another 60 gallons. Weird year this year. No snow on the ground here and frost in the ground. But the bush is 90% north facing. I'm sure sometime today it should stop. Till this weekend.

So far we are around 65 gallons of Syrup in 5 boils.

ennismaple

03-16-2016, 12:24 PM

My brother got to the sugar camp this morning and the 1500 gallon tank (for 1850 taps in our coldest section of woods) was 1" from the top! I guess it ran all night. The releaser is only tripping every 6 minutes but if it did that for 12 hours since the tank was last checked it adds up. He will have a long day. The RO was on early and he was fired up before 11am. Hopefully he gets through it all problem free and gets home before midnight.

With what he has in front of him I'd say he'll get us to 0.4L per tap by the end of today. With what runs tomorrow we should get to close to 50% of a crop before the weekend freezeup.

MaxJ

03-16-2016, 03:14 PM

Weird weather right now, thunderstorms, lightning, and trying to get the boil done.

Run Forest Run!

03-16-2016, 04:21 PM

We're getting pounded with hail in a thunderstorm. Weird weather indeed.

MaxJ

03-16-2016, 05:09 PM

Just dip the hailstones in Maple Syrup, yummy.

Bruce L

03-16-2016, 05:42 PM

Collected maybe 100 gallons from one bush this morning,got the vacuum pump running in the main bush to clean out the lines,almost filled two tanks,probably about 650 gallons,fired up at 2:30, finished at 5:30 with another 16 gallons of liquid gold

Galena

03-16-2016, 06:25 PM

Woohoo...got 1.5l today, this is after 3 days of not collecting...:-( We're meant to get a thunderstorm tomorrow,wonder if the change in atmospheric pressure will affect the flow, and if so, how?

Galena

03-17-2016, 06:46 AM

Nippy this morning, frost on the car, ground hard and slick in areas, still about -3...so will be interesting to see what goes on today...should get something at the end of this day!

LittleEnnis

03-17-2016, 09:50 AM

Your brother is rather tired today...

ennismaple

03-17-2016, 12:31 PM

Your brother is rather tired today...

That's better than being well rested! Vacuum pays for itself on weeks like this!

Maplerock

03-17-2016, 03:05 PM

Galena

03-17-2016, 07:06 PM

Hey all, I have some Tap Me toques for sale...see Classifieds for details. Very limited run, first come first served!

Run Forest Run!

03-17-2016, 07:20 PM

Hey all, I have some Tap Me toques for sale...see Classifieds for details. Very limited run, first come first served!

Uhm... in your ad they are listed as $1,520 each. I know the Canadian to US exchange rate is pretty low at the moment but......... ;)

DrewCP

03-17-2016, 09:59 PM

Boiled on Tuesday.
Finished off Dad's concentrate from Sunday on propane while I got the last 400 liters of sap rolling on the arch. Was able to get almost 35L/hour of evaporation on the 2'x4' flat pan. Better than expected considering the weather and low pressure.
Finished his batch around 14:00 and got around 15L of syrup.
Finished my batch around 19:00 and got around 10L of syrup.

Took about 12 hours to get everything done. That got rid of our sap backlog. We are now starting over. Picked up less than 100L in the last couple days.

I bought a 5 gallon stainless syrup filter tank and added the coffee spout option. Worked perfect. Filtered and bottled from 1 single tank. We used to filter into a stock pot then fill bottles with measuring cups and funnels. Very messy. The no drip coffee spout was awesome. Didn't spill a drop and only had to clean the 1 single tank instead of pot, bowls, cups and funnels.
Kind of hard to spend money on something that's really not 100% necessary, and when you factor in that we will never ever recoup any cost as we do not sell our syrup, but it will literally last forever. Every hobby costs money I suppose.

BrutemanAl

03-18-2016, 04:43 AM

I collected a whopping 18 ltrs yesterday, first I have collected in 3 days. I will wait till later today and go and see whats there and if there is a amount worth collecting I will bring that back and start boiling.

MaxJ

03-18-2016, 05:37 AM

MaxJ,

I hope your boil went well.

I'm looking for a little local weather intel. Did you get any sap today (Thursday)? How was the wind? I'm wondering if my buckets are still hanging!

I haven't been online this week but we had a huge run last Saturday and boiled down about 50 gallons on Sunday. Overall a beautiful day.

Jon

There was probably a litre or less in the buckets yesterday Jon, even though the winds were gusty in the afternoon the pails were still hanging pretty straight.

Finally got 22 litres bottled by the end of yesterday and have 30 litres of 40% content syrup to wet the new pan if it comes in today.
Managed another 4 litres of the syrup that was saved from the pan that I burnt last week, not sure what the outcome of the this syrup will be, but I'll do a few cuts with regular syrup to see.
Looking at the weekend forecast we might be in for another good production run.

Galena

03-18-2016, 07:06 AM

Uhm... in your ad they are listed as $1,520 each. I know the Canadian to US exchange rate is pretty low at the moment but......... ;)

Oopsy better go fix that...I meant to put in $15/USD, $20/CAN!

Clinkis

03-18-2016, 07:41 PM

Put the vacume pumps out today and was pleased to collect 80 gallons from 120 taps. I then proceeded to collect 10 gallons from 70 buckets (a complete waste of time). Sugar content up a bit to 2.5%. Here's hoping this mini cold snap will reset things and get us a few more good runs!

Galena

03-18-2016, 08:15 PM

Got just under 3l today. Sunny but windy, the wind always cuts down on any benefits from the warmth of the sun. Insane weather pattern this weekend and apparently into next week too. Just making nearup and adding to it as I collect, don't want to make just a teeny little 1.5l batch of syrup from what I have, but not enough room in freezer (or snow outside) to keep about 1gallon nearup cold. *sigh*...so will I be stuck waiting til April for the spiles to blow out as happened in 2014?

MaxJ

03-18-2016, 08:38 PM

Shouldn't be a problem keeping the sap cold now outside, -9c it should be looking pretty frozen come morning. I think we were all hoping for colder nights, but now we also need some warmer days to go along with them. Nothing running today, must of been the northerly breeze cooled everything down.:(

Run Forest Run!

03-18-2016, 08:42 PM

Galena

03-19-2016, 07:33 AM

Good news here Galena. None of the blue health spiles fell out this year. Yeah, well, most of the time the buckets were empty. lol Seriously, I was happier with them this year. I think the main difference in their performance was "user error". I think I tapped when the trees were still too frozen in previous years. This year I waited until the bark thawed a bit more.

Good to know, Karen! I still have my doubts as I know I didn't tap til the weather was really suitable last year...now we just have to wait for someone to devise a bark-o-meter to let us know when the bark etc have thawed enough to allow a tight seal, health spiles or not!

Truly oddball weather lined up for the next week or so, fairly cold, calling for snow! Plenty of time for thumb twiddling and staring at the trees. May just go ahead and make batch #2 but knowing it'll be less than 2l kinda bums me out a bit. Maybe I'll just keep chucking the nearup on the stove and let it cook down a little more every couple days.

Clinkis

03-19-2016, 06:46 PM

It started late but sap ran really well this afternoon. Was still dripping like crazy when I came in at 7. Tomorrows weather looking good too so hopefully have a good load tomorrow night.

JeffB

03-20-2016, 06:43 AM

BrutemanAl

03-20-2016, 07:38 AM

Hey all

My trees just won't run think they are defective. Lol
Been in the minus digits past few nights and sunny during the day but only daytime highs of 2Cor 3C
I'm looking for a good run but it's just not the cards I'm thinking.
Been reading a couple post of people that are 5 minutes or so South of me and wondering how their trees running and mine aren't
I have a bad case of tree envy lol
This week's forecast looks bleek plus and minus temps but with flurries and clouds and even a possible shower.
So I will cross my fingers and check my tanks and hope for the best

I have been in the same boat as you, I am in Codrington south of Campbellford and people all around me report on how well their sap is running, I even went to the extreme of hugging the tree's to see if that helped lol. I went over around 2pm yesterday and everything was dripping like crazy, I will be going over this morning to collect it, I expect to get around 60L or so.

Run Forest Run!

03-20-2016, 10:07 AM

It was already close to 4pm before my trees thawed out enough yesterday to start to drip. But by 7pm it was below freezing again and it had all stopped. Got 15L which I'm giving to my nephew for him to have some fun with on his BBQ. That ought to be more than enough to ensnare another future sugarer for life. :lol: Let's all hope that our daytime temps warm up faster around Ontario today than they did yesterday.

Clinkis

03-20-2016, 11:12 AM

I have been in the same boat as you, I am in Codrington south of Campbellford and people all around me report on how well their sap is running, I even went to the extreme of hugging the tree's to see if that helped lol. I went over around 2pm yesterday and everything was dripping like crazy, I will be going over this morning to collect it, I expect to get around 60L or so.

Like i mentioned before, it usually seems like the shoe is on the other foot. When I went back at 8 to turn off vac pumps my one pipeline tank was overflowing. I was shocked. I think this afternoon will be good too. Hang in there, I think we have a couple good weeks ahead of us yet.

Galena

03-20-2016, 04:03 PM

Everyone...just hang in there! Leave those spiles in til the buds pop. I might not need the floaties for another week but I sure haven't deflated em and put them away yet!

Had fun visiting with Bruce Leggett today, very much worth the drive just for what I learned during the two hours there. And next visit I am definitely bringing some syrup along to be assessed and critiqued by a pro. Today was also the first time I've actually seen a vacuum operation running, so was glad that the trees let up enough sap so I could see how the system works. Thanks again for your time and fielding the incessant questions, Bruce! :-)

SPM in King

03-20-2016, 05:14 PM

SPM in King

03-20-2016, 05:30 PM

It looks like I got a lot of sugar sand....must have filtered too hot. What a pain. 38 bottles.

Galena

03-20-2016, 05:30 PM

Very strange...never seen anything like it. How does it taste? Is the flavour OK at least?

JeffB

03-20-2016, 05:41 PM

OK ! OK !
I been wrong once before lol. My trees are not defective like I was staying in a earlier post.
At 10am there was maybe a liter or two in all my buckets and main line tanks , but now it's 630pm and I just poured a coffee after collecting 267 liters in 5 1/2 hours WOOOOOOOOOOOO ! ! ! (Said in Rick Flair voice) . :cool:
So needless to say I love my trees again after pumping out a average 2.38 liters per spile.
I'm just hoping they pump away later into the evening and get another good co!election after work Monday evening.
It's been a long wait and a frustrating start to sugaring season .
Hope my fellow sap addicts trees start running for you !
Catch ya later boilers !:lol:

JeffB

03-20-2016, 05:50 PM

Nope couldn't tell ya what happened never seen maple bottle like that before !

MaxJ

03-20-2016, 07:09 PM

It took until the afternoon before things thawed out to run, and it was a great run of 65 gallons collected. Still ice on the puddles and had three buckets that still had icicles still stuck there at 4pm. Had one bucket laying on the ground, the hook broke on the 5/16" Health Spout, great producer so I'll hang a heavy S hook instead.:(

DrewCP

03-20-2016, 07:53 PM

Well, it's been dead here for a week...and no end in sight for another week or so.

I just finished, filtered and bottled a batch. Looking for some feedback on this bottle. See image. Looks like jelly. Any thoughts on what this could be. This is my 9th year and I have not seen this before.

Thanks.

13904

We often have a small amount of "that" suspended in our finished product. It has no flavour and a waxy consistency. It will settle to the bottom and form a cloud within a few days to a week or so. We now bulk bottle 90% of our yield, let it settle, then package into smaller bottles to use and give away. We like to give away in glass so you can see it but have too much pride to let the cloud remain. Lol. Pain in the rear but but it looks good in the end.

Oddly enough, this year we had 1 boil create the cloud (starts off as suspended particles that are not visible at bottling temp) and 1 batch stay clean. The only difference was that 1 batch sat as concentrate from Sunday until finished on Tuesday. The other batch was started and finished in 1 day. This is the first time in years that we ran a full boil from start to finish in 1 day. We usually marathon boil a 1000L over a couple days then finish. We will try another 350L 1 day boil to see if we can replicate the clean syrup.

You can see "the cloud" at the bottom of the right bottle.

13907

Run Forest Run!

03-20-2016, 08:46 PM

Clinkis

03-20-2016, 10:09 PM

Had another decent run today. Started late again but ran really well once it started. Gathered around 200 gallons from yesterday and today. Just got in from boiling and got through about half. Making nice light syrup with excellent flavour. Hopefully we get a good run of dark syrup at some point.

SPM in King

03-20-2016, 10:13 PM

Thanks to all for your ideas and exprience. I see this stuff starting to settle to a cloud at the bottom of the bottle already. I will test filtering a few bottles at a lower temperature to see if i can get rid of it. Fyi, the syrup tastes fine.

It came from a 1000L sap boil that took 3 days. I think some research on sugar sand is in order....

BrutemanAl

03-21-2016, 04:49 AM

I collected 50 litre's yesterday, everything was flowing pretty good around 2 pm when I went back to collect it. Still had ice blocks in some of the buckets, hope to have another decent run today. I am back to work today after being off for 3 weeks due to my wife having neck surgery, figures.... once I am back to work the tree's wake up lol, last week I put in 10 more buckets in fear I wasn't going to get much sap this year and wanted to get what ever I could, now I will probably be over run with sap and not able to keep up lol.

I have a question.... at what temperature do you filter the finished product? I noticed in a few post's back that someone mentioned they may have filtered it to hot?

MaxJ

03-21-2016, 06:13 AM

I have a question.... at what temperature do you filter the finished product? I noticed in a few post's back that someone mentioned they may have filtered it to hot?

This is how I've been doing it(not sure if t's right)but it turns out pretty nice. I filter it when it gets transferred to the finisher then again when it reaches 66, and it gets bottled. Each time it goes through three filters and as the season goes I add a few more pre filters as needed. So the syrup is as hot as it can get, well within a degree or two.

Big_Eddy

03-21-2016, 07:51 AM

Big_Eddy

03-21-2016, 07:59 AM

If I've learned anything about maple syruping over the years, it's the following.

If you like the what you see in the weather forecast - it will change before it arrives.
If you don't like what you see in the weather forecast - it too will change.
If you take a week off when the kids are home for March break, sap won't run - but it will Monday when you go back to work.
If you have to go out of town for a day - sap will run like crazy.
When you finally get so much sap you boil all night to get caught up - cause it's going to be another great day tomorrow - all your trees will stop flowing and you'll be sitting looking at empty tanks.

I've given up trying to predict the season. I make syrup while the sap flows.

As usual, I took March Break off to make syrup while my youngest was off school.
We collected a grand total of 7 gallons of sap between Monday and Friday, then a bit more Saturday and boiled just ONCE on Sunday morning for about an hour.
Sunday night the trees opened up and we dragged home about 50 gallons last night in time for me to go back to work today. This week's forecast looks great.:)

This year's sample bottles in order from left to right. The Sunday boil was too small to bottle on its own.

Galena

03-21-2016, 08:25 AM

Hey Steve. My first batch has a fair bit of that floating around too. Uggh. I've been letting it settle out for two weeks now. Niter usually falls fairly quickly, but this stuff is STUBBORN! Once it all drops, I'll pour off the clear syrup and bottle it. So, it's not just you. Maybe trees in King Township and Peel Region have lumpy sap. :confused:

GAhh! RFR, you jinxed me!!! Here I was feeling all smug and happy that I don't have lumpy sap...then just finished reducing some nearup collected over the last week or so, and put it in jars and on the windowsill so I can admire it...and eh wala, sap floaties!!! Mind, I haven't put the nearup through any kind of real filters (paper coffee filters at this stage, usually) so just going to pretend it's not there. No sign of it when the nearup was cold and sitting in a gallon jug in the fridge. Tastes fine, just looks weird.

SPM in King

03-21-2016, 01:01 PM

Steve
No such thing as filtering too hot.

Tell us your process. I'll wager you pre-heated the bottles - correct?

Big Eddy,

I boiled this batch in my 2x4 pan. 3 days. I draw off after 500 and 700L. I then add these back at the end of my boil and get to within 1 degree of my ending temperature. I filter all this though some T shirts or something. I then boil in a pot over a propane burner to get to the exact temperature. I filter all this though a synthetic cone with 5-6 pre-filters inside. This goes into my bottling rig, which is a plastic bucket with a spigot at the bottom. Bottles are cold. The system has evolved over the years, but is not drastically different than it was. We filter hotter than we used to do.

Galena

03-21-2016, 06:17 PM

Very glad that I finally got a respectable amount of sap today, just over 17l. My reds are budding out, and #7 is a red, so must watch for any changes in sap...though *knocking on wood* I've never made buddy- or off-syrup from my own trees, don't want this to be the first year. Only one spile on it is going anyway so I think it's going to call it a day soon. So that means I probably have only 2wks max to get as much sap as I can from my sugars!!

JeffB

03-21-2016, 06:26 PM

Evening now just got in from collecting 246 liters in 24 hour span..Looks like weather is gonna take a little turn and give use some snow and freezing rain next couple days.
I have just over 500 liters in a 48 hours time frame so I see a boil down planned for Friday and maybe Saturday if they give up some liquid gold.
Nice thing about this weather front moving in it will keep the stored SAP close to freezing temps for next couple days.Hope I can get another 500 liters by Friday my fingers are crossed.

Galena

03-21-2016, 07:10 PM

*shaking head* Ok so now it's -5 out there, 8pm and they're all producing, holding off collecting til tomorrow though. Tucked them all in and said goodnight, now turn off the flashlights and get some sleep...but they all ignored me. Good thing my trees don't know that they're not supposed to run when it's below zero..or they do know, and do it anyway, cause they can. Now who says I don't have kids?! :-)

MaxJ

03-21-2016, 07:47 PM

Great day for sap 105 gallons and things are still dripping, not surprising though as it took until the pm again to get running after the -10c. Real crap day for equipment, ATV went down, needle valve in the carb stuck open and flooded the engine with fuel so it's in for repairs. Couldn't maintain a good boil with all the interruptions going on so that was an issue, so I'll try again tomorrow. I was ending it all off on a good note using the tractor to do the sap, the first half went great 50 gal. in the tote and off to do the other half, got stuck in a swampy area. Lugging 5 -23 litre containers a 100 meters in mud finished me off for the day. So I'm hoping it'll freeze hard enough tonight so I can get the 4X4 down to pick up the sap and then try to get the tractor out as I'll need it with all the snow coming.

Bruce L

03-21-2016, 08:36 PM

Vacuum pumps hauled in about 1000 gallons today,a little too much to face after getting home from driving the kiddies home from school,started around 6:00,shut down about 8:30, couple more hours to go in the morning will be caught up.

Clinkis

03-21-2016, 09:36 PM

Another really good day here. Collected about 200 gallons. Only disappointment is sugar content is still low. It was down around 2% today. Kinda thought the cold would have brought it up but I'm not complaining. Looks like weather going to give us a break in the sap for a few days so i can get caught up.

Run Forest Run!

03-21-2016, 09:42 PM

Got 47L today! That'll help. :D

Big_Eddy

03-22-2016, 10:36 AM

Big Eddy,

I boiled this batch in my 2x4 pan. 3 days. I draw off after 500 and 700L. I then add these back at the end of my boil and get to within 1 degree of my ending temperature. I filter all this though some T shirts or something. I then boil in a pot over a propane burner to get to the exact temperature. I filter all this though a synthetic cone with 5-6 pre-filters inside. This goes into my bottling rig, which is a plastic bucket with a spigot at the bottom. Bottles are cold. The system has evolved over the years, but is not drastically different than it was. We filter hotter than we used to do.

Steve
Sounds like you are doing it right. Maybe it was just "one of those batches"

Most of the nitre precipitates out during the final few Brix. That's why nitre builds up in the last syrup pan, or in your finishing pan, but not in the sap pan. It really doesn't matter how many times you boil the sap. Any intermediate filtering steps will help to speed up the final filtering, but will not make the difference in the final product. It's all about the final filtering and what you do with the syrup after it.

I like to take my syrup off the evaporator about 68 Brix. I draw off into a 20l stainless pail without filtering. I typically boil until I have ~15l of syrup in the pail, then pour everything except the sludge into a 20l pot for finishing. The sludge is rinsed out of the pail for the next batch.
My 20l pot of warm and slightly heavy syrup then goes onto a propane burner or the kitchen stove. I bring it up to a rolling boil and add 1-2 cups of sap until it hits my final target of 66.8Brix. At the same time, I am steaming my cone filter (with 4 prefilters) over a boiling kettle of water until it is too hot to touch.
I place the filters into my canner and pour the syrup into the cone. I watch until the syrup just stops boiling in the pot before I pour - so it's as hot as it gets. I pre-heat my glass in the oven set at 180. (I once used 225. It was neat - the syrup would hit the glass and boil a bit - but it wasn't so neat an hour later when more nitre precipitated out)

It seems that every once in a while a batch will look cloudy in the bottles. I just dump it the whole lot back into the pot, bring it back up to a boil and pour it through a fresh filter. I can't explain it - just happens.

Lespetras

03-22-2016, 12:04 PM

I think we may surpass last years numbers if these temps keep up! It's so beautiful out and the sap is just pouring out of our trees, we are currently working on batch number 9, and already have 310 litres of sap...

Our local hardware store that carries maple supplies has back orders on bottles, I guess this massive sap production was unexpected to say the least, and I was told many of our local hobbyists apparently didn't even bother tapping this year as it was expected to be a poor tree performance year but I guess you never know. I'm learning this all as I go. I'm just happy that it's still going 😆

Run Forest Run!

03-22-2016, 12:08 PM

Lesley, those are great numbers for you so far! Congrats on doing so well this season. Looks like mason jars are in your future if you keep going at this pace! Keep us posted. :)

Lespetras

03-22-2016, 12:12 PM

Lesley, those are great numbers for you so far! Congrats on doing so well this season. Looks like mason jars are in your future if you keep going at this pace! Keep us posted. :)

Thanks Karen, yes I really thought it was coming to an end and then pow! Even the local supplier is surprised. I've been working lots (no more mat leave) so it's been hard to keep up with the boil, how about out your way?

Run Forest Run!

03-22-2016, 12:57 PM

Still only 6L of 2016 syrup sitting/settling on my counter. I started my third boil yesterday. I'll be continuing to add sap to that batch when I crank up the burners this afternoon. The 47L I collected at dusk yesterday was pretty good since the trees didn't start to drip until mid afternoon. I suspect they dripped for several more hours after that. Everything is still stuck in the trees so far today. I think it's a good time to do a propane run to fill my two empty tanks as there is freezing rain in the forecast over the next day and a half. Might as well be ready for whatever comes my way.....that is if you guys in Inverary are willing to SHARE A LITTLE SAP with the rest of us!!!! :lol:

Galena

03-22-2016, 05:23 PM

OK, going to make syrup tonight from the 92l I have...somewhere between 21/2 or 4 if last year's figures are any indication! And wtf are seagulls doing screeching around outside? Those **** birds only turn up when it's going to rain....grrr....

MaxJ

03-22-2016, 07:59 PM

Great day out there for sap running, collected 185 gallons (710 litres) decided to call it a day at 8pm and it was surprising that many were still doing a couple of drops a second still. I had some real producers today in the buckets division 10-12 litre totals and still going. I found 3 dry taps today, they were producing a few days ago so I'll keep an eye on them.
Hope everyone had a great day as well.

Bruce L

03-22-2016, 08:40 PM

Caught up this morning after bus runs,11 gallons made in two hours,then got home tonight to face another 1000 gallons,why couldn't this have happened March break week?

Big_Eddy

03-22-2016, 10:48 PM

SHARE A LITTLE SAP with the rest of us!!!! :lol:

Come and get it 13934

Run Forest Run!

03-22-2016, 10:54 PM

[QUOTE=Big_Eddy;304908]Come and get it QUOTE]

If only!! If I was driving by Frankford, I'd bring an empty jug or two.

I collected 16L here today Eddy. Hopefully the dripping will continue throughout the evening and there will be lots to collect in the morning. Judging by the amount of sap in your holding tank, I suspect your spill more in a day than I collect. :lol:

Clinkis

03-22-2016, 11:17 PM

Up to my eyeballs in sap. Another 200 gallons today. Just came in and surprisingly many were still running hard. Still working on yesterday's sap but almost through it. Made another 5 gallons of syrup today. Still light and very tasty.

Galena

03-23-2016, 06:50 AM

Well I made batch #2 yesterday, was expecting to get only 2.5l and got almost 4l syrup...not complaining! I was biting my nails a little cause it finished really high, 224-225, but no sign of any crystals, at least not yet. Brought in 4g last night, and then just lugged in another 7-8g from the three best trees which ran all night...haven't even measured it out yet! The other three did some but nothing like what I found this morning. #2 is kickin butt at the moment!

Big_Eddy

03-23-2016, 07:35 AM

If only!! If I was driving by Frankford, I'd bring an empty jug or two.

I collected 16L here today Eddy. Hopefully the dripping will continue throughout the evening and there will be lots to collect in the morning. Judging by the amount of sap in your holding tank, I suspect your spill more in a day than I collect. :lol:

We spilled a lot yesterday! We gather into a 100 gallon tank using a collection of 5 gal camping jugs, plus a couple of 5 gal pails to hold any ice we want to keep for cooling. Total for the day was 140 gals, so the collecting tank was sloshing out the vent, the 7 x 5 gal camping jugs were each sloshing out their openings, and my youngest was holding 2 half full 5 gal pails that were sloshing everywhere on the ride back down the hill. He probably had 16l on his pants by the time we got back:lol:

My 15yo had boiled at least 40 gallons of Monday's sap after school, but with the new load we were close to full again, so my 18yo stayed up well past when I went to bed. By the looks of the tank this morning, he boiled off 75 gallons or so. He doesn't have class until 2:00 today, so I expect he'll boil some more. Even still, I expect it'll be another long night for someone tonight. Hopefully we'll get another couple of good runs. The rest of the gang are coming home for Easter, so it will be family time in the sugar house. :)

I was bottling last night. All of last week's output - a dismal 8l total. Made up some 100ml maple leaf bottles for gifts. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around putting an Amber sticker on these! Syrup is just a tad over the line into 2015 Medium / midway into 2016 Amber.

BrutemanAl

03-23-2016, 08:00 AM

I just got back from my tree's , had not been back there since Monday night,I brought back 65 ltrs, and have roughly another 120-140 ltrs still in the forest. All the buckets were over flowing and 3 of my water cooler jugs were full to the top, so I had to carry the full one's and dump them into buckets and pails that still had room for more sap. So right now I can honestly say..... I have to much sap !!! lol... and all the tree's are still running

Run Forest Run!

03-23-2016, 08:28 AM

Looking out the window I can see that the sap continued through the night. Breakfast can wait, I'm heading out!

JeffB

03-23-2016, 11:19 AM

Had a good run yesterday got home at 630 was snowing pretty good figured i take a peek and ended up collecting 380 lirs to my surprise.
Im away for work today and thinking if that keeps up im gonna have full buckets and drums to come home to thursdayy evening.
If that happens thats over 1000 liters to add to my 750 in the storage tank .
I cant boil till friday like u luck people are doing.
With luck maybe 1200 liters to rip through friday and sat will update later this week.

Run Forest Run!

03-23-2016, 11:53 AM

92L collected this morning. :D All you propane boilers, make sure you have full tanks going into Good Friday. You won't be able to fill up at a lot of places until Saturday.

Galena

03-23-2016, 04:19 PM

Collected 22l this morning so that and the late evening collection of 26l from yesterday are all boiling away...and I only collected from my three best trees this am! Kinda scared to go out now and collect from all 6!

Big_Eddy

03-23-2016, 04:38 PM

Galena

03-23-2016, 05:05 PM

Great work, BigE! And seeing those blue 5g camping waterjugs has reminded me that I should grab some from CT tomorrow...I just learned that one of my 15l water jugs has a teeny tiny pinhole leak in the bottom...grrrr!!!

ETA oh yeah, after 7pm collection, 66l today to play with...;-)...add that to the batch I got but didn't boil yesterday, throw in some of tomorrow's am sap (there's bound to be some) and I might well be getting batch #3 of syrup made!!

Lespetras

03-23-2016, 08:45 PM

Holy crap is all I can say.. Yes the novelty of bucket collection is gone! my husband came home from work and said.. "The buckets are overflowing again" and I was like, hmm... Because we have 200 litres still sitting on our deck to boil.. Lol! What's another 230 litres..
Needless to say, I had to go purchase a commercial shipping drum to store all of it today.
Hmm.. Why am I doing it by propane again 🤔

Run Forest Run!

03-23-2016, 08:50 PM

I hear 'ya Lesley. I had to collect twice today and got 137L. I boiled all day and didn't make a dent. I think I have more in storage now than when I started this morning.....:o Fabulous isn't it?!! :D

BTW, don't forget to fill up your propane tanks tomorrow or you'll be in trouble on Good Friday.

Lespetras

03-23-2016, 08:57 PM

Run Forest Run!

03-23-2016, 09:01 PM

Congrats on great collection day!

It was certainly nice of you to share some sap. ;)

WI Sugarpop

03-23-2016, 09:05 PM

Hey gals, burn some wood:lol:

Bruce L

03-23-2016, 09:24 PM

Karen,are you riding the tsnaumi wave? Left the bush tonight hoping it will freeze and shut down,550 gallon tank,close to the top,300 gallon tank,close to the top,400 gallon tank ready to go over,800 gallon holding tank,boiled down enough that i can empty one of the tanks into it,did manage to put through over 1000 gallons today anyway.

Run Forest Run!

03-23-2016, 09:30 PM

Sure am Bruce! Tsunami time!! Not sure how I'm going to be able to gather the sap tomorrow if the forecast for tonight's freezing rain comes to pass. Those sugars that I tap are down the road 7km. Since my sap storage is bursting at the seams the boiling starts early tomorrow again. Loving this!

BrutemanAl

03-24-2016, 05:38 AM

So here's what my 18yo left for me to find when I got home from work. Even had a caution label on it. Who says teenagers aren't fantastic??13958

Between the two of them they boiled off 120 gallons yesterday.

We dragged home another 140 gallons tonight. Took both tanks today. 13959

lol, love the warning note Big Eddy, even though I was at your place a few weeks ago for a short time, your one son I met seemed very nice, and from what you have posted on here, they are hard working boy's, hopefully they are not like that just at Maple Syrup season lol.

MaxJ

03-24-2016, 06:11 AM

92L collected this morning. :D All you propane boilers, make sure you have full tanks going into Good Friday. You won't be able to fill up at a lot of places until Saturday.

THANK YOU! For the reminder as I'd be sitting there with no finisher without fuel. I'll have to get a couple of tanks before the weather turns to the nasty today.

Went yesterday morning to find that things were full and running onto the ground from all 6 lines, so I switched them out. Everything was slowing down for the afternoon and by 8pm I squeezed 175 gallons (670L) as I emptied everything expecting to wake up to nasty weather. The last collection was done on foot as the trails got too muddy even for the tractor to get around, got stuck twice getting back to the shack so I hoofed it around filling 5 gallon containers from the buckets and leaving them along the route. I'll sure be glad to see the ATV back from the repair shop to get around with, this body is starting to hurt feel it from the lugging of 5-6gal. containers.
Finished another 23L of syrup last night, while trying to shove some food down the throat, finished cleaning up it was past 11pm.

What a run these past 3 days a total 465 gal (1782L) of sap maybe everything will stop for a day so I can do some serious boiling.

Clinkis

03-24-2016, 06:57 AM

Glad to hear that everyone is getting lots of sap. Been a great few days.

After a very long day, I finished ROing and boiling at 10pm the last of my 500+ gallons of sap from the past 3 days. Made a little over 13 gallons of syrup. Sugar content still lower than what is normal for me but making up for it in quantity. The nasty weather should keep the sap at bay for the next couple days and give me a chance to do some bottling and clean up. Weather forecast for weekend looks good and long range looks good for a couple more weeks. Was hoping to make 40 gallons but I'm already at 33 gallons so I'm thinking I might as well shoot for 50!

Galena

03-24-2016, 07:00 AM

Very glad that the trees are starting to produce and the long awaited tsap tsunami is finally arriving! Here, I'm still watching the ocean pull back from the beach, but am not complacent in the least. Barely made a dent in yesterday's total, but now I have 4 full days to devote to boiling. And I think yesterday was a record amount of sap collection for one day. Some froze-over sap in my pails this morning but the spiles are all quiet. Whew!

And batch #2 looks frickin gorgeous, even though it did what it did last year and just ran hot straight through the filters and left lots of nitre behind, so cold-filtered it again last night and it looks much better. Can't wait to show you a sample from this batch Bruce! And think I may rework batch #1, it looks a little thin compared to #2.

Bruce L

03-24-2016, 12:37 PM

Galena

03-24-2016, 03:23 PM

Finished emptying the big 800 gallon holding tank this morning in about 1.5 hours of boiling,then went to prime the pump to send sap up from the other three tanks,pump frozen up. Carried pump up to sugar house,thawed it out with hot sap,by that time sap transfer line was frozen up,fought it for almost 2 hours,then gave up.What should have been a catch up/ clean up day has turned into a delay day.

Eek...having seen your setup and bush and taking into account the rotten weather today...yeah, that would mean a lot of trudging around trying to get stuff to work. Really sucks to lose a day, esp as it sounds like there's going to be a run by morning!

ennismaple

03-24-2016, 04:21 PM

My brother got better than 5,000 gallons processed yesterday but he didn't feel like boiling until 3am so he left me 3,000 gallons to boil tomorrow. With what runs tomorrow it will still be a long day. We are at about 50% of what we need for a good crop. A strong weekend should get us to about 75% with several good weeks ahead in the long range forecast.

Sugar content was poor yesterday - by my math it was 1.5% We'll need to RO it more to cut down on the fuel consumption.

Clamer33

03-25-2016, 05:44 AM

Bruce where are you guys located. Buds are swelling in this area a little bit. So I looking to see where every one is at so far.

BrutemanAl

03-25-2016, 06:48 AM

I'm north of Brighton in Codrington, some of the tree's in this area are starting bud, but they are the one's out in the open, in the forest I tap, they are not showing any signs of buds yet. But I am sure that will change soon, as soon as I enter the forest I can feel the temp difference in the air.

Clinkis

03-25-2016, 07:06 AM

Buds are all still tight in Campbellford. I tap one red and its buds burst last week so I pulled it. I think my sugars will be good for a couple more weeks unless we get a big warm up and they are not calling for that.

Galena

03-25-2016, 09:12 AM

Hey Bruce, I tried to email you a response re my glass jugs and your inbox is full! Anyway I see where I made mistakes (leaving headroom was probably the main one, as the syrup was reheated to 180-185) And maybe you've already tried this, but if you know where the clog is in your line, perhaps something like HotPockets would help thaw it?

Otherwise, made 3.2l last night...would have been more like 3.5l if one of my somewhat precarious filtering setups hadn't taken a little tumble :-( But the remaining syrup looks and tastes great, though still has that light marshmallowy/vanilla flavour profile. Batch #4 should start to taste more like maple.

Now just sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for the trees to get going again, though I bet I won't have that problem this weekend!!

ETA: Famous last words!! I just saw that one of my burly reds, which I don't tap, lost a sizable trunk during the course of the night - so THAT's what that thunky noise was! - so have been lucky enough to round up help and get it bucked up this afternoon, esp as the canopy fell on the neighbour's property. Sad to see half a tree down, but not surprised that it was that tree. The canopy has been producing punky little leaves the last couple years and there's been raccoons living in a hollow in one of the trunks (the one still standing I think). Didn't cause any damage to the neighbour's property, which was my main concern. So grabbing some lunch, then getting on my buckin' stuff and the bucksaw and heading to work. There goes a nice relaxing day of thumb-twiddling!

Bruce L

03-25-2016, 11:50 AM

Clamer,we are 45 minutes north of Kingston on highway 15,lots of freezing rain here,line not thawed out yet to boil,hopefully this afternoon.Buds are quite noticeable in the tops of the trees,figure next hot spell will alter the flavour and be done.

Galena

03-25-2016, 02:45 PM

Ok...after about 2 1/2 hrs solid work with a couple of good buddies and myself, definitely getting a good night's sleep tonight! Got about 2 cord wood out of that trunk, and plenty of branches to let dry and process for kindling later for next winter. The chainsawer said there wasn't a single straight grain in that tree so he sure had his work cut out for him. Wonder if it was a hybrid, a red/sugar cross as it sure as hell was as dense as a sugar. It always leaves out as a red though.

Now I have some time to relax before I go and refinish batch #1, bottle #2 (cause I'm pretty sure it's as close to perfect as I've ever gotten) and do a cold filter on #3 cause there's still some nitre floating around. Too lazy and tired to go reheat it.

Lespetras

03-25-2016, 06:39 PM

Sick of propane.. here's the new make shift arch
13990
Less expensive, and more convenient (no trips into Costco)

Bruce L

03-25-2016, 08:10 PM

Finally got the sap transfer line to thaw out this afternoon,tied up low spots in it and tightened it,pumped up roughly 400-450 gallons,less than a 2 hour boil,tried bringing the sap over from the other bush but that line stayed frozen.Syrup back dangerously close to extra light.

JeffB

03-26-2016, 06:29 AM

Very cool Les .That's the first step in " BIGGER FASTER HOTTER " upgrades lol

JeffB

03-26-2016, 06:32 AM

Boiled 120 gallons in 6 hours .Nothing finished yet weather looks good for today to boil off another 140 today..

maple75

03-26-2016, 08:01 AM

Still slow here, I boiled two weekends ago, had 130l sap and finished 3.5l syrup. Over the last two weeks I only gathered 100l of sap. Second boil today, but first I had to thaw the blocks since I have been storing it in the freezer.
I sure expected more sap so far from my 40 taps, fortunately the weather this week looks promising. Still 2 feet of snow in the bush.

Run Forest Run!

03-26-2016, 08:14 AM

Lespetras

03-26-2016, 08:48 AM

Good morning Lesley. I saw your new signature stats and CONGRATS on surpassing last year's total! I'm sure there is going to be a tsunami of sap over the weekend with temps like we are expecting. :D

I set up a little make shift wood burning arch a month ago in case I needed it this season, but haven't tried it yet. The jury is still out on whether or not I'll need it this year. Since you've tried yours, I have one question for you. What impact has an open wood fire had on the flavour of your syrup vs. the propane boiled syrup? I know that smoke and ash will get into the pans, and wonder how much change there is in the taste? Any thoughts so far?

That's a very fair and good question, and one that we have been wondering about ourselves. The jury is still out on it so I will definitely let you know when we finish our first wood batch. It's true that lots of ash float into the boil, and am hoping that this adds to the flavour and not the contrary, but time will tell.
The greatest part about this system is the money.. We were able to boil down 70 litres in 6 hours yesterday... Roughly the same speed of propane with two steamer pans for nothing where as propane would have cost $20 to do that amount.
Also the ease of this system surprised us. I thought it was gonna be a big ordeal with getting enough wood to keep an even boil, but as the coals built up in the fire pit (mainly using yard scraps and dead fall) the boil got bigger and better - way more btu and efficiency than we ever got with propane though it took the first 4 hours to get the fire up to that quality. In fact, if it hadn't been for the packs of coyotes in our neighbouring farmers field, I would have kept going and prob couldve finished another 70 litres in half the time - we still have 260 litres awaiting boil down..
I would give your arch a whirl Karen, if nothing else but to test out the flavour difference!

Run Forest Run!

03-26-2016, 09:11 AM

Lesley, this is what I put together with materials that were here, and at my Dad's. I put it inside our existing fire pit. The chairs are the most important element. ;) I also got a length of stove pipe from my father's collection of odds and ends that I'll install should the arch get fired up this year.

1399713998

Lespetras

03-26-2016, 09:16 AM

This is a really good set up. I would try it out. Do you use turkey pots? ( I know you have the burners) but was wondering about the surface area you get for evaporation.

Run Forest Run!

03-26-2016, 09:34 AM

I use 4" deep restaurant steam trays. There's more surface area for evaporation than a pot. I also have a 6" deep one that I haven't put into service yet.

Big_Eddy

03-26-2016, 10:02 AM

Lespetras

03-26-2016, 10:41 AM

Lesley
If you make up some kind of grate to get your fire up off the ground it will help a lot. And find a piece of sheet metal to use as a makeshift door to stop the cold air from getting under the and and you will increase the boil rate substantially. Just leave a couple of inch gap under the "door" to let air in.

Good tip on the grate.. As for door, we left both ends open for an escape as there is no flue on this set up.. Is it necessary to have an escape?

Lespetras

03-26-2016, 10:43 AM

I use 4" deep restaurant steam trays. There's more surface area for evaporation than a pot. I also have a 6" deep one that I haven't put into service yet.
Oh that's good..We have same, we actually have 4 of them and so added a third pan today.. Possibly fourth if things get crazy, I'll keep u posted on our progress

Galena

03-26-2016, 10:59 AM

Yep, step in the right direction for sure, Lesley!

Now, much as I love this crazy hobby, the one part of it that drives me absolutely around the bend is getting it to Brix. Which I didn't care about before too much. But now I want to enter competitions so that means getting it Brix or at least in that area. So after a nice scenic drive to Covell's, I have some more 1/2g jugs, plastic lids and a so-called Quebec hydrotherm - meaning it can be used in hot or cold syrup.

So after checking the therm's calibration using my resident jar of grocery store syrup (and using Bruce's patented, shatterproof way of using the therm and therm cup :-) I filled the therm cup with cold syrup from my two best batches so far. Well, one batch finished a good 8 hashmarks or more below the red line, and the other was 1 or 2 hashmarks over! Rinsed off and dried the therm between uses with warm water, don't think that affects anything in terms of the reading, just keep syrup still clinging to it.

Oh, and my therm cup is only 10 inches...do I really need one that's 12 inches? And why?

JeffB

03-26-2016, 08:13 PM

There is no need for an escape you will loose a lot of heat that can be directed on to the pans. I found to get the best boil in hot table pans in my first ever cinder block arch keep the bottom of the pans no more then 15 to 18 inches Ave your fire. I have never boiled down on propane (only to finish) I have never had anybody hint or say my syrup has a smoke flavour to it.

Lespetras

03-26-2016, 08:20 PM

Thanks Jeff,

from an experienced arch guy those are very good tips. I'm glad to hear no difference in taste. We will try bringing the fire a bit closer to the pans, and put on a door

JeffB

03-26-2016, 08:24 PM

Warm water won't hurt the hydrometer I use mine withh boiling syrup I keep the cup and meter in the SAP pan as it boils to keep it preheated( fill the cup with raw SAP) if you do this. When your ready to use dry off meter and rince out SAP with hot syrup and test.
Just a FYI if you don't know , give your meter a little time to compensate for what ever tempatures your testing at to get a really accurate reading.

Galena

03-26-2016, 08:40 PM

Thanks, I tested all my finished syrup off cold. I don't have an arch or a SAP pan so cannot immerse the therm or therm cup, or make nearly enough per batch to rinse out therm cup with hot syrup...reason why I bought a *Quebec* hydrotherm was because it was same price as all the other therms and it is meant to measure hot and cold syrup. I doubt that a quick rinse with warm water would affect readings.

I'd just much rather do testing with cold syrup cause then I don't have to worry about syrup getting too hot and more nitre forming, not to mention even a small saucepan used to bring syrup back up to heat would still end up being coated with syrup that I have to scrape out. Much, much easier to just get therm in therm cup, fill with cold syrup and let the therm bob til it reaches its happy place and stays put. Then I can just dump the cold syrup, only from the therm cup, back into the batch and lose very little syrup from inside the therm cup.

JeffB

03-27-2016, 07:25 AM

Happy Easter everybody Sat and Sunday were great days boiled off 260 gallons, down to concentrate I am going to finish this morning.
Still have glitch with my new set up I'm trying to work through.
Over all impressed with my boil rate of about 19 to 21 gph.
I'm looking at maybe 1 more run this week and hoping my trees give me 1000 liters to do 1 more boil,weatherr looks good for it so crossing my fingers.

JeffB

03-27-2016, 04:24 PM

I'm back lol,
Just finished and bottled 28 liters from my 2 day boil.
That's a total of 8.5 gallons for the season ..
After bottling I went to the bush and my trees are pumping collect 500 liters of Sap between noon yesterday till 3 PM today and it's still flowing like mini rivers on the mainlines ;)

Galena

03-27-2016, 04:45 PM

Since this am I've collected 50+l, and just walked the trees, at least another 5g out there, and it's only been 3.5 hrs since last collection...trying to wait til 7pm to go collect, was able to press the castiron woodstove and the 4in deep hotel pan into play with pre-heated sap to reduce a few litres...I hope to see a gallon or two gone by morning once it's stoked up for the night cause the burners will be off!!

Argh!! how am I going to be able to go to work this week, come home and deal with all the frickin sap and not lose a) my mind; b) my sanity; c) my sap or d) all of the above? Fer example last night I turned off the burners at midnight, walked the trees, my best trees were still going. Fell asleep about 1am. Woke up 7am. Collected 23l at 7:30am. Noon did another collection of 31l. And the weekend's almost over, I have to work tomorrow and all week...definitely going to be running on fumes most of the time. Argh!!!

Run Forest Run!

03-27-2016, 08:48 PM

From dusk last night to dusk today I collected 185L. :o I think the sap gods took pity on me and the trees after hitting them so hard with the ice storm.

Clinkis

03-27-2016, 08:54 PM

Wow what a day. I emptied everything around noon and went back out at 7:30 and everything was flowing over. Collected over 300 gallons today. Unfortunately due to family obligations there was no boiling. I have a busy next couple days trying to get caught up and it was still running hard when I came in. I think the end is in sight for me. A couple more good days will put me over 50 gallons of syrup and then I will pull the plug.

wobbletop

03-27-2016, 09:22 PM

75L from 8 trees today. Had to go empty the buckets at 10pm 'cause they would never last until morning.

Bruce L

03-27-2016, 09:37 PM

Had to collect the buckets three times today,have NEVER done that before,good thing there is only 40 of them!! Sap from tubing I think was around 2100-2200 gallons,hard to keep track of since the tanks were constantly either going over or threatening to. Had to shut down for Family supper,went back down and ran another 800 gallons through the rig to take the edge off.

Lespetras

03-27-2016, 11:42 PM

Whew! Had to bring the inlaws over to help today . It got so ridiculous that we had to allow the buckets to overflow as we had no room for more sap! Wow what a season!

Run Forest Run!

03-27-2016, 11:48 PM

I'd be pretty sure that buckets are overflowing out there tonight, but I'm pretty much out of storage as well. Sounds like you had a good day Lesley. I fired up the wood burning arch today and have tweaked it nicely with a little help from my Dad. The flue works great! I still love the ease of propane however, and will only be using the wood on a nice sunny day. I kind of like the luxury of hanging out in the shelter of the garage out of the wind and snow and rain.

Lespetras

03-28-2016, 12:05 AM

So as to the question in difference in taste.. much as bruce said yesterday.. none! My husband says it tastes better! And let me tell u .. a ton of smoke and wood exudate etc. And a ton of nitre. . But man tastes great!
Glad to hear your collection today was so good Karen. . It's great isn't it

BrutemanAl

03-28-2016, 04:55 AM

wow, sounds like everyone had a great flow yesterday, if my tree's are like what everyone had yesterday then I will have full buckets and containers, sadly yesterday I had to go to a family get together and never made it to the forest, and I am working today, so I wont make it over till after 5 pm tonight :(

Galena

03-28-2016, 06:48 AM

Al...maybe you can ask your neighbour's wife to collect for you?

I got a 101l of sap total yesterday, no idea how much I just brought in but 6g at least from #2...thankfully all the others were holding back a little, but overflowing south spile there! Gotta run off to work though...:-(

JeffB

03-28-2016, 08:58 AM

Lol ! I see you 2 ladies have wood burn bug ! ! ! Good for you.
Wood burn arch is the way to go, boills faster, taste better not to mention the time diffrence to boil down.Just a little
hint: split ur wood into wrist size pieces and stack wood in a log cabin form and keep the wood piled up as close as u want to the bottom of your pans. THEN SIT BACK AND WATCH YOUR PANS RIP ! ! ! !
Oh ya a good pair of welders gloves found at TSC or Canadian Tire for 15 bucks will sure come in handy i tell ya ! ! !
Let me know if you try my suggestions and what you think about boiling on wood after yoy do.
Have fun !

MaxJ

03-28-2016, 09:16 AM

How much can one hole pump out!!!? It turned into a crazy day of collection for the afternoon and up till 11PM. Somebody once commented that with 160 taps I could get up to 200 gallons of sap on a heavy day, that statement was a tad low I ended up with 375 gallon (1437L)!
Just too much and everything was still running when I said at midnight screw it I'm beat. If it's running out onto the ground at the moment so be it, everything is full at the moment.

SPM in King

03-28-2016, 12:04 PM

Yes, it's been quite a week. Got back from a few days away to find my 2 barrels overflowing. Emptied them on Saturday night. Full again Sunday night. Then overflowing again this morning...and still running harder than I remember from previous years. I'm sure the new pump is adding a lot. I collected 400L on 85 taps overnight!!

Karen, are your trees still running today?

Run Forest Run!

03-28-2016, 12:11 PM

Hi Steve. Hasn't it been crazy???!!!

I have collected close to 300L since Saturday night. All of the 2 gallon pails on the sugar maples overflowed overnight, even after emptying them at dusk last night. I gathered this morning before the wind picked up which was a good decision. The sap has slowed down in the past hour because of the wind, and I'm busy boiling my brains out over propane in the shelter of the garage eave line. Tomorrow I'll add in the wood burning arch to help with the overflow. The sugar content has dropped about a point, but with tonight's freeze I'll chuck ice in the morning if I'm lucky to get any.

Bushfrosh

03-28-2016, 01:29 PM

Add me to the list of people affected by the recent tsunami! I happily cleared 1L of syrup per spile when I finished a batch early on Sunday morning. The trees had started to slowly run Saturday evening but were still not enough to collect late on Sunday morning. When there was enough to collect to get a boil restarted, I did just that early Sunday afternoon. This morning I collected for the 4th time since yesterday afternoon and, in less than 24 hours, have hauled up roughly 850L of sap. That's 17L of sap per spile!!! Same thing happened last Easter. I was thinking it was a good season that was winding to a close and, WHUMP, here comes the sap. Now, if I can just somehow manage to boil it all...

Lespetras

03-28-2016, 02:19 PM

maple75

03-28-2016, 02:48 PM

It's picking up around here too, finally! Collected as much yesterday as I did in two weeks previous. Sap slowed right down today, cold rainy day. Catching up on boiling yesterdays sap. This rain sure has me thinking about a shack for next year.
Had some company on Saturday while boiling:

14040

Galena

03-28-2016, 05:48 PM

Well yesterday I got a record 101l sap and today, *only* mere 82.4l...which brings total sap this year up to 421l. Made nearup last night and plan to make more tonight, would like to make batch #4 tomorrow night but still have to tackle that 80+l sitting outside in cold storage!!! #2 is really killing it this year, the south pail was about to overflow this morning even with all the crap weather it's still showing off and producing gallons of sap while all the others are playing it safe and easing up!

Run Forest Run!

03-28-2016, 06:32 PM

Gave my nephew 30L of the 110L I collected this morning. He's trying his hand at making syrup for the first time this year. Boy it felt great to see that sap leave the driveway. :lol:

psparr

03-28-2016, 07:20 PM

Gave my nephew 30L of the 110L I collected this morning. He's trying his hand at making syrup for the first time this year. Boy it felt great to see that sap leave the driveway. :lol:

Now your pushing the addiction! It's dealers like you that give syrup a good name. You should be ashamed.

Ontario Ian

03-28-2016, 07:41 PM

I starting boiling this morning at 5am. I had 4000 gallons in the big storage tank plus all the tanks where full at the bushes. I can go through 540 gallons an hour, mean while my brother hauled sap all day. It's 8:30pm and I still have 3000 gallons left. What a run!!

Run Forest Run!

03-28-2016, 07:44 PM

Now your pushing the addiction! It's dealers like you that give syrup a good name. You should be ashamed.

I also gave him some spiles, jugs, totes, filters, mason jars and a bottle of this year's liquid gold. He's toast. :lol: It was self preservation really. I have to have someone in the family that isn't sick and tired of hearing about making syrup. I can usually clear a room in under five minutes.

JeffB

03-28-2016, 07:45 PM

Home from work at 2pm, went out to the bush and collected 287 gallons WOW ! That's a 1080 liters..
Seriously thinking on pulling the plug on 2016 season, I have almost have 1500 liters in tanks and I'm running out of time to boil dam work stuff is interferring with my maple season!!!!!.
On a good note I resweetened the pans as well this after noon and boiled off 90 gallons in 4 hours.
Waiting to see if lines run Tuesday and decide on if I pulling the taps out.
THEN WHAT ? Lakes are not frozen enough to ice fish and not thawed enough for boating lol

JeffB

03-28-2016, 07:48 PM

Hey Karen
Did you see my post earlier today directed at you and Glenda ?

Galena

03-28-2016, 07:57 PM

Hey Karen
Did you see my post earlier today directed at you and Glenda ?

I thinks you mean me, Galena, not Glenda...and actually it's Karen (Run Forest Run!) and Lesley (LesPetras) who have recently got or built arches. Meanwhile I am definitely thinking about it, saw a teeny tiny li'l evap for $500 at Covell's

Run Forest Run!

03-28-2016, 08:15 PM

Hey Karen
Did you see my post earlier today directed at you and Glenda ?

Hey Jeff, I sure did see that post! Tomorrow is going to be nice and sunny so I'm going to venture out from the shelter of my garage and plan to start up the wood arch along with the propane burners. I need to make a major dent in all of this sap! I'll be sure to report back. Thanks for the tips on how to make things really rip.

Bruce L

03-28-2016, 08:21 PM

Finally caught up!!!!!! 2400 gallons through the rig today,sure made a big hole in the woodpile!!! Karen,I heard the peepers last night when I went to the outdoor furnace,this morning there was the phoebe back chirping at me wanting to set up her nest in the sugar house

JeffB

03-28-2016, 08:27 PM

Lol oh your fair weather outside boiled lol what fun is that ? Yes sorry I got your name wrong MY BAd!

BrutemanAl

03-29-2016, 04:39 AM

I made it over to the forest yesterday when I got home from work, just about turned around and came home when I got looking around at the first 4 buckets.... all over flowing, I said to myself..." If the rest are like this I don't know what I am going to do". Sure enough, everything was full and over flowing, I brought back 87 L( not including spillage lol) , but there is still 200 L in the forest that I plan to bring home tonight. After emptying what I could last night the sap was still running even though it was cloudy and rainy. I am over run, not sure what I will keep and boil, I really wasn't expecting this kind of run to be honest lol.

Big_Eddy

03-29-2016, 05:55 AM

We collected twice on Sunday and ended the weekend with 240 gallons in the sap tanks. Boiled dawn to dusk yesterday and went through 165 gallons. Collected another 170 gallons last night. So much for catching up.
Bottled up the days syrup last night. Into medium now. ( still 2016 Amber) Here are the sample bottles so far this year.
http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160329/a175be53308c815e611f234253ec82be.jpg
More steam today. My 18 yo has volunteered to boil late tonight.

Darn forecast looks perfect for the next two days. 😄

Galena

03-29-2016, 06:55 AM

All I can say is, thank gawd for this cold snap freezing up the trees cause I have around 100l to get boiled and a bunch to make into syrup too at some point. Also glad too that Wednesday's client has cancelled so I can have that day to catch up! And I had enough smarts this time to put my outside storage containers (2 15l water containers filled to the 16l mark, and 1 70l garbage bin used only for sap) in the only area close to my house where they didn't get hammered by the wind - otherwise there would be a huge mess of burst water containers!

And no prob JeffB...and as I spent most of my first two seasons hanging out at my mentors' sugar shack, I know to get lots of small stuff to burn :-)

LittleEnnis

03-29-2016, 11:01 AM

I'll post my brother's update, since he's probably still in a bit of a coma.

It ran insanely hard and late Sunday, resulting in us processing 4,500 gallons of sap after 4:00 PM. One of our stations was dumping every 55 seconds for a while, but averaged ever 75 seconds for most of the day. For us, that's insanely fast.

Monday ennismaple got up and gathered while the RO ran for a while. I think he got north of 7,000 gallons of sap for a new one-day record. But he went to bed after 1:00 AM both days. He's getting some well earned rest ... ok, I'm lying. He's at work right now, plowing through about 6 gallons of coffee cut with Red Bull.

Kyle Baker

03-29-2016, 11:36 AM

ya, Sunday was nuts! Best sap run I think I've had since I started in 2012, and what a beauty day to be out collecting and boiling! I had a batch on the go, finished 8 litres around supper time and continued boiling, then sap seemed to run all night and again through the day yesterday! I'm swamped, I'm glad for the cool nights as it'll help keep the sap from spoiling too quick while I boil away at it. I'm pretty sure one 55 gallon drum I've got tubing running into will have overflowed today because I left it 2/3 full yesterday afternoon, and I have another 75 or so gallons in barrels at home to poke away at. My boil off rate is about 6 gallons per hour, so I've got some boiling ahead of me for sure!

ennismaple

03-29-2016, 12:42 PM

16 hours of RO time over 2 days overlapped with 14 hours of boiling and more than 25 wagon loads of sap gathered in a 30 hour period to make 25% of our annual crop. I love our sugar camp - but it's starting to feel like prison! Neeeed sleeeep....

Clinkis

03-29-2016, 06:14 PM

I know the feeling Ennis......17 hours of ROing and boiling in the last 24 hours......finally caught up today at 3 and then I see buckets full and pipeline tank over flowing!!! I've never seen sap flows like this....it's been a great season but I've pretty much had enough!

Galena

03-29-2016, 06:41 PM

Glad I'm not the only one feeling incarcerated...and by some trees dammit! Got a measly 44l today but I have such a huge backlog of to get through, and nearup to make into syrup, that I'm glad I finally have a teeny li'l arch. It's a small, old cast-iron woodstove that my friends used to use to heat their garage in wintertime when they were working out there. But lift off the top of it, and eh wala the whole buffet pan will cover most of that space nicelty! Have lots of suitable-sized wood that I never touched this past winter, so no shortage of fuel. Just have to run into town and get a length of 6in stovepipe and a topper. Pix later, too busy boiling now....*sigh*...

JeffB

03-29-2016, 07:30 PM

Played hooky from work today and did a mad frenzy boil with blower wide open and running the pan 3/4 inch deep. I was loading wood every 3 minutes Crazy :o
I managed to boil down 248 gallons to a near finished 29 liters in 8 hours on a 2x4 arch:cool:
Things got a little intence when head tank of 200 liters ran empty just at the time of draw off I opened the valve and it just trickeled outas the thermometer for the finishing pan was climbing fast, within 30 seconds it blew past 221 degrees and hit 229 ,thanks to many mapletrader post about scortched pans a 20 liter pail of emergency SAP was on hand and dumped in .:o.
Saved the pan but needed to change my drawers .lol

Bruce L

03-29-2016, 08:23 PM

Called it quits tonight,suffering from exhaustion,running out of containers,sap smelling strong and syrup darkening.Sap today was milky,almost looking greenish yellow,flue pan looked like the syrup pan for colour of boils.Syrup pan was boiling more like porridge cooking,tends to do that with the darker syrup,figure it is not worth burning up a $4000.00 pan to make $500.00-$1000.00 worth of syrup. Filter tank is full of 35 gallons of syrup,have to get some more containers then reheat to hot pack.

maple75

03-29-2016, 08:34 PM

Galena, I would recommend you save some $ and forget about the topper on the stove pipe. In my experience, I found it impedes the draft and deflects ashes downward to the pans.

DrewCP

03-29-2016, 09:20 PM

Put in a 15 hour boil on Sunday. Managed to get rid of the 500L backlog. Think we ended up with around 4 gallons of syrup. I collected in the afternoon Sunday as I noticed multiple 2 gallon buckets overflowing. By 7pm most buckets were over half full again. I plan on running a 400L boil on Thursday. That may be it for us. I think we already have around 15 gallons bottled. Time to move on to the 1000 other things that need to be done in spring!

Run Forest Run!

03-29-2016, 09:36 PM

It's official. I can't collect any more sap until I get more boiled down. Even my travel totes are full. Sorry buckets, you are just going to have to drip to the ground until I make more room. Never had this much sap in so little time before. What a wonderful problem.

I forgot to ask this question so have edited my post........... for boiling over my wood arch tomorrow, should I use my 4" deep or my 6" deep restaurant steam tray? Any thoughts or advice?

Galena

03-29-2016, 10:44 PM

Galena, I would recommend you save some $ and forget about the topper on the stove pipe. In my experience, I found it impedes the draft and deflects ashes downward to the pans.

Must be a mindreader cause I was planning on getting a topper! :-) However I do have a nice big sieve from Dollarama that is just a hair over 6in, which is the size pipe I need. I figure that should be enough. Now I just have to figure out if I should put something like a canopy of some kind over the pan? Otherwise the boiling sap will be at the mercy of bugs, passing birds etc. Gonna be out in the open, baby! Otherwise how else am I going to deal with the sap I hauled in yesterday (most of that 82l still outside in storage) not to mention today's collection of 44l, and tomorrow's, and Thursday's? I have some snow still kickin around outside so may have to dig bunkers in it.

Staying up late letting 2g of very thick nearup slowly reduce down at a steady 219 til it gets to the 6l level. Then max it out and see how much syrup I get - I'm *supposed* to get 3.8l but I'm thinking it'll be closer to 5.

maple75

03-29-2016, 10:59 PM

I forgot to ask this question so have edited my post........... for boiling over my wood arch tomorrow, should I use my 4" deep or my 6" deep restaurant steam tray? Any thoughts or advice?

Karen,
I would use both! I use 4 inch ones because they were cheap and I couldn't find 6 inch around here. If I had deeper ones, I would use them. I boiled one over tonight by being 15 seconds late to tend to it. If it was deeper I would have saved the mess and ensuing fire inside the pan, not to mention a couple litres lost syrup.

Run Forest Run!

03-29-2016, 11:04 PM

Thanks maple75. I'm not sure if I can fit both of them on the arch, but I'll see if I can figure out some way to rig it up so I can. If not, I'll use the 6". I'd rather not have a boil over if I can help it!

Lespetras

03-30-2016, 12:24 AM

JeffB

03-30-2016, 04:24 AM

Karen use both i would suggest run the six inch with about 2 incheses in it as the main boilingl pan. Use thr 4 incj as a earming pan anf laddel hot sap to the 6 inch . Laddel it over just enough not to loose the boil
Before you know it you will be outta sap.. What you temove from 4 inch for the
6 inch replace with fresh sap

BrutemanAl

03-30-2016, 05:23 AM

I brought back 130 L yesterday after work, started boiling last night, already had 30 L sitting waiting to be boiled, everything in the forest is over flowing, I have no room to store it or collect it so it is just over flowing. I pulled a few taps yesterday also, just to much right now and I can't keep up lol. One of the taps I pulled and went to get a bucket to empty the sap into and turned around and my oldest son had his mouth right over the hole in the tree....looked like he was trying to bite the tree, I asked him what he was doing (while laughing) and he told me he didn't want the tree pee to go to waste lol.

Galena

03-30-2016, 07:03 AM

Trees all have ice in the buckets, thank gawd. Give me a chance to catch up.

So mad at myself. I trusted the hydrotherm more than my own instincts and wayyy overboiled the batch I was working on last night. So the therm is packed away, I'll use it on the syrup once it's a) done going by what looks good to me and b) the syrup is good and cold. And I was up til about 2:30 am trying to get it right. Will tackle re-finishing it later with the help of some sap and distilled. Boiling sap now, gonna run to Rona and get that stovepipe and get that stove going.

Big_Eddy

03-30-2016, 07:32 AM

so my question is am I jumping the gun by pulling spiles already? I started today as some of my buckets had cloudy sap, I thought it was possibly buddy but wasn't sure. this is the exact same scenario we had last year.. spent hours boiling to get a yucky syrup and don't want a repeat of that.
the sap still tastes sweet... so I wasn't sure if its because it was left on the tree too long as we ran out of storage containers so didn't collect for 2 days while the weather had warmed up above 7 degrees. or is it buddy?

Lesley Cloudy in the buckets is a sign of warm weather (darker tasty syrup) and not buddiness. It's the same here. Our rule is if it is clear enough to see the bottom of the pail, it's still good. If it's too cloudy to see the bottom of the pail, or it is off-colour, dump it out.

Are you tapping sugars or reds? In my area, the reds in the open are budding while the sugars and any reds in the woods are not yet. Picture below is from a red (right) and sugar 20' apart in the open.

Big_Eddy

03-30-2016, 08:17 AM

I've lost track of how much sap we have collected and boiled in the last few days, although the kids have been diligently recording it on the board. We boiled more than we collected yesterday, but are not caught up yet. We had a bit of a melt down, which dropped our evaporation rate from a nice 20gph to about 12gph for the last few hours. I had to wait until we gave up for the night to install a replacement. If the coals build up too much, the 1/4" angle glows red hot and gets soft, then eventually fails and then the fire doesn't get enough air. I get about a year out of a grate, so I've taken to fabbing up a replacement each time one fails. Syrup yesterday was getting into the 2015 Amber range (2016 dark) and very tasty. It was too late to filter and bottle last night, so it's waiting for another evening.

Some buckets were slightly cloudy yesterday, but normal for this time of year. A few trees have given up for the season now, but most are still producing very well. Now is the time of year when we usually try our very best to keep up with the incoming sap daily, as it tends to spoil quickly in the tank. We've been trying, but it's coming in too fast! We're still getting over 100 gal a day. Today should be another good day, then the forecast looks like there will be a few days relief. Whew!

JeffB

03-30-2016, 09:58 AM

Really Gelena Thats rookie mistake i made as well when starting to use one
To use on a hot test i found its alot more accutate if its preheated.
It seems to take to long to go from a colder temp to a hot accurate.
Keep trying it till you get the hang of it and trust it

Galena

03-30-2016, 11:26 AM

Jeff, I did preheat the therm under hot water, dried it off, then tried. But just tried it this am on cold syrup and though I'm still a little below Brix it's only about 4 hashmarks off now. Will try it again tonight. Keep in mind the big reason I got a so-called *Quebec* hydrotherm is cause it works on cold syrup too. I was way too tired and p.o.'d last night to mess with almost 6l of syrup at 224!!!

Speaking of which, Big_Eddy, can I borrow one of your sons to help with the boiling? You have so many, surely you can spare one? Please? So rare to find kids with a work ethic these days!! None around here :-/

Big_Eddy

03-30-2016, 12:33 PM

Speaking of which, Big_Eddy, can I borrow one of your sons to help with the boiling? You have so many, surely you can spare one? Please? So rare to find kids with a work ethic these days!! None around here :-/

They're kinda busy this week. How about early May? ;)

On the hydrotherm, float it in your hydro cup (taller than the hydro is long) and then go stoke the fire, collect sap or read a book for 5-10 minutes until the thermometer can equalize. To be legal syrup, you need 1 line of red showing above the syrup, and 5 lines for optimum syrup (66.8 Brix) Until the thermometer catches up you won't get an accurate reading.

For a quick check off the evaporator in boiling syrup, the thermometer column will rise to the same point each time (basically the top of the brix marks) so you can just float the hydro and count the lines showing. In my case we take off with 5 marks showing, and adjust for final density when bottling.

ennismaple

03-30-2016, 01:04 PM

so my question is am I jumping the gun by pulling spiles already? I started today as some of my buckets had cloudy sap, I thought it was possibly buddy but wasn't sure. this is the exact same scenario we had last year.. spent hours boiling to get a yucky syrup and don't want a repeat of that.
the sap still tastes sweet... so I wasn't sure if its because it was left on the tree too long as we ran out of storage containers so didn't collect for 2 days while the weather had warmed up above 7 degrees. or is it buddy?

If you have the energy and the wood keep boiling it! Cloudy sap doesn't necessarily mean it is buddy. We've made some nice looking (but strong) syrup out of some very cloudy sap that we could barely get through the RO!

JeffB

03-30-2016, 02:42 PM

Home from work,go out to sugar bush amd everything is full.
6 collectiom sites of 200 liter drums all over flowingon yhe ground.
I pulled all the taps, 1200 liters in a little over 30 hours.
WTF am i gonna do with that much? I still have 25 to 30 liters to finish and bottle !
Im done, this is not fun any more it feels like work ! ! !

Galena

03-30-2016, 02:46 PM

Aw no, I need one of those handsome, strong young men now!!!! Just helping with the sap and syrup!! Hell even just running the place so I can do things like go get groceries! They could really make some decent $$ helping out all of us relative noobs. Just sayin.

My body and brain are way too tired to try and process tricky stuff like Brix info right now but I'm trying - what I don't get is why does the sheet that came with my original hydrotherm (broke it last year) say that Brix is when the red line is equal to the top of the syrup, and anything above or below is too thin or too dense? So incredibly confused. Anyway once batch #4 cools off - I re-finished it earlier this afternoon and did it MY way this time, ignoring the therm - I'll Brix it then and see what it says. Once the season ends (harhar) I plan to take Bruce samples so he can assess them for me.

Oh and I still have that bag of pretty blue spiles...come and get em...

ETA: JeffB, I think we all feel yer pain. And to think lots of people weren't going to tap at all due to the crazy winter. You can see if any other sugarers in your area want more sap, but if not you can just dump it on the ground (where it'll become reabsorbed by the tree, I think) til the holes dry up. Or just pull the spiles and call it a year. I'm probably going to be done by this weekend.

Run Forest Run!

03-30-2016, 02:50 PM

Run Forest Run!

03-30-2016, 03:05 PM

Hi all,

Just looking to see how everyone is feeling in Eastern Ontario with the weather being so mild. I'm thinking not gonna be a super duper maple season?
Being a novice tapper, I'm looking for opinions on this from the more seasoned folks. Gonna try to squeeze what I can from our sugar bush regardless, prob won't be another 2015 though 😂
Regards,
Lesley

Care to rethink your first post of the season now????? :lol:

JeffB

03-30-2016, 03:08 PM

Yes .i'm done for the year, Thats it ! !
Final clean out and finish what i made yesterday should close to 40 liters(i hope)
Will dump the drums back to mother earth as a bribe for a slow and steady run next year, not this flood in 4 days lol !

ennismaple

03-30-2016, 03:13 PM

Report from the woods is the twin 1500 gallon tanks in our New Bush (1900 taps) are close to full. They were almost empty yesterday morning. LittleEnnis will have to push a bunch through tonight and get an early start on it tomorrow morning!

This is the point in the season where you gotta waaaaaaaaaaant it! If you are making syrup to try to make money your profit happens at the end of the season when all the bills have been paid. At this point we are hopefully putting some money in our pockets!

Anyone remember the doom and gloom about how bad the forecast looked 3 weeks ago?

JeffB

03-30-2016, 03:15 PM

HEY!!!!!
Now that i finished my season i do have arch for rent, comes complety with 1200 liters of fresh sap.
Collecting more sap is a upgrade option for small fee at time of rental !!!!
LMAO !!!!!!!!

SPM in King

03-30-2016, 05:27 PM

Four pans rippin' right now. Two over propane. Two over.............. wood. Yes it's true. Wood. :lol: When you can fill a swimming pool with sap you've got to adjust, or as they say "go with the flow". I'm so tired right now I'm not seeing straight.

Karen, pictures!! Let's see the rig...

FYI, sap on the ground seems to be the norm. I let my 2 collection barrels fill this morning and let them overflow all day. As of this morning, I was sitting on 1400L. Been boiling since 7am. Looks like the rain will kill me at 8 or 9...

Run Forest Run!

03-30-2016, 05:40 PM

Karen, pictures!! Let's see the rig...

OK, I'll grab the camera and post some shots. I'm splitting lilac and mulberry wood from the Christmas ice storm we had a couple of years ago. Sounds like a rather fancy fuel supply doesn't it?

Lespetras

03-30-2016, 08:16 PM

Care to rethink your first post of the season now????? :lol:

Yes Karen, im eating my words and some. To the tune of premature, over-mapled, exhaustion shutdown! We called it quits tonight after my husband threatened to head for Cuba during March next year without me!

It's been one hell of a season though, but we are finito ( with the collection part)!

We are still working on sap from Sunday as the buckets continue to overflow today with cloudy sap. The preliminary taste test of the cloudy sap is still sweet syrup ( you'll hate me for this but I was actually praying for buddy)

And so we tapped out! I figure with the rest of Sunday's sap should bring us to 65 litres but I'll continue to report!

Congrats to everyone on a great season!

Run Forest Run!

03-30-2016, 08:35 PM

Lesley, I don't blame you for calling it a year. It's been a exhausting week. My sap is still crystal clear, so I'm not sure when I'll shut it down. Once I get all of today's nearup turned into syrup I'll be in a better position to see how much longer I'm going to continue on like a hamster on a wheel.

Here are photos of my two setups. I got SO much boiled down today with four pans roaring away. But, I've got to say that running both the propane burners and the wood arch was really taxing. Having to split all of the wood as I went, while collecting sap and topping up pans was a lot of crazy for one day. The drive down the street to the sugar maples never happened today. There was absolutely no way to fit that in too, especially since I had an active fire going.

14064140651406614067

Galena

03-30-2016, 08:35 PM

Yep lots of maple burnout...I'm still working on putting March 28th batch to bed. Definitely want it all nearup'd before I hit the hay tonight. Then the 29th's batch of *only 44 litres* and today I got 66l sap total...pretty sure I'm pulling spiles soon, even after taking the red maple off the line this morning! At least the homemade arch helped a little, now need to get some shelter built around it to shield it from the wind. Took a little more time than it should have to boil down 15l to a more manageable 9 (rain started so had to get in).

Using toothpicks to keep eyes open, so ciao...sleep well...zzzzzz

Bushfrosh

03-30-2016, 10:49 PM

[QUOTE=Lespetras;306546]Yes Karen, im eating my words and some. To the tune of premature, over-mapled, exhaustion shutdown! We called it quits tonight after my husband threatened to head for Cuba during March next year without me!

Very funny! I'm trying to soldier on. I waaaaaaaaant it, in the words of Mr. Ennis. I have reinforcements helping as my brother-in-law did some boiling for me today before I took over for the evening shift. It was our first boil since the wee hours of Monday morning. Needless to say, we have some sap to get through. Currently have about 1100L of sap in storage yet I can only get through about 400L per day. That could be 25 to 27L of syrup. Add that to the 65L that has already been bottled and another 5-7L of syrup that is currently on the fire. In 2014, for the entire season, I averaged 37L of sap per spile. Since Sunday, I think I have averaged over 32L of sap per spile. And that was after what had already been a great start to the year. What are we all going to do when this craziness is over? Won't we all be bored???

a.clarke

03-31-2016, 12:09 AM

So after tapping 2 trees last year, not really having a clue what I was doing and making a liter of what I think might be buddy syrup. I decided to try it again this year...

I have 5 taps in reds, 3 in sugars, and 3 in silvers. Well, all I can say is that I was not expecting to get all the sap that I got this past weekend.

Similarly to everyone else around here it has been an absolutely crazy few days.

I think I ended up collecting somewhere around 250 Liters of sap between Saturday and today. I say somewhere, because one of my helpers was adding sap to the boil without marking it down.

Here is a picture of what I am calling my first real syrup, its about 3 Liters of nice sweet syrup, not really mapley, but very sweet and tasty.

14069

Needless to say I am hooked. Just need to figure out a better way to boil, I am using a turkey fryer and it I cant seem to get better than about 1gph of evap rate. :confused:

I still have another 120 Liters of sap to boil down which should mean another batch like this :D

BrutemanAl

03-31-2016, 05:50 AM

14069[/ATTACH]

Needless to say I am hooked. Just need to figure out a better way to boil, I am using a turkey fryer and it I cant seem to get better than about 1gph of evap rate. :confused:

I still have another 120 Liters of sap to boil down which should mean another batch like this :D

Are you using the pot that comes with the turkey fryers? Thats what I use, and yes it is about 1gph, very slow, I am switching over to Buffet pans for next year, have some ordered, going to also make up a fire pit to use for boiling next year, and also use the turkey fryer but with buffet pans instead, and I am doing away with the little 20 and 30lb propane tanks, Yesterday I had our gas supplier that we buy all our fittings and such from for work send me a hose and all the fittings so I can attach it to my big propane tank I have that runs my back up generator, just sick and tired of running back and forth for propane.

Galena

03-31-2016, 08:34 AM

ennismaple

03-31-2016, 10:31 AM

We got through 3000 gallons of sap last night - just enough to avoid the tanks overtopping through the night. The tanks filled back up again by morning. It will be an extremely long day again today!

Empty drums are scarce and ambition is about the same. Can someone ask the polar vortex we are supposed to get to hurry up and get here so we can catch up on the sap and maybe get some sleep?!?!?!

a.clarke

03-31-2016, 12:05 PM

Are you using the pot that comes with the turkey fryers? Thats what I use, and yes it is about 1gph, very slow, I am switching over to Buffet pans for next year, have some ordered, going to also make up a fire pit to use for boiling next year, and also use the turkey fryer but with buffet pans instead, and I am doing away with the little 20 and 30lb propane tanks, Yesterday I had our gas supplier that we buy all our fittings and such from for work send me a hose and all the fittings so I can attach it to my big propane tank I have that runs my back up generator, just sick and tired of running back and forth for propane.

Yeah, I am still using the big pot that came with the turkey fryer. Sounds like you and I are having similar thoughts, with the exception that I am stuck on propane because I am in the city. No outside fires allowed, even if I did have the firewood for it.

I might see if I can rig up an old propane barbeque with some buffet pans for a make shift evaporator.

Galena

03-31-2016, 12:06 PM

HEY! POLAR VORTEX! Get your big cold *** over here right frickin NOW and stop the trees from giving any more sap for a few days!

Let's see if that helps :-)

Well I have to make batch #5 this afternoon. Should be about 4l. Oh and #4 Brix'd off at 4-5 hashmarks over the red line. So I'm gonna stick with my instincts from now on!

a.clarke

03-31-2016, 12:08 PM

Hey a.clarke, it's not at all unusual for the first batch or so to not taste very mapley at all. Usually it tastes more like vanilla and marshmallow. For me I don't get the expected maple flavour and colour til about batch #4-#5. Then by batch #6 the flavours intensify and I get stuff that has notes of brown sugar, coffee, molasses even! There is a maple flavour wheel, google it and bookmark it :-0

Thanks for the tips Galena. I have noticed you and others mentioning this color/flavor progression before. I would definitely call this "marshmallowey" flavored syrup.

I am still not sure what "buddy" sap/syrup smells like though. Everyone says I'll know it when I smell it, so well see. Some of my sap definitely has more of a woody or earthy smell to it and has had it all season so I'm not too sure.

ennismaple

03-31-2016, 12:39 PM

HEY! POLAR VORTEX! Get your big cold *** over here right frickin NOW and stop the trees from giving any more sap for a few days!

That should do it!

Galena

03-31-2016, 12:47 PM

Thanks for the tips Galena. I have noticed you and others mentioning this color/flavor progression before. I would definitely call this "marshmallowey" flavored syrup.

I am still not sure what "buddy" sap/syrup smells like though. Everyone says I'll know it when I smell it, so well see. Some of my sap definitely has more of a woody or earthy smell to it and has had it all season so I'm not too sure.

You're welcome...and if your sap ever starts to look really cloudy, smell funky or off, or you start to boil sap and it smells like you're boiling swamp water...I would think you'd want to dump it! As the season progresses I become more and more careful to keep track of which day I collected sap, and in different containers, so I not only know when I got it, but if the sap turns on you overnight (as happened last year at a second bush I had going) then the damage is limited. Hopefully anyway!

sinker

03-31-2016, 03:05 PM

This is just crazy. I'm so glad to (hopefully) get a break.

In 4 days I have finished 16 litres of syrup.

Still have 160L of sap to boil.

Sitting at 25.5 litres finished.

I'm boiling in a 2ftx2ft flat pan on propane. It holds 100 litres. Getting about 20L/hour boiling rate. Not bad, but i've been collecting 200+ litres per day since Sunday. 46 taps on buckets.

Once I finish this last batch I need to spend some time on clean up. Sheesh, this place is a write off LOL

S.

Run Forest Run!

03-31-2016, 03:13 PM

Hey sinker. I've let over 200L hit the ground since Tuesday. It seems so wrong, but for many of us in this part of Ontario, we haven't got much choice.

sinker

03-31-2016, 03:23 PM

Hey sinker. I've let over 200L hit the ground since Tuesday. It seems so wrong, but for many of us in this part of Ontario, we haven't got much choice.

Blasphemy!! LOL

I have been able to keep up, but I have been off work for a week, luckily. Non stop boiling 24hrs straight......almost.

Madness I tell ya!

S.

Galena

03-31-2016, 04:17 PM

Just about had to change my underwear...gave myself a good ol scare with batch #5...I was using my usual candy therm, it was going up to around 220 as expected...then it PLUMMETED to 215 and stayed there! My first reaction was OMFG now I've made a gorgeous batch of syrup with mercury in it...but then realized that the *faulty* therm was intact. So then I boiled a pot of water (yeah I know I should've done that first) and tested it there and it was definitely boiling below 212.

I dug out the probe thermometer and another candy therm, they both read 225 in the syrup as I expected it to. But having that one therm so wildly off really messed with me. Being in a maple zombie state doesn't help! And I promptly googled 'do modern candy thermometers contain mercury' and was glad to see that then no longer do, usually it's coloured alcohol. So thank gawd for both counts.

Oh and now I have to go get more sap...I just can't bear to dump it.

JeffB

03-31-2016, 04:46 PM

MaxJ

03-31-2016, 06:20 PM

Hi
Well did a final clean out and boiled while it rained was hard to keep s good boil and steam was crazy in the shack.
I just went and kicked over all the drums full of sap that i pulled the taps on the other day.
What a shame over 1200 liters on the ground. we hope for great runs and when we get jt we cant kerp up.
On a good note total boiled just over 5000 liters and it looks like i going to have just over 32 gallons for market and personal use.
I should have rethought a bigger evaporator.
Now its to to cut split and pile next years 2 or 3 bush cords of birch for the arch.
Talk to you all soon !
!

I hear you Jeff about the bigger evaporator part and the starting of dumping of sap back the nature. I dumped 130 gallons today and it looks tomorrow will be the same story as I have just too much and getting through it with what I have is simply impossible. "Oh it's so easy to drill a hole into a tree."

Galena

03-31-2016, 07:04 PM

I've started a new thread in general discussion, would LOVE to see site admin go with my idea and implement a whole new rung to the ladder here...the only thing more willing to work brainlessly hard is a zombie, right? And I believe historically too, it makes perfect sense cause in Haiti a lot of zombies were used to work the sugarcane fields. Lots of hard backbreaking work with mind-numbing hours, yet each year we look forward to doing it yet ago...

So I think that this season qualifies LOTS of us for the status of Maple Zombie!!

cheesegenie

03-31-2016, 08:12 PM

For sure, I am burnt out but not complaining.

Run Forest Run!

03-31-2016, 08:37 PM

Lesley, in an attempt to answer my own question about different flavour profiles of syrup made over wood vs. propane I conducted a major experiment yesterday. From the same storage buckets I split the sap, with half going to wood fired and half to propane fired. The nearup is very close to syrup now and I'll be able to offer up my thoughts on any differences very soon. My sample size was something upwards of 75L+ being directed to each cooking method.