SmellsLikeSyrup NH 2019

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Finished tapping all of my trees today. 275 taps of which 40 are in Sap Sacks the rest is tubed with 3/16” and 5/16”. I got about 250 gallons since last week and sweetened my pans with that. Today I boiled for a little while just to get my 1st drawoff with the new AutoDraw. The lines are flowing really well today. Almost SAP TSUNAMI stage! Haha


https://youtu.be/W8PLIv7b8LA

[Russell Lampron]

Nice video, I was waiting for the jar to overflow to see what you did with it. I'm glad that you're getting enough sap to boil. It's going to have to speed up some for me to have enough to boil before it gets cold again. Happy sapping!

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Thanks Russell, I had my hand ready to close the shutoff once it got too full. I got another 100 gallons today hoping I’ll have 200 by Sunday to boil again. Now that the pans are sweetened I can’t wait to start really running the new gear. I think we have 2 more days of run here in Merrimack before it gets cold again Monday.

[UB29]

Looks good Scott. Firing up the new 2x4XL today for it's first boil. 72 gal. from the last few days. Not enough to sweeten but at least I can start to get used to the Mason. Will put out the rest of my buckets today to try to capture at least this weekend. Then it's back to the deep freeze.
Tough getting rolling this season. Hoping for a big March.

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Good luck!! Having the new gear just adds to the excitement and I like figuring out and working through the issues. I just left a friends of mine, helped him out in a few 100 taps. He has over 4000 trees. I wish I had them!!

[LMP Maple]

Hung my 50 buckets today in Hudson. In the game and excited. Not excited about the upcoming weather. They were all running well here today.

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

I got 235 gallons yesterday. Was happy with that as I knew I’d get some maple goodness from boiling this morning. Ran the Sap through my RO last night for its 1st pass and ran the 2nd pass this morning. Took me less than 3 hours to boil it down to almost 5 gallons of syrup. The Autodraw was pouring out about every 15 mins. I need to slow/close the valve a bit on the draw so that my times between draws gets reduced. I finally had it dialed in to about 5mins between draws when I ran out of sap. Next run I’ll get it!!

Made this little video to show family and friends my new setup.

https://youtu.be/A8eLeH75PFI

[wnybassman]

I got 235 gallons yesterday. Was happy with that as I knew I’d get some maple goodness from boiling this morning. Ran the Sap through my RO last night for its 1st pass and ran the 2nd pass this morning. Took me less than 3 hours to boil it down to almost 5 gallons of syrup. The Autodraw was pouring out about every 15 mins. I need to slow/close the valve a bit on the draw so that my times between draws gets reduced. I finally had it dialed in to about 5mins between draws when I ran out of sap. Next run I’ll get it!!

Made this little video to show family and friends my new setup.

https://youtu.be/A8eLeH75PFI

With the quick shot of the flue pan it didn't look like the flues were covered by liquid? Or was I seeing something else?

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

It’s set at 1.5” deep above the flues. Just hard to really capture it with so much steam :-)

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Woke up to another 150 or so gallons today. was 32 when I left Merrimack to go to work and all 3 of my pumps were running. Only 2 of my setups were online last night as I needed to charge the battery on the 3rd. That part sucks, I may have missed out on another 75 gallons. I think I am just going to buy some inexpensive 12v lawn mower batteries to put in place when I take the big batteries out for charging. Having 6 12v batteries to maintain will not be fun, but at least I wont miss any more runs. Rest of the week looks cold up until Saturday.

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Bottled up my 1st batch of the season last night, 6 gallons of tasty liquid gold. Doesn’t seem to be much coming in the way of sap, so that gives me some time to drain the sweet from my front pan and give it a good cleaning. As this is my 1st year with a true continuous flow setup, should I just pour the sweet right back into the front pan? It’s about 4 gallons, I was actually thinking of filtering it a bit just to clean out any niter before it goes back into the cleaned pan. My results were a bit on the darker side from what I would of expected from the 1st batch of the season, if my next batch was lighter im just worried about the "darker" sweet being poured into it and not allowing the lighter amber to show up. Maybe im over thinking haha

19550

[wnybassman]

Bottled up my 1st batch of the season last night, 6 gallons of tasty liquid gold. Doesn’t seem to be much coming in the way of sap, so that gives me some time to drain the sweet from my front pan and give it a good cleaning. As this is my 1st year with a true continuous flow setup, should I just pour the sweet right back into the front pan? It’s about 4 gallons, I was actually thinking of filtering it a bit just to clean out any niter before it goes back into the cleaned pan. My results were a bit on the darker side from what I would of expected from the 1st batch of the season, if my next batch was lighter im just worried about the "darker" sweet being poured into it and not allowing the lighter amber to show up. Maybe im over thinking haha

19550

I like to zip tie a cone pre-filter to the draw-off and drain it while relatively warm. I'll keep that in a stock pot(s) until I am ready to go again.

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Was surprised to go check my tanks this morning and see how much sap I got during the storm. Easily 100 gallons overnight. One of my 3 pumps wasn’t running because I needed to recharge the battery for the Shurflo, but the sap was running so hard it was flowing into my tank through the recirculating line. Looks like I’ll be making syrup tonight.

Video of my sap flowing this morning.

https://youtu.be/vdkgP8rYsgo

[Russell Lampron]

Lucky you! Everything was froze up here before the snow even started.

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Ended up with 150 gallons today Russell. Just finished boiling, got some nice lighter amber today. My 1st few batches were quite dark.

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Spent Saturday morning helping a friend finish his new main lines and laterals. Got home with a full tote of 275 gallons. Started processing it through the RO around noon time and by 3:00 I started boiling. My new equipment is so much faster I cant even believe it. When I would get 275 gallons in the past it was 10+ hours of boiling to get through it. The longest part of my day was waiting on my RO. I was done before 6 and had over 8 gallons of liquid gold. I know there are still many more upgrades I could make to make this even faster, but as of right now I am very happy. My only upgrade im looking at doing for next season is adding a 2nd tower to my RO. On Sunday morning I bottled up all I had and I am up to 19 gallons on the season. Really hoping for a good week and I hope I have sap for the weekend! Its looking like a good week for production.

[UB29]

Sounds good Scott. Looks like the season is finally underway.
Collected 80 gals last night. Both lines and buckets putting out nicely. Last Sunday, worked up some nice blisters tightening caps on a (200) maple leaf bottle order for a Wedding. Not sure I want to do that again. But who had the most fun?........me or my wife filling (200) -100ml bottles !!

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

On Sunday my wife got some bad blisters helping me bottle, her hands are just too soft lol From now on she can fill and I will put the covers on. We did the 200+ bottles for our wedding last year, thanks to Moncriefs Maple for sending the bottles out to Turkey for me. The people out there have no idea what maple syrup is, so they called it "American Honey" haha

1975919760

Had another good day yesterday, collected 210 gallons. The RO is definitely the slowest part of my operation now. After reducing it to about 100 gallons I started boiling around 8pm and was in bed by 10pm, amazing how fast the evaporator is working now.

[Russell Lampron]

It's good to see that the sap is running where you are. It has been too cold at night and gets started too late in the day here. I'm hoping to save enough sap between now and the weekend to boil both days.

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

I got 200 gallons last night Russell, and I'll get about 200 more today. My buddy is also going to give me sap for the weekend so I should be good for both days but I am only going to boil from maybe noon-4 on both days so that way I have something to show people. My holding tanks and head tank are in nice shaded areas so it should be good for the weekend.

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Got a full tote of 275 gallons last night was very happy with that! Pulled my batteries off of the ShurFlo pump setups and replaced them with 3 small lawmower batteries just to keep the flow going while the big ones recharged, came back this morning to put the big ones back and had about 100 more gallons. Very surprised, but the trees seemed to run all night, was 29 when i left for work and the lines were frozen, but its already up to 40 here in Merrimack. Should be another good day. I boiled down the 200 gallons of 3.4% I got the night before while the RO was chugging on the new sap. Looks like I will be ok for the weekend sap wise. I'll go to my buddies tonight and fill another tote. Up to over 2000 gallons of sap collected so far this season. Started off slow, but turning into a great season for me.

Got my Autodraw to pour out at a fairly good cadence...yesterday my syrup temp was 219.55 the valve would open and pour out for roughly a minute or 2 then close off while it dropped down to about 219.2 then just a few minutes later it would hit back to the 219.5 and repeat. The new 2x6 Smoky Lake pans and my oil burner have my evaporator averaging close to 50gph. really happy with how everything works so far. My RO is my slowdown point, but next year I'll add an extra tower to fix that as well.

19785

[UB29]

Good week Scott. Averaged 80+ gals. per day early this week, and yesterday shot up to 122 gal. Glad to have my little homebuilt RO to keep my boils manageable. Forgot you are on oil now.....must be nice not cutting/splitting/hauling all that firewood. Good luck for the weekend. Will be boiling hard on this end.
Bill

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Yeah that oil burner is pretty badass. It absolutely flies, I get my whole evaporator fully boiling in about 9 minutes. :-)

Good luck this weekend Bill

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Had a lot of good people come by and check out my small sugaring operation this weekend. Had decent sales but was more excited to see the little ones smiling and tasting the syrup. I had a steady flow of people both days and made about 10 gallons of syrup while the evaporator was chugging away. I decided to boil raw sap instead of running it through the RO so that I would have a good 4-5 hours of boiling time each day. That worked out just fine for me, only 1 family came by after I had shutdown for the day on Sunday, but I still walked them through the process. I will probably be wrapping up my season this weekend. Temps dont look good after Wednesday, so will have to just see how much sap I get and hopefully I can have 1 more strong weekend.

[Russell Lampron]

I wouldn't be relying on the extended forecast. It's only somewhat accurate for 2 days, an educated guess for 5 days and strictly going by computer models after that. I wouldn't be thinking about ending the season just yet.