Hobby level and managing Frozen buckets

[Ntatar]

For better or worse the weather has turned bitter cold here in the Boston /MetroWest area. When I put my TAPS in attempts were going to be in the low 30s. But the last three days they've been sub-20. I now have 80 gallons of Frozen sap in 2 gallon buckets... The weather will warm up slightly on Sat/Sunday so I'd like to boil down and make syrups Sun a.m.. Thoughts or ideas on how best to melt the sap before Sunday morning? I'm working on a 2x3 Mason with dividers in the pan.

[smokeyamber]

General observation on ice in buckets is that if it forms slowly , say as temps drop slowly overnight, then just removing it will give you a nice head start on concentrating the sugar. If there is a quick hard freeze and the buckets are solid ice the sugar is often mixed in with the ice. If my buckets are half full and freeze solid I just leave them for the next thaw and they will thaw pretty quickly.

You will find that in the center of many of the frozen buckets is a nice pocket of liquid. That is concentrated sap and will be high in sugar content. I would gather that liquid and boil it. The ice that remains you can put in one barrel and boil if you want to, but likely it will be low in sugar content. If the buckets are truely frozen solid then putting them all in one container is the second option. Then wait for a run and boil the fresh sap using the sap ice cubes to keep sap cool as you get later into the season. I have had to deal with this scenario a few times with a 60 gallon barrel being frozen solid, it never fully thawed out so I drained the unfrozen portion and chucked the ice, the sap was nice and concentrated.

Good luck and the sap flood is coming soon !

[jrm]

When I've had frozen solid, either due to weather as you describe, or because I've frozen the sap for batch boiling, I've brought my containers inside to defrost over a couple days. I've never had a concern about spoilage, even at house temps, because the frozen sap takes awhile to melt (similar to a turkey) and I've had enough ice remaining even as the bulk has defrosted, to keep the sap very cold.

[maple flats]

If you thaw it, toss the ice when it is about half the volume of the bucket: poor man's RO.

[bigschuss]

Can you get the ice rounds out of your buckets? I'm on a 2x4 Mason and a hobbyist. When I end up with frozen solid buckets I just get my evaporator going with some fresh sap and start adding the ice chunks to my pan. They sit on the dividers and kind of begin to melt and drip into the pan and eventually they fall in. Yes, it takes longer and uses more wood. But as a hobbyist, I don't care and I don't have any other choice. You'll need to have some fresh sap available for this to work. If you can put your buckets in the sun somewhere they will melt enough to loosen up the solid ice. Good luck.