Eastern Ontario 2020

[Big_Eddy]

For anyone interested, the Quinte OMSPA chapter will be holding a maple syrup workshop for beginners through large producers Saturday February 8th in Campbellford

Big Eddyhttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200122/b2b196d0746a7360a8e022e2670fa6f3.jpg


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[Sugarmaker]

Eddy,
Good luck with your event.
Regards,
Chris

[Clinkis]

Crap, I’d love to go but unfortunately I’m away that day but I will pass it on to all the local producers I know. Thx

[ennismaple]

Lanark & District is tomorrow in Perth. Anyone going? I will be there.

[PaulRenaud]

Where and when in Perth?

[PaulRenaud]

With all this warm weather this winter, any thoughts on what it might do to the harvest this season?

On a related note, end-January is looking like March with several days above zero but below zero at night. Anyone thinking of tapping yet?

[Big_Eddy]

With all this warm weather this winter, any thoughts on what it might do to the harvest this season?

Ask me again late April


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[TurkeyJohn]

Starting to get the itch....Thinking Sunday will be the day, may be a bit early, but don't want to miss out either with some folks on here started already....

Looking forward to a great season with a new spot for my set up closer to the house for convenience and fewer trips down a slippery slope....

Turkey John

[MikeC82]

For Brockville - Prescott

20818

[BoerBoel]

MikeC82: Where is the screenshot from?

[MikeC82]

MikeC82: Where is the screenshot from?

I make em.

Have a formula based on day high, low the previous night, and previous 60 hour temp trend. Works pretty good for early in the year - but breaks down a bit once the REALLY heavy flow comes later on. Still trying to tweak it. I think it has something to do with the sun at the end. Need some way to plug in solar radiation lol.

This is the results from last year -

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[TurkeyJohn]

For Brockville - Prescott

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Where'd you find that graphic Mike? Would be great to use as a reference....

TJ

[ennismaple]

We are planning to start getting ready this weekend. Our new RO needs to get plumbed, the releasers need to be put back together and taken out to the woods, the evaporator needs to be put back together and a million other odds and ends. The plan is to start tapping on Sunday to get a headstart so we can be ready when the real start happens. Since we need about 5 days to get tapped and the lines checked, primarily on weekends, we can't risk not being ready in time.

[MikeC82]

Where'd you find that graphic Mike? Would be great to use as a reference....

TJ

Hi Turkey John.
I make them myself based on the two-week temperature forecasts from a couple models I get online. Seemed to work pretty good last year. Helped me to know when I had to pick up and when I could leave the buckets out for the night. As with most maple syrup things though, nothing is every really for certain :)

[paulslund]

Long Range forecast for Ottawa. Full week of sap weather starting next Sat. Will be putting out the taps next Sat am (or maybe Friday evening). Looking forward to boiling in my new sugar shack (I made expansions this year. :-) )

20840

[ennismaple]

We got about 2600 taps in this weekend despite some mechanical issues with my truck and the ATV. The going isn't terrible in the woods - but not great either! My calves feel like someone beat them with a framing hammer.

The forecast doesn't look that warm for us next week. +4 on Sunday and Monday might get the lines flushed out a bit but probably not worth gathering. The rest of next week and beyond is too cold for any significant flows.

[MikeC82]

Agree w. ennismaple about the weather. Might get a push Sunday into Monday in Eastern Ontario, but I will believe it when I see it. We just bought a new rig the other day new stove and a continuous flow pan with flutes. Very excited to see how it works. Mother Nature seems determined to make us wait.

For what it's worth (and that's not much) - here's my season flow prediction before it all gets started. Good luck to anyone tapping this weekend!

20878

[halladaymaple]

I will be tapping Saturday here in n Addison. Should be enough to flush the alcohol out with a little help from VAC. then heading for a freeze late next week. Also a good time to check for leaks. I think it’s worth the effort and be ready to go when she flows. Good luck !

[Clinkis]

Weather forecast are as reliable as the weather it seams. Was going to tap this weekend but think I will hold off now. Long range forecast has changed again. Looks like after a brief warmup next week it’s back below freezing for the next couple weeks. If it changes again, which it likely will, I’m ready to go. With only 400 taps to put in I can do that in a few hours. Don’t want to jump the gun. I’m actually good if it does hold off a couple more weeks as I still waiting for the steam hood for my new evaporator. Cheers to a good season

[Big_Eddy]

I took the time on Monday to snowblow my access trail - about 300m of it at least - so we can get into the woods when needed.
Other than that - all I need is 30 mins warning and we could be off to the woods. I'll look at the forecast again come Saturday and consider. I look for 7 of 14 "good sap days" in the long term forecast to get started.

[Clinkis]

How did the workshop go in Campbellford a couple weeks ago Big Eddy?

[Big_Eddy]

How did the workshop go in Campbellford a couple weeks ago Big Eddy?
I wasn't actually there - we went up to Ottawa for the weekend to visit the grandkid.
But last Saturday I attended the Quinte Chapter of OMSPAs official first tapping ceremony at Bata Maples in Frankford, and spoke with the organizers. Everyone said it was well received.

Hastings Stewardship Council also had a "History of Maple Sugaring" talk last Thursday in Ivanhoe. Apologies for not getting the announcement for that on here. It too was well received.

[MikeC82]

Put out 10 'testers' just for fun with it predicted to get so warm yesterday. Stuck around the low-lying swampy area. Some promising signs. May pound in some in those kinda spots on Saturday and hope for an early Sunday-Monday run. Located just North of Prescott, Ont.

20893

20894

[TurkeyJohn]

Had my 20 taps in 830 yesterday morning, sap dripping away by 1000, spring is springing....great start to the season....


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[Big_Eddy]

Tapped somewhere between 150 and 175 this morning. Plenty of half full buckets by 5pm. Cleaned out most of the stored stuff from the sugar shack. Will have to collect tomorrow. Should have enough to boil mid week. 2020 season has begun!


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[Fort Wisers]

Hey everyone! Hope everyone had a great off season....

The post above are making me think we need to get some taps popped in.
We dug out the equipment and got it into place over the weekend but that was it, still have to hook everything up and start the cleaning process.
The warm weather had us itching to get tapping but we held off as the weather forecast is showing a decent cold snap coming soon.

Anyone in the North Grenville area put in any test taps yet?
Hope everyone has a great season......

[MikeC82]

Hey everyone! Hope everyone had a great off season....

The post above are making me think we need to get some taps popped in.
We dug out the equipment and got it into place over the weekend but that was it, still have to hook everything up and start the cleaning process.
The warm weather had us itching to get tapping but we held off as the weather forecast is showing a decent cold snap coming soon.

Anyone in the North Grenville area put in any test taps yet?
Hope everyone has a great season......

Hi Fort Wisers.

We put in about 100 taps in South Grenville yesterday - just north of Prescott. Might have been early - but was trying to get enough for a boil before it turns colder at the end of the week. I went out at dawn this AM. Last night froze in the gullies - but stayed well-above zero on the ridges. Kinda strange. Anyways, some 2 gallon buckets 1/2 full. Some 1/8 full. Some zilch. Going to put in about 25 more today on the south facing ridges and collect tonight. Trying to pick up enough to get an early boil in this weekend. Good luck to you!

Mike

[Bushfrosh]

Installed my 50 spiles by 12:16 yesterday. Collected 56.89L of sap around 18:00 yesterday. Took a peek this morning around 08:30 at a few buckets and there's likely at least that much again right now and they're slowly dripping. It's nice to see things slowly springing to life for at least a day or two. Happy sugarin'!!!

[ennismaple]

We got fully tapped on the weekend and got the releasers out into the woods plus all the tanks washed. There was still a strong alcohol smell from what was running in late day yesterday, plus with how cold it's getting later this week we'll let today's sap clean the lines and run onto the ground.

Have to say... I almost enjoyed tapping without snowshoes and no crust in the snowpack!

[Big_Eddy]

Tapped somewhere between 150 and 175 this morning. Plenty of half full buckets by 5pm. Cleaned out most of the stored stuff from the sugar shack. Will have to collect tomorrow. Should have enough to boil mid week. 2020 season has begun!


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Collected about 130 gallons at 6pm tonight. Not a bad first day.
Should have finished setting up the bulk storage tank and pump on the weekend. Figured I had another day or two. Cant collect tomorrow until I transfer the sap out of the gathering tank.
Guess I know what I am doing after dinner.


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[TurkeyJohn]

Hey Folks,
I've got a small 4x2 continuous flow pan that I use on top of my barrel burner....I typically have been doing batch boils, but really want to leverage the continuous flow part of it and looking for suggestions....

1. Should the draw off tap be at the front of the barrel where it's cooler or at the back where it typically runs hotter?
2. How often should I be boiling to keep the nearup from getting skunky, is weekends often enough or should I draw off when done, store and put back in come the next weekend?
3. I use a small tin prewarmer so wondering if I should go larger to a hotel pan or as long as the sap is warmed a bit, am I good...?

I've been bombing around the forum getting info but don't see any commentary on these details....

Turkey John

[Big_Eddy]

Hey Folks,
I've got a small 4x2 continuous flow pan that I use on top of my barrel burner....I typically have been doing batch boils, but really want to leverage the continuous flow part of it and looking for suggestions....

1. Should the draw off tap be at the front of the barrel where it's cooler or at the back where it typically runs hotter?
2. How often should I be boiling to keep the nearup from getting skunky, is weekends often enough or should I draw off when done, store and put back in come the next weekend?
3. I use a small tin prewarmer so wondering if I should go larger to a hotel pan or as long as the sap is warmed a bit, am I good...?

I've been bombing around the forum getting info but don't see any commentary on these details....

Turkey John
1) As long as your pan boils at the front, it's usually preferred to have the draw off at the front where it is slightly cooler, as that gives you more control and makes for less "emergencies"
2) it all depends on temperatures. If it is going to be warm - you don't want to leave your pans full for more than a couple of days. Early in the season (like now) if the sweet freezes, you can leave it as long as it stays frozen with no concerns. Better to be happy than sad so if in doubt, drain and freeze / refrigerate / bury in snowbank.
3) Any additional heat you capture from the steam is heat that doesn't need to be added later. Every bit helps. Just be careful with your placement so condensation on the outside of the warming tray does not drip back into your pan.

[TurkeyJohn]

1) As long as your pan boils at the front, it's usually preferred to have the draw off at the front where it is slightly cooler, as that gives you more control and makes for less "emergencies"
2) it all depends on temperatures. If it is going to be warm - you don't want to leave your pans full for more than a couple of days. Early in the season (like now) if the sweet freezes, you can leave it as long as it stays frozen with no concerns. Better to be happy than sad so if in doubt, drain and freeze / refrigerate / bury in snowbank.
3) Any additional heat you capture from the steam is heat that doesn't need to be added later. Every bit helps. Just be careful with your placement so condensation on the outside of the warming tray does not drip back into your pan.

Great info Eddy, have been messing with this for a few years and got the new pan last year, but didn't work quite like I wanted it too....thanks again...

[jungmaria]

Is a couple days run on the ground usually enough to clean the lines? Last year was my first on 3/16. Tapped yesterday am hoping the run yesterday & today would be enough to have lines clean for (hopefully) next week's run. Do you replace all your taps each year? I didn't for the ones that seemed in good shape and still had alcohol in the drops.
Thanks in advance, I've been lurking here for a couple of years now and you've all been such a great source of info!

[PaulRenaud]

Weather forecast for northern side of Lanark county looks promising this coming week, but the week following looks touch and go for daytime freezing. Seeing mixed forecasts from different weather providers.

The big local producers on evaporators have already tapped, but I'm on buckets so I usually wait a week or so before I tap.
So guess I'll be tapping on Monday.

Has anyone measured the Brix levels yet to compare to last year?

[MarkReynolds]

I'm just east of London, I tested my sap between 1.8-2.2 I knew it would be as good as last year were my avg the whole season was 3.5.

[Bricklayer]

Got 200 tapped after work today then it got too dark. Fixed some damaged drops and lines also. Nice to not have too much snow in the Bush. First time I’ve ever tapped in the pouring rain though. Then when I was done it stopped raining. Of course.

[Bruce L]

Got another 240 or so tapped this morning between bus runs before it started to rain,should hopefully finish tapping second bush tomorrow morning. Found two destroyed drop lines,had just been through the bush last week making repairs. Little buggers have gone into hiding now that I have the pellet gun at the sugar house,before that they used to chatter at me from the walls and roof when I walked by

[Clinkis]

I managed to get almost all my 400 taps in on Sunday. Put the last few in yesterday and fired up the vacuum pump. I spent most of the afternoon fixing leaks and sags. Let it run on the ground for a couple hours to flush the lines and then started collecting. Tank was 3/4 full by 9 last night when I shut down the pump. Spent most of the evening getting things setup and cleaned up in the sugar house. So I think I’m almost ready to go! Probably do my first boil Wednesday afternoon.

[Galena]

Hey Wisers, I should be tapping this coming weekend. My bush maples should go well but the big ones always take much longer to start.

BUT....I have to finish up the reno project I foolishly undertook thinking I could get it done in 1 week...welllet's just say this'll learn me to not go tackle a 600sq ft popcorn ceiling removal/sanding/mudding/painting going into sugaring season ever again!!! Just finishing drinking rocket fuel now so I van get up there and hack away at the remaining 200sq ft or so. I may have a very short season this year.

[Bricklayer]

Out in the pouring rain again tonight. Made it to the very back of the bush in the swamp section. Always leave it till last. So I bring everything I need to fix leaks patch a mainline. Fix a drop etc. Lugged it all back there and first hole I drilled in the very farthest away tree I broke my tapping bit off. And of course it’s my last one. Broke the other one last year. And said I’d buy a new spare. But I didn’t. Guess I’ll finish up tomorrow.

[Big_Eddy]

Good sap today here, although I got drenched bringing it in. 130 gallons from 160 taps. Have more than enough that it is time to start boiling.


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[Galena]

[QUOTE=Big_Eddy;380587]Good sap today here, although I got drenched bringing it in. 130 gallons from 160 taps. Have more than enough that it is time to start boiling./QUOTE]

Wow that's a good haul for this time of year...hopefully my trees will wait a few more days...hurtling headlong from one project into another!

[MikeC82]

Got 87 Gallons from 137 pails yesterday. .64 gallons per pail is a pretty good rate for my trees. Didn't freeze overnight by the St. Lawrence though. Won't be much today likely.

[Fort Wisers]

Got 18 taps in yesterday morning, hoping to do a total of 20 this year just ran out of time to do the last 2!
What a beautiful morning it was, most were dripping fairly steady by 9:30am.
Today I hope to get a new (larger) gravity tank installed and a few small mods to the evaporator.

[Clinkis]

Out in the pouring rain again tonight. Made it to the very back of the bush in the swamp section. Always leave it till last. So I bring everything I need to fix leaks patch a mainline. Fix a drop etc. Lugged it all back there and first hole I drilled in the very farthest away tree I broke my tapping bit off. And of course it’s my last one. Broke the other one last year. And said I’d buy a new spare. But I didn’t. Guess I’ll finish up tomorrow.

That really sucks I’ve been there and done that a couple of times. Now I never go to the woods with out at least two spares. Some of my taps are high and awkward to do. I usually break at least one bit a year. I think this year is the first time I tapped entirely on one bit

[paulslund]

I finally got my taps in Monday afternoon...got totally drenched in the process. I had already buried my buckets in the snow on the ground two weekends ago when everything was really soft (and before the rain/snow/freezing last week) so no digging through crusts of snow this time! I feel ahead of the game.. now to finish the mods to the evap before my anticipated Sunday boil. I think I have about 2L/bucket give or take but no freeze overnight here either so not much to write home about. Put out 31 taps again this year. Weird weather in the forecast for next week.. but at least the rain has turned to a lot of snow (knock wood!). Might still be some local sledding to be had yet! :-)

[PaulRenaud]

Currently have 59 producing taps in Lanark, with an average volume of just over 1 L per tap.

Brix ranges from 2 - 2.6 with an average of 2.3.

[Fort Wisers]

Got the new tank installed and the evap mods done yesterday.
The new tank gives us ~220 liters of storage (old tank was about 100).
On the evap we welded a plate onto the stove body that extends out to under the float box.
We're hoping it helps pre-heat the incoming sap a bit, we'll see how that goes on the first boil.
Also did a bit more brick work on the inside.

Collected this morning, got about 40 liters since tapping Monday morning, we're in North Grenville.
Lastly add two more taps this morning......

[Bruce L]

Finally finished tapping the tubing this morning,feeling like we’re behind the eight ball again. Decided next year will take the month of March off from driving school bus so we don’t miss the first runs,many have made syrup around us already.

[Big_Eddy]

Our Sugar house is steaming again!!
Started with 300 gallons this morning, boiled off somewhere around 130, collected 75 more.
Looks like we will be generating steam again tomorrow and much of the weekend. Forecast looks like good sap weather as well.
Here's to a great 2020 season.

[Fort Wisers]

Right on Big_Eddy!
We collected another bit last night, we're now at a total of 77 liters of sap.
Water tested the new gravity tank yesterday, cleaned all the pans and finished up organizing.
Hoping to have enough for our first boil Sunday or Monday.


Just getting caught up on older posts:
Galena -> I hope your renovation goes well and comes to an end quickly!
TurkeyJohn -> I hope that new continuous pan works well for you
MikeC82 -> Thanks for your initial report of South Grenville

Everyone-> As Big_Eddy mentioned, here's to a great season indeed!

[Big_Eddy]

Boiled another 100+ gallons today. Still have 150 plus what is in the woods. Did not collect today as it was a light flow day and expected to freeze overnight. Might as well let nature do some concentrating for us. Will collect tomorrow and discard any ice.
More steam tomorrow and Sunday.


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[Galena]

Wow so glad everyone's having a good run....my taps still aren't in, and have yet to stock up Shack Whacky with firewood etc...but frickin current reno is almost done!!! My wondereful handyman mudded yesterday, I sanded today, about to do some minor patching, hope to have paint up Sat night and Sunday, clean up everything and get it back in place....then Monday drag out sugaring stuff, get out there and frickin tap!!! :-)

[Clinkis]

Collected about 750 gallons the last few days. Processed about 500 gallons Wednesday and Thursday evening. Will get through the rest of it tomorrow. New evaporator sweetened and working good so far. Finished about 30L. Forecast looking good the next week so should keep everyone hopping! Cheers to a good season for everyone.

[JeffB]

Happy Maple season to you all..

Season off to rough start but all taps are in and freaking repairs to line completed after the deer had several parties
And made a feast out of the lines.
All that's left to do is clean and sanazite the sugar shack and will do that sunday.
Collection might be a bit of a issue I still have big drifts in low areas to try and get sap hauler thru.
Hope next couple days of sun knocks the deep stuff down..

[Lespetras]

Hi everyone! Good to see you all back at it! We tapped here March 1.. ran well a couple of days.. slow today. Forecast looks good for the week!
Hope we all go well again this year!!

[Galena]

...Hope next couple days of sun knocks the deep stuff down..

Do what I did and lay a trail of birdseed down the pathways you take out to the sugarbush...turkeys will come along and eat and in the process scratch through the snow pretty much down to the ground...every little bit helps! hehehe

ETA: *waving* Hey Lesley! Glad to see you here, hope you have a great season!

[MikeC82]

My sap partner bought us a new pan/stove this year. We boiled yesterday first time. Its a continuous flow pan. We've got almost 90 gallons in the thing so far and have yet to draw any off. Does anyone else use one of these pans?

Its pretty big. Holds 10 gallons at float level. The sap in the final partition was running about 216 degrees when we called it off last night. Shooting for 220. Once we figured out the damper and right way to load the wood we were cruising along at about 13 gallons/hr.

It is pretty neat to see it work, but we were amazed at how much sap has to go into the thing before any syrup is ready. At 40-1 we figured we would get about a gallon once we had 40 into it. Certainly wasnt the case. Would be interested to hear from anyone familiar with this type of pan in terms of how frequently we will have to 'pour off' once it does start to make syrup.

Should get a big sap flow today-tomorrow, Good luck everyone.

Mike

[Clinkis]

That doesn’t sound unreasonable. My 18”x60” continuous flow takes at least 100 gallons of sap before I see any syrup.

[Bricklayer]

Just keep boiling and adding sap. Once you get to Syrup just keep your firing up and don't leave doors open to long. You should be able to get small drawoffs every 20-30 minutes.

[Fort Wisers]

My sap partner bought us a new pan/stove this year. We boiled yesterday first time. Its a continuous flow pan. We've got almost 90 gallons in the thing so far and have yet to draw any off. Does anyone else use one of these pans?


Mike

We run a small continuous flow pan and take nearly 250-300 L (depending on incoming sap brix) to start drawing off. Once you start drawing then the next drawing will be much quicker, obviously.
And then at the end of your year (or when you decide to empty the pan for any reason) of your sweet, you will have a monster load of finished to end things off once.
We went through the same questions our first time firing up the pan we're running and learned a lot talking back and forth (on this board) and reading Big Eddy's link in his signature called "How much sap to sweeten".
He has a good calculation description to help you estimate how much sap it will take to get into your first draw, when you start running the numbers in his calculations it all becomes very clear.

Hope that helps.

[Galena]

Don't mind me, I'm just lurking and living vicariously through everyone else's sugaring season :-) I am just hanging out here patiently waiting for the last few little patches of mud to cure thoroughly, so I can do one last sand then put down drop sheets and frickin PAINT!!! If I ever get the urge to do renos before sugaring season, someone please remind me of what a terrible idea it is :-)

[Vandy]

Finally tapped today. Only 62 buckets this year. Off to TO for the week leaving kids to collect and store. Weekend batch boiling for me this year :)

[Bruce L]

Finally got the last of the tapping done this evening,20 buckets around the sugar house. Warmed up enough to get the vacuum pumps running,and no end to leaks. Skipped lunch and my sister came along to help,must have walked what feels like 15 miles. Got 2 bushes covered this afternoon,and the third one covered after supper,should be upwards of 1000 gallons to roll through tomorrow morning

[Big_Eddy]

Started Saturday with about 150 gallons in the tank. Boiled both days. 190 gallons in the tank after collecting tonight. Hmmm.

Did collect a couple of loads of rocket fuel today too. Should be enough stacked close to the evaporator for a few days. Weather the next few days looks warm. Might give us a chance to get caught up.

Have been having very good runs for the first week of the season.


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[Big_Eddy]

Its pretty big. Holds 10 gallons at float level. The sap in the final partition was running about 216 degrees when we called it off last night. Shooting for 220. Once we figured out the damper and right way to load the wood we were cruising along at about 13 gallons/hr.

Mike

If it holds 10 gallons you are likely looking at ~200 until first syrup, depending on sap sweetness, depth, rate of evaporation, and how steady you keep the fire.

I got my first syrup at 60 gallons this year, but I was running very shallow and hot. Fastest ever. Normally closer to 100+ for my 20x 66 evaporator. Sweet sap this season.



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[Fort Wisers]

Boiling this afternoon, gorgeous weather, could be cooler but we get what we get.....

www.fort-wisers.ca/Albums/Sugarin Pics for Forum Use/Sugarin2020.JPG

[Galena]

Wisers, are you getting a sap tsunami this early? Holy crap....

[Big_Eddy]

Boiling this afternoon, gorgeous weather, could be cooler but we get what we get.....

21178

Same here
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200309/4bf530160590ba1bd94e5dfd83754a95.jpg

Tank was full when I started boiling this morning. Still have a ways to go.

[marlmucker]

With the warm weather over the next few days the sap might not run much. When this happens are you leaving the sweet in your pans, or finishing it off and starting over when things start up again.

[Galena]

With the warm weather over the next few days the sap might not run much.....

Oh I don't know...my big trees LOVE the warm weather and given the chance will run all night, too.

Also I posted this in the Sugar Inn but thought I'd cross-post to here, too.

Hi all, I have a microbush of 8 trees on buckets and always measure how much sap I get from each tree, each collection, so I know which trees are the best producers. And then I have an accurate record of how well they have run over the years.

But the system I use for measuring sap is very, very slow and time consuming....measruing to a fill line.

I need something like a funnel with a digital gauge built into it so I can just pour straight from the pail into the water containers that I use for collecting tanks.

It would also be nice if this device was also either a simple DIY, or is at least affordable and doesn't cost hundreds of $$$, and of course accurate and easy to clean and maintain.

Any ideas? What do other small producers use?

[Big_Eddy]

Forecast here is 7 degrees overnight and warm tomorrow, but back down and below freezing Tuesday overnight.
I have 40 gallons of sap in the main tank still to go, plus another 60 collected today. The collecting tank is parked in a shady spot for now. It will be fine for 1 day, and will get boiled tomorrow night. After that we are back to sap temperatures for the rest of the week.

I only drain if it looks like a week or so of warmer weather.

[marlmucker]

Great. Thanks. Good luck.

[Bruce L]

Sap from tubing with the vacuum took off today,buckets not so much. Fired up just before lunch for a couple of hours,then off on the bus run. Back down after supper and two tubing tanks close to full. My wife finished pumping up sap at 7:45,800 gallon head tank full to the top. Made between 20-25 gallons of ginger ale coloured golden syrup

[paulslund]

Oh I don't know...my big trees LOVE the warm weather and given the chance will run all night, too.

Also I posted this in the Sugar Inn but thought I'd cross-post to here, too.

Hi all, I have a microbush of 8 trees on buckets and always measure how much sap I get from each tree, each collection, so I know which trees are the best producers. And then I have an accurate record of how well they have run over the years.

But the system I use for measuring sap is very, very slow and time consuming....measruing to a fill line.

I need something like a funnel with a digital gauge built into it so I can just pour straight from the pail into the water containers that I use for collecting tanks.

It would also be nice if this device was also either a simple DIY, or is at least affordable and doesn't cost hundreds of $$$, and of course accurate and easy to clean and maintain.

Any ideas? What do other small producers use?

I have a quick and easy way that I use to measure my volume. When I first started, I took one of my buckets empty, and found a stick I can write on (in this case it was a clean Home Depot wooden paint stiring stick). Now, put the paint stick in the empty bucket, and mark a line where the top of the bucket meets the stick. This is your "0" mark (i.e. empty). Now, add 1L in the bucket (take the stick out first), and then put the stick in the bucket but just to where the bottom meets the water level. Now make another mark where the top of the bucket meets the stick.. this is now your 1L mark. Keep doing until you've measure the whole bucket. When the bucket is full, the stick doesn't even go in.

All my buckets are straight-walled buckets so that makes it easier than traditional maple buckets but you should be able to work something around that. Now when I take my count, I just put the stick in the bucket to where it just touches the sap, and look at what mark is at the top of the bucket. Easy peasy.

Tapped my trees last Monday, but was having difficulties with the new set up, so only started boiling last night. Started around 8:30 -9 and finished around 4:30am. This was for 20 of my 31 taps. Then today needed to finish so light the fire around 6:45 and finished around 1:45am. Processed 295L of SAP! Still need to finish on stove but man..I've already used most of my wood! Need to cut more!

Happy Sugaring everyone!

[MikeC82]

Oh I don't know...my big trees LOVE the warm weather and given the chance will run all night, too.

Also I posted this in the Sugar Inn but thought I'd cross-post to here, too.

Hi all, I have a microbush of 8 trees on buckets and always measure how much sap I get from each tree, each collection, so I know which trees are the best producers. And then I have an accurate record of how well they have run over the years.

But the system I use for measuring sap is very, very slow and time consuming....measruing to a fill line.

I need something like a funnel with a digital gauge built into it so I can just pour straight from the pail into the water containers that I use for collecting tanks.

It would also be nice if this device was also either a simple DIY, or is at least affordable and doesn't cost hundreds of $$$, and of course accurate and easy to clean and maintain.

Any ideas? What do other small producers use?


We bought a cheap Chinese digital flow meter off amazon. Can switch between Gallons and Litres. Our idea was to track the amount and rate of the sap flowing from our tote into the float on our pan - but we discovered it wasn't sensitive enough to measure such a slow flow rate. They have a turbine or little propeller inside that spins as the liquid flows through and measures rate and volume - the feed into the pan was too slow to turn the propeller. We took it off and put it on the back of our collector. It measures the amount coming 'in' with each load now. The only other problem with it was 'debris' can clog the fan and it doesnt love little bits of ice after cold days. Otherwise, very accurate. Something like this, stuck on the bottom of a funnel could give you a cheap accurate reading from each tree - you would just have to reset it after each pail dump. They also have more expensive ones, but we just thought we would give it a try. 21193

Also -

much thanks to Fort Wisers, Big Eddy, Clinkis and Bricklayer and everyone else who offered advice about the sweetening process. We finally pushed through at about 150 gallons. Was a very exciting moment! We've got about 200 gallons left to go and still coming in. Seems like nice year so far!

M

[Fort Wisers]

Collected yesterday afternoon while boiling, we're now right at 200L of sap collected since last Monday when we first tapped.

Boiled until ~7:30pm (off and on as my focus gets interrupted a bit when the kids get home from school) and couldn't make it any longer lol.
I was up early yesterday morning to get work done so that we could boil all afternoon.
As a result, the combination of the dark, the occasional flock of geese flying overhead, the constant soothing sound of buckets dripping in the background, and the sound of the stove pan boiling was enough to start putting me to sleep lol.
So I didn't boil as late as I planned but will continue this morning.....not too much left in the tank anyhow.

We'll see what the next few days bring, next week looks like longer stretches of warm through the night.
Unlike Galena's trees, ours are not liking the warmer nights and have ground to a halt in terms of sap......
Galena-> how are the renos coming?

[Galena]

Hey all, thanks to MikeC82 and paulslund for the ideas for measuring sap flow. The digital flow meter looks like it'd work best for me, I have been using the pour to a line method far too long.

The renos are finally done now thank gawd. Popcorn ceiling down, paint up, still have to put stuff back in place and clean up. Nothing more remotely resembling renos til May!

I still have yet to tap. Have even been considering not tapping this year, as it is so much work and I am only one person running this ship - my own business, regular household/property stuff, renos, and now sugaring, and the renos in particular esp the most recent one was very stressful. After some thought, though, I think I will tap, but only half my trees, the 4 biggest ones. I have the itch enough that I want to tap but not be up til 3 am boiling madly to keep up.

[ennismaple]

We didn't get a lot of sap last week but it did add up over time. Family commitments kept me from working on Saturday - which I paid for! Sunday we got the sugar camp ready to rock, new RO all rigged up and ready and walked the entire bush to get the vacuum up. Tanks were starting to slowly fill but once the vacuum was at 22"+ holy crap did they fill fast! I had to do some late night gathering Sunday to make sure none of my tanks would run over before morning. RO was on by 8:00am yesterday and no problems there. Checked the concentrate going into the evaporator feed tank and it was 18 Brix! Holy crap...

Fired up by 2pm, first runoff at 3pm and by 6pm I had to let me fire die down so I could catch up on filtering. I turned the RO off by 4:45pm and we continued to gather to get the tanks down as much as possible. I managed to get everything filtered and cleaned up by 9pm. It was probably the best tasting 1st day syrup I've made. All total we processed about 6800 gallons yesterday and my brother should push through about the same today to get the tanks emptied. Not a bad start to the season!

[Fort Wisers]

All total we processed about 6800 gallons yesterday....

Holy wow! That's amazing, your operation must be something to see running.......glad you're off to a great start.

[PaulRenaud]

No sap flowing today. Yesterday was 14 C and the overnight was 2C.

To-date have collected 415 L over 7 days. Brix is up slightly from 2.3 to 2.6 as I seem to have added taps in a sweeter area of my bush. These are trees that have not been tapped in at least 5 years, so the carb content might be higher in the sapwood.

4 days ago, I had a lot of slushy ice in the buckets, so I strained out the slush and discarded the ice - result was a raised Brix level by 1%. A poor man's RO!!

[Galena]

Very glad the sap isn't flowing today, I still am not quite done with cleanup from renos and sick of drywall dust turning up everywhere. Sure don't want it in the sugaring equipment which I will be pulling out and at least getting washed and ready to go, maybe tomorrow...this will be the latest I have ever tapped in a season.

[ennismaple]

Holy wow! That's amazing, your operation must be something to see running.......glad you're off to a great start. Thanks. It's intimidating at times because you know from the time you fire up until the last fire has died down that you will be on your feet at a fast walk - no sitting! This is still a part time endeavor for us so we don't have time to watch pans simmer.

My brother got through the remaining 6000 gallons of sap on Tuesday. RO on at 9am, fired up at noon and RO off before 5pm, out of the camp by 8pm. Not a bad half day's work!

It's looking like I'll need to boil tomorrow night or Saturday depending on what happens today and overnight.

[Galena]

Hey, everyone who uses RO....is that best for big volume operations like Ennis and other commercial producers? As I can't count on a freeze-up to help out as the poor woman's RO, I am starting to think if that might be an option for the future. In the past I've boiled off thousands of litres of sap all on my own. Nobody I know (around here anyway) wants to come sit in Shack Whacky and tend the fire and add sap for hours on end. I still love sugaring but am trying to streamline things a bit.

[Bruce L]

Marty,as of 1:00 barely started here yet,figure probably late today and run all night for a long boil Friday

[argohauler]

Finally finished tapping the tubing this morning,feeling like we’re behind the eight ball again. Decided next year will take the month of March off from driving school bus so we don’t miss the first runs,many have made syrup around us already.

My uncle was in the same boat as you. Drove bus, milked cows, made syrup. He had some kids to help though

[Galena]

Finally got the spiles in my big trees - taking a quick break to warm up and get dry socks on before visiting the bush maples - and every single one of them is running hot as soon as the spiles are in. Certainly making up for lost time!

[Bruce L]

My uncle was in the same boat as you. Drove bus, milked cows, made syrup. He had some kids to help though

Kids used to help when they were younger,looked forward to their paycheque end of season,unfortunately they aged and found that there’s no app to do the manual labour for you

[Galena]

Kids used to help when they were younger,looked forward to their paycheque end of season,unfortunately they aged and found that there’s no app to do the manual labour for you

Yeah exactly...I just finished telling a friend who was interested in helping, that 20% of it is the *fun stuff* like tapping, collecting sap and finishing the syrup....but 80% of it is boiling. Once I saw their eyes glaze over as I explained how I needed my woodstove to be run, and at what temp and how to add fresh sap so as to not kill the boil...yeah. There isn't an app for that. So I will probably be doing it all by myself again this year, though at least the woodstove in Shack Whacky is all gasketed and refractory-cemented up. Should do a test fire to make sure it all holds!

[Fort Wisers]

Trees finally woke up again this afternoon.
Buckets were dead empty this morning and had been since Tuesday but we collected 43 L tonight.
Galena-> glad to see you decided to tap.....

[Galena]

Hey Wisers, yup I could all but hear my trees esp the big ones hollering at me to hurry up and tap before they exploded....and at least one of them (I think #5) had a very gushy release of pressure/sap as I was trying to pound in the spile! Only a few hrs later and one keener in particular (cough cough #2) is making up for lost time. Glad to see #6 back in the game, for a few years it was really lagging and worrying me. And, thanks to a dollar store plastic funnel and a few metres of electrical tape I now have a digital measuring volume thingy in place, to help speed up the counting at sap collection. Seems to be pretty accurate.

Will probably have to collect before work and long day ahead tomorrow, so gonna say goodnight all now. Sweet dreams!

[argohauler]

Anybody with kids will have lots of help now for the next 3 weeks as schools off 1 week for March break and 2 weeks of self isolation afterwards

[Galena]

Anybody with kids will have lots of help now for the next 3 weeks as schools off 1 week for March break and 2 weeks of self isolation afterwards

Good, anyone in the North Grenville area send me a PM and your bored but responsible and older offspring...there is a sap tsunami here...I just collected at least 30g cause they ran all night and aren't letting up! Shack Whacky will need to be fired up tonight and kept fired probably all night.

[Coatesy]

Hey all, I'm between Brockville a d Prescott. Just north. New here and also new sugarer. Learning alot here, how is everyone doing so far this year?

Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk

[Galena]

Welcome Coatsey! I waited til late to start and oh gawd now I have approx 32g to boil, which came in a 16hr period. Thankfully the run has slowed a lot today.

ETA: Well, I put the new toy to the test and it measured perfectly....and then....it stopped!!! All I can see is condensation in the LED display. So did a compnay that makes digital water gauges truly make a non-waterproof digital gauge? Are you freakin kidding me?! Back to the old-school way of doing it...*sigh*

[Vandy]

Good, anyone in the North Grenville area send me a PM and your bored but responsible and older offspring...there is a sap tsunami here...I just collected at least 30g cause they ran all night and aren't letting up! Shack Whacky will need to be fired up tonight and kept fired probably all night.Sooooooo tempting... I've got 5 that need training before I let them touch my setup! :)

[Galena]

Sooooooo tempting... I've got 5 that need training before I let them touch my setup! :)

So long as they aren't whiny and can start a fire, keep it going, and continue to carefully feed it - no just stuffing the firebox and walking away - can carry and manage a full 15l water bottle, be mature enough to accept responsibility for their actions and be reliable enough to sit quietly in a tiny sugar shack up til the small hours and/or all night WITH NO WIFI (I recommend they bring a book), and are self-starters who take the initiative and know how to use their brain....send them over.

Otherwise, don't bother. I'm not a babysitter, I am a tough but fair boss - not a bully - but I do not hand out gold stars for just showing up.

ETA: Fired up at 8pm, at 9:30 it was at 205 and counting. So glad that all that refractory cementing paid off! The damper works, the sparks screen works, I'm getting a lot of mileage out of very little wood being loaded in. Very happy! Now if only I could take several days off....

[PaulRenaud]

Banner day today, collected nearly 200 L from 75 taps. Trees ran all night last night and I had to collect mid-day instead of my usual late afternoon.

High winds are challenging for those of us on buckets tonight. Had to put some snow in some of the buckets to stabilize them in the wind. Will have to boil that out later :(

[MikeC82]

Hi Coatesy.

We are pretty close. I am straight north of Prescott. We got started recently also. This will be our third year. This is a great place for advice and everyone is very friendly. If you have any questions this is the place to be. Good luck!

Mike.

[Fort Wisers]

Welcome to the forum Coatsey
Galena -> We'd send our girls over to help you but I'm slaving (err I mean putting them to work) on our operation today lol

Started a boil again this morning, total collection to date is now 333L (~88 US gallons or 73.25 Imp gallons).
Have a great weekend everyone

[Galena]

Welcome to the forum Coatsey
Galena -> We'd send our girls over to help you but I'm slaving (err I mean putting them to work) on our operation today lol

Started a boil again this morning, total collection to date is now 333L (~88 US gallons or 73.25 Imp gallons).
Have a great weekend everyone

Hehe thanks for thinking of me Wisers! I do have a neighbourhood victim *errr, teen* lined up to help out in another week or so.

In terms of amount, I overestimated how much I got yesterday as the food-grade buckets in which I collect are in US g and my sap pails are Imperial g. Not that it matters much, it all gets converted to litres anyway lol.

Anyhoo I still got 70l yesterday, in which I have barely made a dent, and just finished measuring out another 58l from today's morning collection. Thankfully Sunday meant to be cold! I plan to leave out this morning's haul and hopefully it'll freeze and give me some poor person's RO help :-)

[Coatesy]

Thanks for the welcome everyone. Just finished a boil off and bottled three pints. Still have that dark stuff at the top of my bottles. Here's a pic
I'm guessing I'm not filtering enough. I filter off the pan once yellowish then finish boil on propane to about 218 filter then I finish inside on convection to about 220-221 and filter to bottles at 190. I'm using a standard coffee filter inside a camping style coffee urn with its own metal filter. Everything is sterile and clean. Even had my bottles warmed. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200314/edafec85138fafbb24504acdd9697f44.jpg

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[Fort Wisers]

A long day yesterday......
Our work resulted in 12.75 L of finished syrup, we're happy with this as our first batch.
After cleaning up and getting ready for round #2 we plopped in-front of the TV enjoying a bowl of ice cream drizzled in fresh syrup.

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[Galena]

Sounds like a well-deserved break! Had a bit of a technical snafu with SW last night. I have a spark screen on the cap of my smokepipe, and I guess stuff was getting caught up there and building up, because there were streaks of creosote on the OUTSIDE of the smokepipe. I know I put in a couple sticks of green wood, but didn't think it would create such a problem. This meant some got into the pan of sap I've been working since Friday. Goodbye to an estimated 35l of sap :-(

So I am back inside my house, large burners going, fans going, window open, dehumidifier going. At least I know I won't get creosote! Meantime thinking of possibly just doing an outside arch? Maybe even just taking the woodstove out of SW, putting it on concrete paving slabs and leave on a couple lengths of smokepipe that have been cleaned off? Any ideas?

[Bricklayer]

Screens on top of a smoke stack are disaster waiting to happen.
They plug up and always at the worst possible time.
I tried a spark screen years ago. And the first boil about 1 hr in I had to go take it off. It was plugged and choking the draft.
And so hot that it was dripping down the outside of the pipe as you described.
With wood you are always going to get sparks. Unless you have a high efficient arch with both auf and aof. Even then I’m sure some sparks still get discharged.

[Galena]

Screens on top of a smoke stack are disaster waiting to happen.
They plug up and always at the worst possible time.
I tried a spark screen years ago. And the first boil about 1 hr in I had to go take it off. It was plugged and choking the draft.
And so hot that it was dripping down the outside of the pipe as you described.
With wood you are always going to get sparks. Unless you have a high efficient arch with both auf and aof. Even then I’m sure some sparks still get discharged.

I'm afraid you're exactly right, for all the reasons you describe. I don't know if I can get rid of the creosote but at least I can get rid of the screen. Goodbye to 38l sap :-/

[MikeC82]

Not sure if everyone is already aware of this - but there is a really cool app you can get called saptapapps. Allows you to put in your daily (or weekly logs) for collection and automatically tracks your sap and syrup production for you by year. Shows how your sap production compares with other people. Allows you to see how other types of sugar bushes are doing around you.

If you have logs from previous years, you can go back and enter them. There is also a 'flowcaster' based on your location and the temp-pressure-sun forecast from darksky.com and the data that users enter which is pretty neat. It only costs like 3 dollars. All shapes and sizes of operations on there from very tiny to massive. Well worth looking into in my opinion if you are into tracking your year-to-year production, or just interested in general. Screenshots below:

saptapapps.com/about/

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[ennismaple]

What an exhausting weekend! I had to be in Ottawa for a meeting on Friday afternoon but I did manage to get the RO running for the afternoon before heading into the City. By the time I got to the camp at 7pm I had a full head tank waiting for me. Fired up at 8pm and was in my bed at 2am. Even though it almost froze overnight the sap decided to run so we had tanks close to running over again by Saturday morning. A 'short' 12 hours in the sugar camp and we'd processed another 6000 gallons of sap and had 3000+ waiting to be cleaned up yesterday. We ended up making 0.3L/tap in under 48 hours! I've never seen a start to the season like this one.

I don't know how we'd have handled this without the new RO and 3rd tower. Depending on the sap temperature, we're getting rid of 800+ gallons of water per hour and have pushed concentrate as high as 19.5 Brix into the head tank! Today's cold weather is much needed because I need to go to work for a rest!

[Galena]

Thanks for the welcome everyone. Just finished a boil off and bottled three pints. Still have that dark stuff at the top of my bottles. Here's a pic
I'm guessing I'm not filtering enough. I filter off the pan once yellowish then finish boil on propane to about 218 filter then I finish inside on convection to about 220-221 and filter to bottles at 190. I'm using a standard coffee filter inside a camping style coffee urn with its own metal filter. Everything is sterile and clean. Even had my bottles warmed. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200314/edafec85138fafbb24504acdd9697f44.jpg

Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk

Hmm really strange cause it looks like you have nitre floating at the top instead of settling at the bottom. When you bottle do you keep your syrup at 190 or less? And do you sterilize your jars at 190 for 10 min? Simply warming them may not be enough.

Otherwise we're not that far off in terms of finishing syrup. I boil mine to approx 216, set it on the woodstove to further reduce overnight, pour it off into 2l jars and depending on the day either stick em in the fridge or into my biggest ss pot and finish it, usually around 222-225.

And I filter using mostly ss oil filters from Princess Auto that have never seen the inside of a car, and paper coffee filters clipped to them with WOODEN not PLASTIC clothespins, which are cleaned in hot water and left to air-dry in a tin plate on my castiron woodstove. IMNSHO just straight plain metal coffee filters won't do it, no more than cheesecloth would. You need to use at the very least a filter made of some sort of fabric. Thems that produce vast amount of this stuff often use all manner of gigantic cone-shaped filters, made of felt and Orlon. However these huge filters will also sop up the small amounts us microproducers make. So, hope that my tips help.

[Bruce L]

Hopefully extended forecast is wrong,which it usually is,predicting +16 for Friday!!! That’s enough to kill the season

[marlmucker]

Yes the weather doesn’t look good at all

[Galena]

I'm probably the only one unperturbed by the forecast. My trees love the warm weather, especially the big ones. And when it's time to quit, they just do. Get very little if any snotty sap at the end of the run.

[Coatesy]

Thanks for the replies all. I figured out my problem, I wasn't filtering off enough, and also bottling right away so way to hot I guess. My first bottles are extremely sugary, I think that is why the nitre is sitting at the top because it cant get to the bottom. It tastes fantastic though lol. I'm gonna do what you all suggested and run it through my next batch filter it off a few times.

Mentioned in another post, not sure if its beginners luck but I am having a hard time keeping up with my sap collection, I am getting like 60-70 liters a day off 15 taps. Emptying buckets twice a day. with the exception of 2-3 days where we had cold snap and a super mild day. Have a couple taps that are a little sluggish also, and three large trees that are just huge gushers (3 buckets on each)..

[Coatesy]

Hopefully extended forecast is wrong,which it usually is,predicting +16 for Friday!!! That’s enough to kill the season

Hope it doesn't. :)

[Galena]

Thanks for the replies all. I figured out my problem, I wasn't filtering off enough, and also bottling right away so way to hot I guess. My first bottles are extremely sugary, I think that is why the nitre is sitting at the top because it cant get to the bottom. It tastes fantastic though lol. I'm gonna do what you all suggested and run it through my next batch filter it off a few times.

Mentioned in another post, not sure if its beginners luck but I am having a hard time keeping up with my sap collection, I am getting like 60-70 liters a day off 15 taps. Emptying buckets twice a day. with the exception of 2-3 days where we had cold snap and a super mild day. Have a couple taps that are a little sluggish also, and three large trees that are just huge gushers (3 buckets on each)..

Yes definitely filter it off through something made of fabric...and if you use any kind of cloth fabric for filtering, remember to wash them ONLY IN HOT WATER. NO SOAP AT ALL. When I tried using cut-up chunks of clean, never-worn T-shirts, I would save the dirtied up filters in a plastic bag in the freezer. Yes they were jammed with nitre...but after a nice hot bath in a gallon or two of distilled water, they came clean (air-dried by woodstove) and I got a teeny tiny lil batch like 250ml of bonus syrup from all the sugar left trapped in the nitre.

My trees are also late-season runners for the most part. Just walked the bush and apart form the 65l collected at 3pm today, at 8pm there was prob at least another 15l ready to collect. I didn't. I have left the bulk of the 65l collected today sitting outside on snow/ice, hoping for some ice in them in the morning. Then I can drag them in, invert them into big enough containers, and pour off as much sweet as possible. Definitely helps reduce the amount of boiling if you chuck out ice - I wince when I see peeps posting pics of evaporators full of chunks of ice.

[Coatesy]

Yes definitely filter it off through something made of fabric...and if you use any kind of cloth fabric for filtering, remember to wash them ONLY IN HOT WATER. NO SOAP AT ALL. When I tried using cut-up chunks of clean, never-worn T-shirts, I would save the dirtied up filters in a plastic bag in the freezer. Yes they were jammed with nitre...but after a nice hot bath in a gallon or two of distilled water, they came clean (air-dried by woodstove) and I got a teeny tiny lil batch like 250ml of bonus syrup from all the sugar left trapped in the nitre.

My trees are also late-season runners for the most part. Just walked the bush and apart form the 65l collected at 3pm today, at 8pm there was prob at least another 15l ready to collect. I didn't. I have left the bulk of the 65l collected today sitting outside on snow/ice, hoping for some ice in them in the morning. Then I can drag them in, invert them into big enough containers, and pour off as much sweet as possible. Definitely helps reduce the amount of boiling if you chuck out ice - I wince when I see peeps posting pics of evaporators full of chunks of ice.

Agree, I love when I see the Frisbee ice on the tops of my buckets :0
I toss them across my pond and watch them explode for some joy ;)

[paulslund]

What an exhausting weekend! I had to be in Ottawa for a meeting on Friday afternoon but I did manage to get the RO running for the afternoon before heading into the City. By the time I got to the camp at 7pm I had a full head tank waiting for me. Fired up at 8pm and was in my bed at 2am. Even though it almost froze overnight the sap decided to run so we had tanks close to running over again by Saturday morning. A 'short' 12 hours in the sugar camp and we'd processed another 6000 gallons of sap and had 3000+ waiting to be cleaned up yesterday. We ended up making 0.3L/tap in under 48 hours! I've never seen a start to the season like this one.

I don't know how we'd have handled this without the new RO and 3rd tower. Depending on the sap temperature, we're getting rid of 800+ gallons of water per hour and have pushed concentrate as high as 19.5 Brix into the head tank! Today's cold weather is much needed because I need to go to work for a rest!

Wow!! 9000 gallons in one weekend! You are off to a great start!!!

My trees aren't happy lately. Barely anything in the buckets since I collected Saturday morning. Was hoping for some flow yesterday but it barely hit 0 here and I think the wind kept down any significant flow today, but some were dripping. Here's hoping for tomorrow! Not too optimistic about the rest of the week. Next week the forecast is showing barely 0 for overnight lows..so this weekend might be the last unless it changes... :-( At least for my trees anyways.. my silvers tend to start going to buddy after about 4 weeks.. the open ones go first and then the enclosed ones within a week..

[Big_Eddy]

I was happy yesterday. After all day boiling every day since I dont know when, I finally hit the bottom of the sap tank at about 4pm. Wahoo. No more sap. My son arrived home for work at 5. Two tank day, Dad. An hour later the sap tank was full again. 170 gallons from 165 trees. Boiling again today.



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[Galena]

Glad runs are still going for those who are still getting them...I wish I had a commercial freezer or access to one so I could throw my sap containers in there, then chuck the ice and boil only sweet. Friday is meant to have a freakish high of +15 daytime and -15 nighttime so I will try to leave my sap out overnight so it freezes. Boiling only the sweet saved me a few hours of work the other day. Batch #1 almost done, just needs a tiny bit more work then through the filters it goes!

Quick stupid question: which is more accurate, a hydrotherm or a hydrometer? According to my hydrometer my syrup is just about ready, but as it's neither at 60 or 211 not going to bother testing with the Quebec hydrotherm. Also does the size of the measuring cup really matter? Mine's a 10incher in case that makes any diff.

I am just being super, super picky this season cause I show my syrup and I think my density being slightly below is what's costing me. If density isn't bang-on then you lose something like at least 10pts. Should I aim to finish slightly over density? Bruce? Thoughts?

[Bricklayer]

Both are accurate.
The hydrotherm is probley your best bet as it already has a temperature compensation built in. And the hydrometer does not. The size of container you float your hydrometer or hydrotherm does not matter as long as it dosnt touch the bottom or sides.
I don’t really use a hydrotherm anymore. But used to have it floating around in my canner that is 16 x16. And it worked fine.
I use the Murphy cup now at it give a reading at 66.9. So I can roughly say my syrup is 67 brix. I think most producers try to hit 67. Then at least you give yourself a little bit of a buffer.

[ennismaple]

Hopefully extended forecast is wrong,which it usually is,predicting +16 for Friday!!! That’s enough to kill the season
I know you are further south than us Bruce and generally a week ahead of us north of Hwy 7, but a single day of high temp won't end the season for us. We still have quite a bit of snow in the bush and a layer of ice on top of the ground. We'll survive a few warm days.

[ennismaple]

Another short boil last night to clean up what ran Monday-Tuesday. We got about 1 GPT over the 2 days so fired up the RO at 3pm, lit a fire in the belly of The Beast at 5:30 and was home by 10:30pm. I love boiling 17.5 Brix concentrate!

I just checked the bush and we have enough to fire up again tonight. It's just starting to run but with the sun it's getting pretty warm and muddy. No rest for this guy!

[Fort Wisers]

Wow a good run today, collected 62 litres at noon and just collected another 55 this evening.
Boiling again tomorrow then we may shut down for the season.......

[Bruce L]

I know you are further south than us Bruce and generally a week ahead of us north of Hwy 7, but a single day of high temp won't end the season for us. We still have quite a bit of snow in the bush and a layer of ice on top of the ground. We'll survive a few warm days.

Unfortunately Marty there’s no such thing as snow around here now,just lots of mud. Had a real hard freeze last night,should have hammered out today but didn’t. Sugar has dropped way off also,instead of syrup every 10 minutes it was more like every 30 minutes until got into sap my Father picked up in the upper bush which is always sweeter,but a lot more nitre also.

[Galena]

Bruce and Wisers, if you're all finished up don't despair...I have 140l in holding, and another approx 65-75l per day this Thursday and Friday coming, that i badly need help boiling. Come help! PM me for directions. I have Shack Whacky cleaned up, adequate supply of wood, just need it manned so I can get some sleep

[Coatesy]

I feel your pain. I'm almost at 55g storage and maxed out pan full finish boil pots all full.
I'm actually running out of wood.

[jungmaria]

Hi everyone, newbie here. Been lurking a couple years now, using all your great advice. I’m tapping near Tamworth, off-grid and open air, and struggling to keep up like everyone else here it seems.
I’ve got about 1000 litres of sap to process plus whatever we get today and can only do 400-500/day (and none when it’s raining out). How quickly does sap spoil? With a forecast 18oC & rain tomorrow, it means I won’t be able to boil. Is the sap sitting in barrels still going to be ok to boil off on the weekend?

[Galena]

Hi everyone, newbie here. Been lurking a couple years now, using all your great advice. I’m tapping near Tamworth, off-grid and open air, and struggling to keep up like everyone else here it seems.
I’ve got about 1000 litres of sap to process plus whatever we get today and can only do 400-500/day (and none when it’s raining out). How quickly does sap spoil? With a forecast 18oC & rain tomorrow, it means I won’t be able to boil. Is the sap sitting in barrels still going to be ok to boil off on the weekend?

Welcome Maria! Generally you should boil sap as soon as you can, but for the most part if kept cold it can keep up to a week. If you have snow still, esp on the north side of outbuildings, out of sun, dig bunkers or heap snow around the barrels. One season some years ago I got offered sap to take but it was 10 days after collection. I knew it might turn, but I got it and made some lovely syrup with it!

I also know of the freakish warmth we're also going to get Friday but it is also meant to be followed by freakish cold. Pull out any ice Saturday morning and frisbee it :-) I used to burn ice too but it't just not worth it. BTW I use clean garbage pails for bulk storage of up to 70l per. I am freezing up all the cold packs that come with my home meal delivery service (Goodfood, hellofresh etc) and will be putting them in the bulk containers Friday night to ensure as much ice as possible so I can make the most of the poor person's RO :-)

[ennismaple]

We weren't really expecting much sap yesterday but we still got 1+ GPT, mostly late in the day so we had to fire up again late last night. It's definitely looking like with today and tomorrow plus next week's run after the weekend deep freeze will mean we have another good season.

We cranked the RO up to 18.7 Brix concentrate and holy crap does the syrup come flying off the front pans! Filtering can be a challenge but you don't fire for long.

[jungmaria]

Hi Galena,
Thanks. No snow or ice at all left here. Also no way of storing about 600l somewhere cool. At least it’s not going to be too sunny on Fri with all the rain. I’ll pull out the ice Sat am and hope for the best. I guess I’ll know right away if it smells off. Thanks!


Welcome Maria! Generally you should boil sap as soon as you can, but for the most part if kept cold it can keep up to a week. If you have snow still, esp on the north side of outbuildings, out of sun, dig bunkers or heap snow around the barrels. One season some years ago I got offered sap to take but it was 10 days after collection. I knew it might turn, but I got it and made some lovely syrup with it!

I also know of the freakish warmth we're also going to get Friday but it is also meant to be followed by freakish cold. Pull out any ice Saturday morning and frisbee it :-) I used to burn ice too but it't just not worth it. BTW I use clean garbage pails for bulk storage of up to 70l per. I am freezing up all the cold packs that come with my home meal delivery service (Goodfood, hellofresh etc) and will be putting them in the bulk containers Friday night to ensure as much ice as possible so I can make the most of the poor person's RO :-)

[Galena]

hey Maria, if you have some kind of dirt-floored or concrete-floored storage shed you can try that. Also maybe try getting cheap tarps from the dollar store, the kind that are blue on one side and silver on the other. Put it over the storage container silver side up to help deflect heat/any sunlight. Any shady area not too close to the house in particular as houses give off heat.

Usually it's easy to tell if sap has gone off. It'll often go cloudy and smell off. But sometimes it stays deceptively clear and smells ok. Best thing is to take a small saucepan of the sap, bring it to the boil. If it smells like you're boiling frogs, or just like swamp water on a late summer day, ditch it. Unless you want to make a novelty batch of swamp water-flavoured maple syrup lol :-) Good luck!

[jungmaria]

Haha. Thanks for the tip to boil it in a pot first. Yum, frog flavoured syrup! Going to put up a tarp for shade and hope for the best!


hey Maria, if you have some kind of dirt-floored or concrete-floored storage shed you can try that. Also maybe try getting cheap tarps from the dollar store, the kind that are blue on one side and silver on the other. Put it over the storage container silver side up to help deflect heat/any sunlight. Any shady area not too close to the house in particular as houses give off heat.

Usually it's easy to tell if sap has gone off. It'll often go cloudy and smell off. But sometimes it stays deceptively clear and smells ok. Best thing is to take a small saucepan of the sap, bring it to the boil. If it smells like you're boiling frogs, or just like swamp water on a late summer day, ditch it. Unless you want to make a novelty batch of swamp water-flavoured maple syrup lol :-) Good luck!

[TurkeyJohn]

So, city of Kingston instituting an open air burn ban starting 8 am tomorrow morning...boiling like mad so I don’t have to tip all the sap I’ve got still stored....woods going down and it’s been a great run this year, but like all seasons I’m ok to see the end...Forecast was looking like this was the last hurrah for us anyway....good luck for the rest of the season all that are still boiling, wishing you dry wood, high sugar and no nitre,

TurkeyJohn


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[Galena]

Thanks for the well-wishes, TurkeyJohn, sorry your season cut short :-/

JungMaria okeydokey hope you don't end up with froggy syrup! Hope the tarps and other suggestions help!

[Fort Wisers]

Another long but productive day for us yesterday....
We finished off what sap we had left, which resulted in 6 litres of tasty gold.
We pulled all our taps and started the cleanup process, which will continue today.
Our season total is 18.75 litres, which we're very happy about.....

TurkeyJohn -> sorry to hear your season was cut short.....
Galena -> as much as we'd love to come help with your operation, we have a list a mile long that halts during the season so it's off to that. If it would help, perhaps we can lend you our propane finisher to help you through your sap? Couldn't get it to you until next week though......
Jungmaria -> welcome to the forum

Everyone........enjoy the rest of your season, we'll see you next year.

Cheers!

21266

[Galena]

Hey Wisers, almost 19l is nothing to sneeze at! I've finished about 3.5l from batch #1 so far but it's a good 5 marks over density. I fixed SW yesterday so it was working perfectly yesterday. Luckily my trees seem slow today so I have a chance to catch up and tonight will load up my 72ls from yesterday with Goodfood packs, let it freeze, and boil the sweet indoors. Too much work running back and forth to SW and house every 20 min or so.

[Vandy]

So, city of Kingston instituting an open air burn ban starting 8 am tomorrow morning...boiling like mad so I don’t have to tip all the sap I’ve got still stored....woods going down and it’s been a great run this year, but like all seasons I’m ok to see the end...Forecast was looking like this was the last hurrah for us anyway....good luck for the rest of the season all that are still boiling, wishing you dry wood, high sugar and no nitre,

TurkeyJohn


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You are making food. Fireban doesn't apply...

[TurkeyJohn]

You are making food. Fireban doesn't apply...
Called the Fire & Rescue folks that issued it and definitely banned, because it's wood fueled with no on/off switch, it's a big no go.....

Sent them photos as requested, they were good about it, apologized, never had it come up before for them...

TurkeyJohn

[ennismaple]

Another decent day yesterday - the sap started running later because of the hard freeze Wednesday night but we still ended up with about 0.75 GPT for the day. Another day of 73 LT syrup! No frost overnight so it did run all night and is still running some - we need to get it processed before it freezes solid and hopefully the power stays on through the wind storm.

The freezeup that's forecast for the next 3 days is needed so we can re-charge our batteries! We've boiled 9 of the last 12 days and can definitely use a rest.

[Big_Eddy]

Been boiling all day every day this week - down to the last 20 gallons or so in the tank again. First time I have been close to caught up in a while. Kids tell me there is sap in the buckets again today. Not sure whether I'm happy or that or not.
So windy today it broke my chimney off at the top of the sugar house. Will need to run to town for a replacement collar once the fire is out. Assuming there is someone open somewhere with one to sell.

Been a fast and furious season so far - I've been isolated in the sugar house for days on end.

[Galena]

Big_Eddy, Sounds like my season...Been boiling off 60-72l a day since I began tapping one week ago. 341l collected so far. Trying to get batch #2 finished, the start of batch #3 out there in the icy cold wind hoping for some natural RO by morning so I can just boil sweet.

[Coatesy]

I'm slowly getting caught up boiled about 20 gallons yesterday and have about 25 more in the tank. Hoping to get througn it today.

Bottled last night again and filtered numerous times and still same outcome with the nitre at the top of my bottles even the ones last week it didn't settle to the bottom stays on top for some reason. Wondering if the system I'm doing is over cooking the sap..

[Galena]

I'm slowly getting caught up boiled about 20 gallons yesterday and have about 25 more in the tank. Hoping to get througn it today.

Bottled last night again and filtered numerous times and still same outcome with the nitre at the top of my bottles even the ones last week it didn't settle to the bottom stays on top for some reason. Wondering if the system I'm doing is over cooking the sap..

Coatesy, do you have a hydrotherm or hydrometer? Are you checking the temp of boiling water? How accurate a thermometer are you using? At what temp are you finishing the syrup? I have never heard of nitre floating at all, it usually sinks to the bottom. Maybe if push comes to shove, and you and fam are ok in terms of health, I can pop by (I'm healthy and we'd do social distancing, no coughing on each other blah blah etc) and see if I can help figure out what's happening.

Meantime I just fixed my first batch which was over by 5 hashmarks...it was around 3.25l so I added 500ml distilled, slowly brought it to 185, checked it again. Only 2 hashes of red over so I've bottled it. Let's see how it does in competition...if there are any places to show it at this year of course :-/

[Bricklayer]

What are you filtering with? The only time I’ve ever seen it foamy and dirty like that is if I draw off a bunch of sweet from the front pan to clean the pan. But it’s usually not syrup yet. So it kind of foams up.
Very strange. I’d double check your density for sure. And your filter method. A proper pre filter and a proper orlon filter would filter that out for sure.

[Coatesy]

So here's my process. I have a small stove in sugar shack. I've cut a hole in the top so that my caterer tray sits in the flame.
I boil the sap adding to it to maintain 3-4 inches through the day. After 8-10 hours I draw off and filter with strainer and cloth into a pot and finish boil on turkey fryer. I filter again. Then into the house. Final finish on convection stove, I use a stainless steel tfal strainer lined with 2,3,4 micro fiber cloths. I pour into an urn straining it, then I strain through a couple of times.Wondering if I should be running it through the straining setup like 4-5 times?

Question, is it okay to crack my current bottles and simply remove the nitre and cap them back up?

Alternative is dump em all back into a pot and reboil but then have to reuse bottle and cap that I removed.

[Galena]

See the message I just sent....and though you can re-use the bottles, you will need new caps. You cannot re-use old ones.

Pic of a jar of batch #1, which finished 2 hashmarks over Brix, 54 light density. Next to it is a my classic funnel/filter setup. Nearup that will soon be Batch #2 had a good 1/2 of nitre sitting in the bottom so after carefully pouring off the nearup, dumped the nitre into the funnel so I can get what nearup is left still trapped in the nitre. 21281

[paulslund]

So here might be a silly question, but does the outside air temps affect the boiling efficiency a lot? I boiled my latest batch on Friday morning. From the time I lit the fire to when I pulled the batch off I calculated that I boiled on average slightly over 26L/hour. My other boils were done at much cooler outside temps (around 5 I think) and I average around 20-21L/hour. Now I have to say this time I was always on it and rarely let the boil slow down if I could help it, so I think that was a major contributor..but I'm curious if benefited a lot, or just a bit, from the fact it was +10 at 7am when I started and was around +16 when I finished?

Thoughts?

So far 630L of sap in three weeks, and an estimated 19L of syrup. Not a bad year..this week should prove interesting.. the few days we have overnight lows below freezing are *just* bellow freezing.. not sure if that's enough to get the trees flowing during the day?

At least I feel I"m doing my part for Social Distancing when I'm holed up in the sugar shack! :-)

[Galena]

Not a silly question but one I can't answer sadly...Shack Whacky keeps the heat confined. Humble lil arch is not outside.

[Big_Eddy]

Coatesy, do you have a hydrotherm or hydrometer? Are you checking the temp of boiling water? How accurate a thermometer are you using? At what temp are you finishing the syrup? I have never heard of nitre floating at all, it usually sinks to the bottom. Maybe if push comes to shove, and you and fam are ok in terms of health, I can pop by (I'm healthy and we'd do social distancing, no coughing on each other blah blah etc) and see if I can help figure out what's happening.

Meantime I just fixed my first batch which was over by 5 hashmarks...it was around 3.25l so I added 500ml distilled, slowly brought it to 185, checked it again. Only 2 hashes of red over so I've bottled it. Let's see how it does in competition...if there are any places to show it at this year of course :-/

2 lines over is 66.2. Still legal but just. Shoot for 5-6 lines over. 66.8 to 67. Better mouth feel and less chance of being disqualified for under density syrup. Tastes better too.


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[Big_Eddy]

Boiled all day every day for 8 days straight. By end of day yesterday we were finally caught up - for now. No sap in the tank and only what is left in the evaporator not bottled and filtered. 125l of syrup so far from 165 trees. The syrup wood wall is stocked again. Bring on the sap.


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[Galena]

Lol hear ya....I am finally finishing off batch #2...it just light density graded at 96-98 wtf?! Really rich robust taste, not at all delicate. But then I tinkered with this one too prob too much. Approx 6-7ls read 5 lines over red, so I went 'Oh f**k' and added 500ml distilled to fix it which took fricking forever....pulled it and begand putting it through the filters when it was 2 lines over red on the hydrometer. So maybe a little too much arsing around with it. *sigh*

And if that weren't enough, I just found the potlifter lid handle in the sap that is meant to be batch #3. I was using it to help keep smokepipe damper level, it wasn't supposed to be in there!!!! So that could be a VERY iron-y batch...which I will not share with anyone else. Gaaaahhh.

[PaulRenaud]

2 lines over is 66.2. Still legal but just. Shoot for 5-6 lines over. 66.8 to 67. Better mouth feel and less chance of being disqualified for under density syrup. Tastes better too.


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My first couple of batches are a tad high at 67.2 brix, should I bother cutting it down?

[Galena]

My first couple of batches are a tad high at 67.2 brix, should I bother cutting it down?

I dunno...if Big_Eddy says to go over, then I'd rather go over. Wish I'd seen that about 5-6 lines over being better and ensuring more mouthfeel, cause otherwise I'd've saved myself a ton of work over the last couple batches...both were 5 lines over and I took em down to 2. ****. But not about to redo them cause pretty sure about to get flooded yet again.

[Bricklayer]

67.2 you are good. Bottle it.
Once you hit the mid 67’s I’d be a little worried. Not about it crystallizing in the bottle that won’t happen untill around 68.
But any higher and your giving syrup away. And around 67.5 it will get all crunchy around the neck once you open the bottle. Harmless yes. But not pleasant.

[PaulRenaud]

So here might be a silly question, but does the outside air temps affect the boiling efficiency a lot? I boiled my latest batch on Friday morning. From the time I lit the fire to when I pulled the batch off I calculated that I boiled on average slightly over 26L/hour. My other boils were done at much cooler outside temps (around 5 I think) and I average around 20-21L/hour. Now I have to say this time I was always on it and rarely let the boil slow down if I could help it, so I think that was a major contributor..but I'm curious if benefited a lot, or just a bit, from the fact it was +10 at 7am when I started and was around +16 when I finished?

Thoughts?

So far 630L of sap in three weeks, and an estimated 19L of syrup. Not a bad year..this week should prove interesting.. the few days we have overnight lows below freezing are *just* bellow freezing.. not sure if that's enough to get the trees flowing during the day?

At least I feel I"m doing my part for Social Distancing when I'm holed up in the sugar shack! :-)

Barometric pressure and wind can affect the pull of air up your chimney, removing or constraining heat in the evaporator. If you install a draft control on the chimney that allows you to add air thru a flapper, you can keep more heat in the evaporator. I'm getting >30 L/hr on my old 18x60" Waterloo. But I also optimized the arch to make better use of convection (I posted on this in the evaporator section of this board).

That said, I can't really brag, I've processed about 800 L of sap and have about as much syrup as you due to leaks in my storage lines and ancient float box. Also just spotted one in my finishing pan too. I guess my leaks are offsetting my boiling efficiency gains this year! :(

[Galena]

One of the smart things I did do with the SW woodstove, apart from sealing it as much as possible with refractory cement, was to install a damper in the smokepipe. Easy to do and very effective at helping keep the heat where I need it. I still need a new stove, I am afraid the one I have won't stand up to the amount of work I want it to do.

Batch #2 is almost done filtering through. Approx 5l and finally got a more realistic reading on my light meter (fingerprint on the cuvette) of 52. Definitely am never going to mess with syrup that is 5lines over again!!

ETA: OMFG I am cursed yet again by the density blues. With both batches to date I initially boiled to 5 lines over red. So I fixed both with distilled and re-finished to 2 lines over red.

Now, this morning (hydrotherm in pics) these are my readings: at room temp both are like 8 lines over red if not more. I am ready to start pulling my f***in hair out. The first pic that is slightly skewed is batch #1, the remainder of which is already hotpacked. The second is batch #2 which is all filtered except for a final 500ml or so, so willing to try and fix it.

Anyone here local to me21286 have something like a digital refractometer so I can get a frickin accurate read on these?21285

[Coatesy]

Awesome to read everyone's stories success and frustrations lol
I've had lots of both. Just dumped about 10G of sap as it was cloudy and had a weird smell to it when boiling. The taste is a bit off on the last set of bottles I did. No where near the sugary sweet taste of my first batch.
I might boil down the sour stuff and make candy or maybe sugar. I don't think it's far off as the sap was only about 4 days old, but I think I kow what happened. I keep my storage barrel INSIDE my stone shack. (first year doing this made sense to have it close to stove). However having boiled for those 4 straight days 10-14 hours a day I think heated up the shack too much that coupled cool nights change the temp of the storage too much. Least that's the only thing that I've come up with.

Batch one I didn't boil until my drum was almost full.

Lots of learning.. Painful dumping sap 😡😡😡

[Centre Creek Farms]

I was at that seminar. Very informative. I ended buying a used Lapierre 2x6 classic from Squirrel Creek dealers. Mama was reluctant but now is happy that I did. :)

[Galena]

Awesome to read everyone's stories success and frustrations lol
I've had lots of both. Just dumped about 10G of sap as it was cloudy and had a weird smell to it when boiling. The taste is a bit off on the last set of bottles I did. No where near the sugary sweet taste of my first batch.
I might boil down the sour stuff and make candy or maybe sugar. I don't think it's far off as the sap was only about 4 days old, but I think I kow what happened. I keep my storage barrel INSIDE my stone shack. (first year doing this made sense to have it close to stove). However having boiled for those 4 straight days 10-14 hours a day I think heated up the shack too much that coupled cool nights change the temp of the storage too much. Least that's the only thing that I've come up with.

Batch one I didn't boil until my drum was almost full.

Lots of learning.. Painful dumping sap 😡😡😡

Yeah some painful learning curves for sure, unfortunately. You might be able to make passable sugar from the crap sap; you have tyo go to like 265 and stir it constantly. See the thread on candymaking and sugarmaking.

How is the ventilation in your stone shack?

And I had to dump 38l nearup from batch #1 cause creosote flakes got into it. And as you've seen yeah having issues with density yet again. And I've been doing this 12 yrs now. Grrrr...

[Bricklayer]

Awesome to read everyone's stories success and frustrations lol
I've had lots of both. Just dumped about 10G of sap as it was cloudy and had a weird smell to it when boiling. The taste is a bit off on the last set of bottles I did. No where near the sugary sweet taste of my first batch.
I might boil down the sour stuff and make candy or maybe sugar. I don't think it's far off as the sap was only about 4 days old, but I think I kow what happened. I keep my storage barrel INSIDE my stone shack. (first year doing this made sense to have it close to stove). However having boiled for those 4 straight days 10-14 hours a day I think heated up the shack too much that coupled cool nights change the temp of the storage too much. Least that's the only thing that I've come up with.

Batch one I didn't boil until my drum was almost full.

Lots of learning.. Painful dumping sap 😡😡😡

Bad sap does not make nice sugar or candy. It will taste worse then the syrup does now. It sucks to waste it and the hard work on boiling it down. But there will be more sap this season. It’s not over yet. Dump it. Clean up and wait for more sap.

[DrewCP]

We had a nice short in and out season.

Collected for around 2 weeks. 60 trees. and ran two +/- 850L batch boils. Not sure of our final yield but way more than we could ever use and give away in a year.
Everything went off without a hitch. Pulled taps and cleaned up everything last Friday.

Ready for 2021.

Have fun out there everyone.
Drew.

[Bruce L]

Bad sap does not make nice sugar or candy. It will taste worse then the syrup does now. It sucks to waste it and the hard work on boiling it down. But there will be more sap this season. It’s not over yet. Dump it. Clean up and wait for more sap.

My wife said that the sap smelled strong in the tanks yesterday while I was cleaning the syrup pan. Hoping for a good couple of runs yet,probably dump what’s in the tanks and hope for better sap. Once it gets that milky greenish look in the tank and suds up from the releaser dumping I don’t want it in my pans

[Hkb82]

I try and keep my sap as cold as I can up until I’m about to boil then it’s into the pre heater. I only dump ice if my tanks are empty of sap. I find the ice aids in keeping it cold with the way weather has been the past few years. I also try to boil it no more then 3 days after it’s ran from the tree. I get it’s not always possible for all to do but has always worked for me. Once it smells off I’m out and unless it was from my error my seasons over.

[paulslund]

Barometric pressure and wind can affect the pull of air up your chimney, removing or constraining heat in the evaporator. If you install a draft control on the chimney that allows you to add air thru a flapper, you can keep more heat in the evaporator. I'm getting >30 L/hr on my old 18x60" Waterloo. But I also optimized the arch to make better use of convection (I posted on this in the evaporator section of this board).

That said, I can't really brag, I've processed about 800 L of sap and have about as much syrup as you due to leaks in my storage lines and ancient float box. Also just spotted one in my finishing pan too. I guess my leaks are offsetting my boiling efficiency gains this year! :(

Sorry..having trouble keeping up with the board dealing with working from home and having the kids home too..

I hadn't thought about the barometric pressure on those other days.. and although I'm now in a sugar shack where wind doesn't cook down the pan, there was at least one day where the wind was blowing the smoke from the stack down..so probably didn't help with draft (even with a blower).

I think I'll be getting enough for another boil this weekend (or maybe even Thursday evening if there's enough) if the next few days forecast pans out so I'll try to be on it as efficiently and see if I still get the same boil rate.

I upgraded my sugar gazebo to a sugar shack this year.. as well as my collection method (no more breaking the back carrying buckets to the boiler :-) ).
21304

[BoerBoel]

I upgraded my sugar gazebo to a sugar shack this year.. as well as my collection method (no more breaking the back carrying buckets to the boiler :-) ).
http://mapletrader.com/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=21304&stc=1

I would suggest a talerl stack to help with the draft. I think the general rule is 2-3 times the length of the pans. I also think it should be at least 3 feet above the highest pint of the roof.

[paulslund]

To my knowledge a tall stack is only important with natural draft. When I enquired last year I was told that with a blower, too much stack will actually interfere as the blower is trying to push more air than the stack can handle.

I will, however, be lengthening it a bit..I'm getting all kinds of soot on my cupola! And one time I had the fire going so well there were red flames coming out the stack, hitting the domed cap which diverted it down onto the roof of the cupola! It was pretty cool! Until I realized I was probably burning the roof! LOL (no significant damage done..flames weren't actually hitting the roof..just depositing soot! )

[Galena]

Hey all, I've found a way to deal with the painful fact that my trees have woken up yet again and are trying to drown me. Again! 36l just this morning, plenty more on the way unfortunately. Even though I now have a lot of time on my hands, boiling is still a ton of work, and I still have a bunch of other things to do. And my neighbours are asking when I will have syrup for sale.

So....I'm gonna put them to work by offering them DIY syrup! Safely and in their own homes, of course :-) I'm going to collect the sap and leave it out for them to collect, along with instructions on boiling, and getting the amount I give them to boil, down to a couple litres so I can then finish it for them. Planning on charging a small amount to cover my time and of course my experience (and to help pay for my new toy when it gets here - cost an arm and leg). Thoughts?

[Hkb82]

I like it helps everybody out but don’t be surprised if they enjoy the process and want to start doing it also. It’s addicting remember. What’s the new toy might I ask also?

[Galena]

I like it helps everybody out but don’t be surprised if they enjoy the process and want to start doing it also. It’s addicting remember. What’s the new toy might I ask also?

Hehe if they want to start doing it all themselves they're welcome to! It's only a couple neighbours, not everyone around me. Don't want to make someone feel that they've bitten off more than they can chew. The new toy is a Murphy Compensation Cup.

[Bruce L]

Susan,how did you end up getting one? Last I read you were trying to get one shipped across the border

[Galena]

Susan,how did you end up getting one? Last I read you were trying to get one shipped across the border

Emailed Cooke's Maple, a listed dealer, bemoaning the fact that I couldn't get ahold of one up here and all US dealers seemingly were refusing to ship to Canada, and my passport has expired and I don't want to/couldn't cross the border right now anyway. George himself called and said he'd ship me one, so I ordered through their site. Costs an arm and a leg but hey at least I'll soon have one! Apparently Bascom will ship them north of the border too but Maine, where Cooke's is located, is a leetle closer than NH.

[ennismaple]

Another good boil yesterday to clean up the sap from earlier in the week. I was expecting dark syrup because the pans had sat since Friday night. After the first couple of runoffs it was obvious the syrup wasn't dark despite the incoming sap being rather cloudy. The 1st drum was 66LT and by the end of the night we were at 70LT. It tastes great but it's really light in colour!

The sap that ran overnight is crystal clear and there's a lot of it! it will be another late night in the camp by the time we get through everything.

[paulslund]

The sap that ran overnight is crystal clear and there's a lot of it! it will be another late night in the camp by the time we get through everything.

Funny thing.. I seem to have had a good run overnight too even though it didn't dip below freezing. Trees were still dripping first thing this morning and still about an hour ago! Warm weather is coming so we'll see how it goes next week...

So, high of 9 today, low of 0 tonight, then high of 10 tomorrow (but -4 tomorrow night).

I'm going to try and throw what remaining snow is left around the buckets (they are on the ground).. do I run the risk of spoilage if I don't boil tomorrow and wait until Sat? Busy with work stuff so would be a big relief if I can wait until Sat (that and I need to cut up more wood!) and maybe get a bit of freezing in..

Silver sap still tasting good which is unusual as we are into week four for me..

[paulslund]

Hey Galena.

I meant to mention..remember last year you had a batch that just wouldn't filter out some really, really fine sugar sand? I have the same thing with one of my batches. Sat in the fridge for a week and it just wouldn't settle to the bottom. Those will be for maple cream, maple candy and maple sugar..

[Galena]

Paulslund, put the sap storage tank you're using in the coldest, shadiest part of your property. Doesn't hurt to drape a cheap Dollarama blue/silver tarp over it, silver side up, to help deflect heat.

Sap can keep good for a surprising amount of time - I once got a batch of perfectly fine syrup from sap that had been collected about a week prior to me picking it up, then I had to wait a couple more days to boil. I was lucky! But if the sap looks/smells off...call it a day. Esp if a small test-batch boiled in a little saucepan smells like old socks or swamp water on a hot August day.

[paulslund]

Esp if a small test-batch boiled in a little saucepan smells like old socks or swamp water on a hot August day.

Oh I know that smell all to well. My first ever attempts to make syrup with equipment borrowed from my neighbour was 4 taps around late April.. I had no idea the sap goes off when the trees bud.. made a whole 500ml of the grossest smelling and weird tasting stuff on the BBQ.. then I researched it and realized what happened. The smell gave me headaches actually!

I think I'll be okay. Found enough snow to bury my most exposed buckets and will deal with the rest soon as well.. still some ice floating around in them from the weekend.. Will do the same tomorrow and then boil on Sat..

Don't we hate it when work gets in the way of sugaring?

[Bruce L]

Dumped around 800 gallons yesterday morning that had been sitting for a week,washed out the tanks and drained the flue pan so everything was cleaned up fresh for new sap. Two tanks overflowing this morning,was unsure about syrup,but it has great flavour and actually tested 82 golden this late in the season.

[Galena]

Seems that Ennis also got some golden, I am curious to see if I get some golden this late in the season. It's happened before!

[paulslund]

My last batch of the season is usually the darker batch, often with molasses flavours to it.. at least the two prior seasons anyhow.. will be interesting to see how this turns out on Sat.

[Galena]

Ditto with mine but my season usually runs 6-8 batches. I just finished batch #3 and am working away at batch #4.

[Coatesy]

Glad to hear ur still running G, I pulled in about 25 gallons the last two days. Boiling today and tomorrow to keep up on it. I don't wanna be dumping sap again. 😡😡

[Galena]

Hey Coatesy, yes dumping sap is kinda like dumping blood to me. If you're not going to use it, don't collect it! btw just curious, is that in USG or Imperial gallons? my 5g white collecting tubs are in USG, but my pails are all Imperial 2gs. That explains why 2 reasonably full sap pails can top up my collecting pails. So I just stick with using litres.

Boiled all day yesterday, got 122l total, haven't even started yet on the 75l in holding outside. Thankfully I was unable to offload 45l of sap, my neighbour made syrup for her little household :-) Very glad there isn't much out there in the pails, I want to take something of a break from boiling. Like maybe try to clean my own house for once. OH S**T the sun's coming out, dammit...they'll soon be running again *groan*

Finished batch #3, batch #4 on its way to being done, and yes Ennis this batch is also looking like it will be golden. Amazingly very little nitre in it, at least so far!

[Coatesy]

Dunno what the measurement is I ball park it as my storage is a 55 gallon drum. So I count just over half as 20gish

[Coatesy]

One thing I'm curious about is what rate everyone gets per hour. Today so far I'm boiling about 5-6g an hour. That's with a somewhat improved setup added firebrick and monitoring the burn closer.
I know I can create a better setup but don't wanna spend more $$ this year lol. My chimney is ROUGH and seal at stove top is weak.

Also I find having the door open seems to work better than closed up.

[Galena]

Lol I have no idea what I get per hour, I leave that to the pros. I'm just a lil hobbyist :-)

So proud of both my sap and my neighbour and good friend down the road...I gave her 45 l sap and basic instructions...she made approx 2l, slightly over density (but no signs of crystallization) beautifully clear golden syrup with the marshmallowy taste I expect from syrup that grade. She just went by feel (didn't have a therm) and poured it through coffee filters. She wants to make more this weekend and I am pretty sure my trees will be able to meet her needs! And if she got 2l syrup from 45l sap...yay my trees! :-0

[Coatesy]

Amazing...

[paulslund]

And if she got 2l syrup from 45l sap...yay my trees! :-0

Man your trees are sweet again this year eh? Awesome!

[Galena]

Man your trees are sweet again this year eh? Awesome!

Yes, I'm very proud of my trees...all 8 of them :-) Ever since I took off the one red maple I did tap, and began tapping the bush maples, I've had really good sugar content esp at this time of year.

[Galena]

Hey all, just curious...is there one batch year after year that just seems bent on giving you as much grief as possible?

For me, it's batch #4. Came off lookin like peach jam. Full of nitre. Thin, so left to finish on the woodstove a bit more overnight. Did finish off perfectly this morning so hotpacked it. Was expecting to get over 3l, got just underneath that. So feeling a little hosed! Stoopid batch #4! Glad you're done and in the rearview mirror now!

[paulslund]

Well.. it's official. I'm a sugarer.

They say you're not a sugarer until you burn a batch. For me, that was about 1/2 hour ago. Collected the buckets this morning with the kids and measured the batch at 190L. Figured that's about a 10 hour boil. Fired up at 1:15ish.. Was really focused on boiling as fast as I could as I had hash marks on the head tank, so wanted to determine peak evaporation rate. Because of that I wasn't as diligent in adding defoamer to the pans.. Right when I was checking the head tank my daughter said how sweet it smelled.. that should have been the sign I picked up on .. Then luckily I was right beside the evaporator when I hear her ask "is something burning?".:o:o:o

That's when I noticed the front pan was starting to look like sponge toffee! Grabbed my "oh ****" bucket of sap and poured it in, then continued to add more sap to cool it off as it still boiled really hard after that... The siphon must have gotten air locked, but it looked like the level was okay because of the foam.. I was just about to reset the siphon out of "peach of mind" as I normally do.. I got too cocky I guess..

Luckily it seems to taste fine, so just letting the fire die down so it can evap some more ( too much in the pan right now for me to remove).. Going to take it off and keep as a separate batch.. very dark now, but no burnt taste to it! But I think I can detect some burned sugar on the bottom of the pan with the spatula so didn't want to continue boiling until I check that out...

So what I thought would be a relatively late evening finish, might turn out to be a early Sunday morning finish.. depending on how bad the pan is.. Still have about 120-130 L to go..

Ugh!

[Coatesy]

Sorry to hear that Paul. I do the same, get busy doing other things when we should be monitoring the boil.
Hopefully the pan is okay. If you can empty it, I find boiling hot vinegar water and steel wool are the best way to scrub er clean.

[Galena]

Yeah, that's a big owch, Paul. That's the problem with boiling, it's too easy to get complacent and turn your back a moment too long and things go haywire.But just like they say 7 falls make a horseman, well hey at least now you've proved yourself a sugarmaker! And yes Coatesy's solution of hot vinegar water and steel wool are great. So long as it's just plain steel wool and not SOS pads!!! Just remember to rinse a lot with hot clean water and then even wipe out with paper towel to ensure all clean when done.

Just got back in from wiping down the pail lids, both sides, with Lysol wipes. I noticed some white mold blooms both inside and out, and though not over concerned about one or two little spots, some lids were really bad. So being careful not just cause of the pandemic but also as this is a primary food source we're dealing with. I'm giving away sap at 45l a time so have to make sure the sap is as clean as possible!

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

Get a piece of 3/4” or 1” copper pipe and flatten one end with a hammer to make scraper. Copper won’t scratch the stainless like steel wool can.

[Galena]

That sounds like a good idea....I've heard that the steel wool can gouge areas where nitre can collect and form. Personally I use a green scrubbie.

[paulslund]

Well so far boiling vinegar and my nylon scrub brush are getting most of it off.. just have to keep at it. I was avoiding steel wool but I like the copper pipe idea.. I do have 1/2 inch pipe I could smash down. I also heard a brash brush for a drill will work (which I also have) but am going to use that as a last resort. There are a few stubborn spots

It turned out that my pan wasn't level..the front area was about 1/2 inch shallower than the back (where the siphon is). Siphon must have gotten an air lock and I didn't notice because of the foaming.. will make sure to level the pan when I fire up again..

I've never noticed mold in my buckets.. but my buckets are white.. now you've got me concerned..

Although isn't boiling mold how you make penicillin? Does our syrup have natural anti-biotic properties? :lol: I'm just kidding..I have no idea how to make penicillin.. :-)

[Galena]

Hehe I think you need moldy bread to make penicillin :-)

BTW I don't have the white mold in my buckets - which are aluminum - but inside the lids I could see some, just on a few pails. I also wiped down the tops of the lids too.

My buckets are aluminum. Sometimes I get that pinkish-orangey mold starting to show in the bottom or any area where there are dents, but I see that kind of mold literally everywhere in my area, so not too concerned. Very benign so far as I know and easy to get rid of. It's any kind of mold that 'blooms' that concerns me.

[paulslund]

Okay.. I've salvaged the pan!

Boiling vinegar got 99.9% off.. some of those little spots that remained I scrapped off with my thumbnail! :-) Just some slight discoloration so one more scrub and hopefully get the fire going by 10! Hopefully in bed by 3! :-)

Thanks for everyone's advice!

[Galena]

Yay Paul, glad you were able to save the pan :-)

I was a teeny bit off as to how much syrup my friend made from 45l sap I gave her. I didn't realize the jars she uses are those weird, tall, wide-mouthed Mason jars that are in fact only 750ml and not 1l. So she actually made closer to 1.5ls. Still, at least now she knows how to do it and has made a second batch, and I unloaded another 45l or so last night on someone else. So glad to have the load lightened somewhat. And my trees still rock :-)

[Big_Eddy]

Dont use plain steel wool, but a stainless scrubbing pad is fine. Plain steel wool can leave small amounts of iron behind that will rust later. The copper scraper is my go to. Thanks to Ennismaple for that one.


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[Bruce L]

Packed it in yesterday,sap was sudsy going in the tank from the releaser,trees seem to be pretty much shutting down. Had a good freeze,sap started running great but then slowed right down. No freeze in sight for quite a while now,so filled the pans with distilled water and vinegar to clean up for next season

[paulslund]

Packed it in yesterday,sap was sudsy going in the tank from the releaser,trees seem to be pretty much shutting down. Had a good freeze,sap started running great but then slowed right down. No freeze in sight for quite a while now,so filled the pans with distilled water and vinegar to clean up for next season

Yes I think this is the end too. Have about maybe 30-40L on the buckets that ran Saturday after collecting.. still looks clear so will likely boil on the bbq..not enough to fire up the evap. A new record year for me at around 820L of sap. Syrup count to be determined..

[Bricklayer]

Packed it in yesterday,sap was sudsy going in the tank from the releaser,trees seem to be pretty much shutting down. Had a good freeze,sap started running great but then slowed right down. No freeze in sight for quite a while now,so filled the pans with distilled water and vinegar to clean up for next season

Sap we boiled today was like that. , foamy comming out of releaser. And a bit cloudy. But made nice syrup. Gotta please the dark syrup customers. Wasn’t as dark as I thought it would be though. But tasted great. Gonna wait it out till Thursday see what we get for sap. And call it a year. A year everyone will remember.

[jungmaria]

Me too. Had just enough wood left to boil what I got Fri & yesterday. Shut it down last night.
5200 l of sap and 109 l of syrup so 48:1 (should’ve been 45:1 but I scorched the syrup pan and lost the sweet. And then there the other 1000 l of sap lost to tipped barrels, broken lines and spoiled sap that we just won’t talk about...) it was quite the season.
Good luck to everyone finishing up.


Yes I think this is the end too. Have about maybe 30-40L on the buckets that ran Saturday after collecting.. still looks clear so will likely boil on the bbq..not enough to fire up the evap. A new record year for me at around 820L of sap. Syrup count to be determined..

[Bruce L]

Heard some peepers out at 5:30 this morning,not a whole chorus yet,but just a few sopranos warming up

[Galena]

Still going, my trees often go into mid-April. So long as the sap stays clear and good, I keep on collecting and boiling. And boiling. And boiling...glad the trees haven't tried to replicate last Friday's run of 122l and are now giving more sensible amounts like 53l a day.

[ennismaple]

We boiled 5 straight days from Wednesday to Sunday. No massive amounts of sap but it needed to be boiled or the following days wouldn't have been manageable. We're at about 95% of last year's total so we'll be beyond that when we boil again tomorrow. It didn't freeze Saturday night but we still got 3/4 GPT to boil Sunday thanks to high vacuum. The bucket on the tree by the sugar camp didn't have 100mL in it so this is the point in the season where vacuum pays for itself!

The sap coming in is still very clear and we were making syrup between 60-65 LT yesterday before we had to shut down. It didn't freeze last night and isn't supposed to freeze tonight but Tuesday and Wednesday night are forecast to dip below zero so we should be able to boil tomorrow, Thursday and maybe one more on the weekend if the weatherman is correct. I need to fill a bunch of drums with Dark Robust before the peepers start!

[Coatesy]

I'll be wrapping up probably this weekend. Almost caught up, should be today. Collect the rest of this week and boil all weekend..

Been a fun first season. I'll end up with close to 50 pints when all done. Big thanks to this forum, glad I found it. 👍👍👍

[Bruce L]

Marty,sent you a pm about automatic defoamer,must not have gotten through. Think I read once you have one now,likes or dislikes and is this your first one? Gets tough on the legs climbing up to the steam away every fire

[Galena]

Gaahhhhh....just dumped the last 10l or so of sap from the megabatch of last Thursday. Starting to sour :-( Knew I should've boiled last night but opted for an early night. Pushing sap from yesterday through now. Thankfully it's not much.

[ennismaple]

Bruce - we bought one of the drippers but we don't use it anymore. Because our camp isn't heated it was difficult to keep a constant flow going in to the pan. We went back to adding a teaspoon of Kasher defoamer every 15 minutes.

The electronic liquid dispensers may work better but I haven't spoken to anyone who has one.

[paulslund]

I need to fill a bunch of drums with Dark Robust before the peepers start!

Hi Martin.. both you and Bruce mentioned peepers.. what are those? I think Karen (Run Forest Run) also mentions those but I forget if I've asked in the past.. or more importantly I forget the answer if I've asked in the past! Are they birds or frogs or something?

Thanks!

[ennismaple]

Tree frogs - see below.

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+are+peepers+in+the+spring&rlz=1C1GGRV_enCA773CA773&oq=what+are+peepers&aqs=chrome.3.69i57j0l5.8154j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[paulslund]

Tree frogs - see below.

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+are+peepers+in+the+spring&rlz=1C1GGRV_enCA773CA773&oq=what+are+peepers&aqs=chrome.3.69i57j0l5.8154j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Ah! Thanks! I think I hear those in the swamp when I'm out turkey hunting. I don't tend to hear them around the house, though.

Neat! Cute little guys too!

[paulslund]

It didn't freeze Saturday night but we still got 3/4 GPT to boil Sunday thanks to high vacuum. The bucket on the tree by the sugar camp didn't have 100mL in it so this is the point in the season where vacuum pays for itself!


I didn't pick up this comment before. I always thought that vacuum pulls more sap out of the tree than just spouts when the trees are running. But from your comment I gather it will also pull sap when the trees aren't running?

I may have to consider a poor man's vacuum system for next year..

[ennismaple]

Paulslund - vacuum draws sap out of the tree with every inch of mercury getting you about 5% more sap. For us this difference can be huge over the course of a season.

When it doesn't freeze at night and buckets stop running we'll get up to 3/4 GPT per day if we've got our vacuum at about 25" Hg.

[paulslund]

Paulslund - vacuum draws sap out of the tree with every inch of mercury getting you about 5% more sap. For us this difference can be huge over the course of a season.

When it doesn't freeze at night and buckets stop running we'll get up to 3/4 GPT per day if we've got our vacuum at about 25" Hg.

Oh Wow! I never realized it was that much. So, at 25"Hg that would mean around 125% more sap then if using buckets...So not only do you roughly double your sap on normal days, but you'll pull sap on those dead days too! I get it now.. I didn't know the benefits could be that great! Thanks!

[ennismaple]

I'm not sure that it's perfectly linear from zero to 29" but I do hear the stat quoted all the time that you'll get 25% more by going from 20" to 25" Hg. Even though it hadn't frozen in days we got over 1.3 GPT on Monday and Tuesday by running the vacuum continuously.

[Clinkis]

I’m done. Did my last collection on Saturday and did my last big boil Sunday. Drained the evaporator and finished off the sweet on Monday and bottled up the last of my syrup. I finished cleaning up the evaporator, RO and then cleaned the sugar shack tonight. Now I have to pull all the taps, flush the lines and clean up the pump house house this weekend.

I definitely missed a run today and likely tomorrow but I’ve had enough. I had a decent season. I collected lots of sap but unfortunately sugar content started low and went lower as the season went on. Thank goodness for the RO. I ended up making around 400 litres of syrup or about 1L/tap. Down a bit from last year but I’m still happy with my totals. My upgrades to my RO and new evaporator worked very well and definitely sped things up for me I’d say about 50%.

Cheers

[ennismaple]

Clinkis - it always feels good when your upgrades work out and you can do more with less effort! Congrats.

We got another 2/3 GPT yesterday so we will boil today and likely Saturday. 4 straight days of double digit highs and no freezing should end the season for us. Even with cold nights and close to ideal days the trees are shutting down and the sap is coming in cloudy. The sugar content has also dropped below 2% - thankfully with the RO it really doesn't matter because we can adjust the pressure and concentrate flow rate to get the sugar content we want flowing into the flue pan.

We've made so much light syrup that I need a couple days of dark stuff to keep people happy!

[Coatesy]

Think I'm done also. Only got about 1/4 of a gallon per tree the last few days and it's cloudy sap. Buckets full of what looks like baby black flies also, been a good first year for us. Lots of learning and will be better set up next season from what I learned here. Thanks all and stay safe.

[Galena]

I think I'll be done by the end of this week but my trees have made liars of me before! Meantime they're still producing lovely clear sap. Giving away more sap later today, then keeping what's left unless there is a sap tsunami so I can a 6th batch. Just finished batch #5, will be about 5l. Getting dark now, had maybe 1 batch that was even anywhere close to golden and it reads at 52. Stoopid batch #4!

[paulslund]

Yep, I think my trees are done as well. Got maybe 2L from the few Sugars I have, but the Silvers seem to have mostly shut down..even with the freezing Tuesday night and a bit last night I thought might get another 3-4L per tree, but nope. Not enough to fire the evap, although I boiled 50L on the kitchen stove the other night..man that took forever!). Will likely boil on the stove again.. collect this evening and then retire the buckets. Might really look into a basic vacuum system using a water pump like some has posted. Even if I get 30-40% more sap (compared to a high vacuum system) it will be an improvement.

Martin: I scorched a pan last weekend,but salvaged the syrup..it's very dark..you could try that if you need dark bulk? :lol::lol: (just kidding). Just curious..have you ever run the RO and concentrated sap to the point of being syrup without boiling.. you know..just to see how it turns out?

Record year for me this year.. still haven't counted all the syrup as last weekends is still settling in the fridge, but 880L of sap (plus the bit still on the trees). Clean up this weekend, and then start focusing on self-isolation in the turkey woods! :-)

[Big_Eddy]

Spent a pleasant 2 hours this afternoon pulling taps and collecting buckets and lids. Most buckets had sap in them but not anything I would boil. We last collected Saturday so what was there was pretty cloudy. Need a good day for washing up. I left the evaporator sweet on the weekend so need to drain and add my vinegar then let it soak. About 160l from 160 buckets so no complaints. Next task - refilling the woodshed. My goal is to get it full before the first grass cutting.


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[Robert K]

I was scoping out a few trees that got some serious damage over the winter today. I kept thinking how much of the lean-to would be filled for next seasons runs with each tree, doc I think I got a maple problem, I think it’s bad :o

[ennismaple]

We had another decent boil yesterday - about 1 GPT of sap coming in but much lower than 2% sap so not as much syrup as we'd like but not much you can do. The first 15 gallons was a great Very Dark, quickly rising to 45 LT and the last 10 gallons were back into a low Amber Rich.

There was 1000 gallons of decent looking sap in the tanks when we left the woods last night so we should have enough to get in one last boil tomorrow. With no freezing for the near future and double digit highs I fully expect to see tanks full of otter snot by Sunday.

[paulslund]

I was scoping out a few trees that got some serious damage over the winter today. I kept thinking how much of the lean-to would be filled for next seasons runs with each tree, doc I think I got a maple problem, I think it’s bad :o
You're asking the wrong crew for advice on that one.. Our answer to your problem is: Embrace the madness!

I learned how much wood I burn to boil sap the hard way this season. Thought I had enough set aside, and was through it all in just over 2 boils! Spent a lot of the evenings cutting pallets I would get from work to replenish. Time to build a dedicated "syrup wood" wood shed beside the sugar shack!

[Galena]

You're asking the wrong crew for advice on that one.. Our answer to your problem is: Embrace the madness!

I learned how much wood I burn to boil sap the hard way this season. Thought I had enough set aside, and was through it all in just over 2 boils! Spent a lot of the evenings cutting pallets I would get from work to replenish. Time to build a dedicated "syrup wood" wood shed beside the sugar shack!

Eek be carefulif you're burning pallets you just got esp if they're pine...they're often very green. I ruined smokepipe in SW the first year I bucked up pallets with sickening amounts of creosote as I was using fresh-cut up pallets. Now, the planks and knuckles from the same pallets are now well over 2 yrs old and burn cleanly.

[paulslund]

Eek be carefulif you're burning pallets you just got esp if they're pine...they're often very green. I ruined smokepipe in SW the first year I bucked up pallets with sickening amounts of creosote as I was using fresh-cut up pallets. Now, the planks and knuckles from the same pallets are now well over 2 yrs old and burn cleanly.

Yeah they certainly didn't burn as cleanly as last year's stuff.. but I try to keep on the fire a lot so it's as hot as possible.. When I do it properly I only have some smoke when I add some wood.. the rest is a pretty hot and cleanly burned. We learn every year eh?

[Galena]

Well time I called it a year...only one tree, #9, is still producing good clear sap, maybe 3l at a guess. The Surprises produced only drops, and all the big trees produced less than half a litre each, and a spile or two looked a little dubious but still tasted good. We'll find out when I throw it in a saucepan and boil it! Not adding it to the incipient batch #6 if it's gonna ruin it!. Still don't have final figures yet but think about 850+l collected.

[Galena]

GAAAAAHHHHHHHHH....was all set to pull spiles today. This morning the spiles were barely damp on 7 of the trees. I pulled Surprise 3 off the line.

But when I was out doing yardwork in the vicinity of 1 and 2, guess what I heard....that telltale plink! plink! plink!....just collected 15l more good sap (ok some a little cloudy but I tasted it, it's still good). Guess my trees aren't quite done yet. Guess what I'm doing tonight?

[Ghs57]

GAAAAAHHHHHHHHH....was all set to pull spiles today. This morning the spiles were barely damp on 7 of the trees. I pulled Surprise 3 off the line.

But when I was out doing yardwork in the vicinity of 1 and 2, guess what I heard....that telltale plink! plink! plink!....just collected 15l more good sap (ok some a little cloudy but I tasted it, it's still good). Guess my trees aren't quite done yet. Guess what I'm doing tonight?

I'm quite a bit further south than you, but while pulling taps the past few days, it's pretty clear that the trees don't know it's over. I actually think the sap was OK, but we are well past peak and the quantity was pretty low. Well, we will be back next year, bigger and better than ever. (Had an average season this year)

[Galena]

I'm quite a bit further south than you, but while pulling taps the past few days, it's pretty clear that the trees don't know it's over. I actually think the sap was OK, but we are well past peak and the quantity was pretty low. Well, we will be back next year, bigger and better than ever. (Had an average season this year)

Yeah I always tell people that the trees don't read the books on sugaring....no different than horses not reading the various books of horse trainers and knowing what they're *supposed* to do. There's always at least a few that break the mold!

Ok today now the few drips of sap I've seen are starting to look cloudy and some pails have more baby mosquitoes than anything else. Still will wait til around 5pm. Just.
in.case.

[ennismaple]

We pushed through one last GPT of sap on Saturday. The sugar was down again so the RO did the heavy lifting. Made some Very Dark to start the day and some low Dark for the rest of the day. We might have been able to stretch it to another day but all the signs indicated we were done.

We couldn't be happier with the new RO this year. It consistently pushed through up to 1000 GPH of sap and would give us concentrate anywhere between 15 and 19.5 Brix depending on the incoming sap and how we dialed up or down the flows. We ended up making a whopping 235 gallons of finished syrup per chord of wood! I'll need to figure out what to do with the rest of my time I won't be spending cutting and splitting evaporator wood! We should have gone to the 3rd tower years ago.

Yesterday we got the evaporator drained and flooded with sap, the RO partly apart and about 1800 taps pulled. I'll pick away at the rest of the taps this week. And then I sleep...

[paulslund]

We pushed through one last GPT of sap on Saturday. The sugar was down again so the RO did the heavy lifting. Made some Very Dark to start the day and some low Dark for the rest of the day. We might have been able to stretch it to another day but all the signs indicated we were done.

We couldn't be happier with the new RO this year. It consistently pushed through up to 1000 GPH of sap and would give us concentrate anywhere between 15 and 19.5 Brix depending on the incoming sap and how we dialed up or down the flows. We ended up making a whopping 235 gallons of finished syrup per chord of wood! I'll need to figure out what to do with the rest of my time I won't be spending cutting and splitting evaporator wood! We should have gone to the 3rd tower years ago.

Yesterday we got the evaporator drained and flooded with sap, the RO partly apart and about 1800 taps pulled. I'll pick away at the rest of the taps this week. And then I sleep...

Wow! If I recall you had set aside 10 chords of wood for the season..did you get through all the wood? Does that mean you made about 2,350 gallons of syrup (US or Imp?). Is that an average season or a better than average season for you?

[ennismaple]

Paulslund - we had over 15 chord cut and split but we obviously didn't need it all!

We don't advertise how much syrup we made because people tend to multiply that times the retail price of a 4L jug and assume that's what we make for revenue. I will say it was our best ever year in terms of GPT and total production. Less than 20% of what we made was dark or very dark.

We already have plans to make things better for next year. We need to get our electric releaser plumbed and about 4500 feet of 1.5" line installed to allow us to pump all but 1000 taps directly back to the sugar camp. That will make life so much easier when we don't have to gather all that sap every day. We'll still have 2 tanks that need to be gathered each day but they are close to the camp and easy driving. Some days it takes a dozen or more trips to get all the sap collected and that wears you out!

[paulslund]

Ah I understand. I'm glad to see you had a record year! You guys sure work hard enough for it! :)

[DrTimPerkins]

I will say it was our best ever year in terms of GPT and total production.

Congratulations!

We're hoping to do a sap pump line this summer also for the same reasons. Takes one guy half the day or more just to truck sap around.

[ennismaple]

Congratulations!

We're hoping to do a sap pump line this summer also for the same reasons. Takes one guy half the day or more just to truck sap around.
Thanks Dr Tim. We've come to realize that as we improve our tubing, improve our vacuum and do better with leak patrol that the great seasons happen more often. If I can control those factors the weather has less of an impact than I thought 10 years ago.

[DrTimPerkins]

If I can control those factors the weather has less of an impact than I thought 10 years ago.

I agree. If we look at the UVM PMRC production records for the past 18 yrs (below), there is relatively little fluctuation from year to year. The trend line (solid black) is about as flat as it could be. Even 2012 (point 9 in this figure), which was a terrible year, is just a small downward blip. In most cases, the small peaks and dips are due to some factor that we know of quite well (pump failure, line freezing under road, freaking squirrels, new vacuum pump so better CFM, a bunch of new taps so great sanitation there, etc.) Moreover...we CAN'T control the weather, so there is no point in worrying about it. What is more important are the problems that crop up -- just a few issues over a couple of days during the season make a huge difference.

21391

Weather - Trees - Vacuum - Sanitation - NO ERRORS

[ennismaple]

I totally agree Dr Tim. Our best 5 seasons have been our last 5 seasons - I'd like to believe that's not an accident!

[DrTimPerkins]

I totally agree Dr Tim. Our best 5 seasons have been our last 5 seasons - I'd like to believe that's not an accident!

:lol: High yields definitely don't happen by accident, but they will happen if you work at it. It costs some in labor and materials, but nice to hear you're seeing the benefits and the fruits of your efforts.

I can't even count the number of times producers have said to us "that can't be done in this area" or "the conditions are different here" or "our trees are different" or they straight-up just don't believe us or think our woods are some weird genetics experiment with super high sugar (not the case...our woods are pretty ugly...cold, fairly high elevation and WINDY). That attitude continues until some maple producer up the road takes the new approaches to heart and gets great results...then the light-bulb comes on!

So again...congratulations and great job.

[Galena]

Got my Murphy Cup today - yay! Now once I figure out the Canadian conversion part (Bricklayer did his best to help) I'll have it figured out.

Coatesy if you're still around, clear out your inbox, trying to send you a message and can't cause it's full.

Also for reasons unknown to me did not get any light/golden this year. All amber and dark. And I cannot upload a pic to show...I keep getting told to refresh page and log back in. Dr Tim?

[PaulRenaud]

I'm in Darling Township, north of the Tatlock Road. The weather this coming week after Easter looks promising (ranging from +7 to -2 most days) but I hear that many of the producers in mid-to-southern Lanark are already pulling their taps. Should I do the same or try to get a couple hundred more Litres before the season ends?

[paulslund]

I'm in Darling Township, north of the Tatlock Road. The weather this coming week after Easter looks promising (ranging from +7 to -2 most days) but I hear that many of the producers in mid-to-southern Lanark are already pulling their taps. Should I do the same or try to get a couple hundred more Litres before the season ends?

I pulled my taps because they dried up, even with the 2 cold(er) nights we had last week I barely got 1L/tap. If your last sap still looked nice and clear and you haven't pulled any yet, I can't imagine it would do any harm to leave them in and see what you get next. There's a 4 day stretch coming that looks to be the nicest sap weather of the entire season!

If you leave them in, please report back..if it turns out well, I might not be so quick to pull them next year when it appears they had dried up.

[Galena]

I'm in Darling Township, north of the Tatlock Road. The weather this coming week after Easter looks promising (ranging from +7 to -2 most days) but I hear that many of the producers in mid-to-southern Lanark are already pulling their taps. Should I do the same or try to get a couple hundred more Litres before the season ends?

It's entirely your call. Like Paulslund said, if your sap is still clear and good, sure keep the taps in and see what happens. The microclimates for all our areas can vary greatly. FWIW normally I am still tapping this time of year, often up til late April. But the combination of both cloudy sap and spiles drying convinced me otherwise. When my trees are done, they're done! Just walked them now and no *tears* of sap running down any trunks.

[ennismaple]

That depends on what your trees are telling you. As the season starts to end I'll start seeing a significant reduction in flow for a few days even with perfect conditions. Then the sap starts to change, then the syrup starts to get that stronger end of season smell which normally means you get about 1 more day and you're done. Any remaining sap in our lines as we finished washing on Friday was getting snotty and the releasers were nasty so no way we could make more syrup that was worth boiling.

[paulslund]

That depends on what your trees are telling you. As the season starts to end I'll start seeing a significant reduction in flow for a few days even with perfect conditions. Then the sap starts to change, then the syrup starts to get that stronger end of season smell which normally means you get about 1 more day and you're done. Any remaining sap in our lines as we finished washing on Friday was getting snotty and the releasers were nasty so no way we could make more syrup that was worth boiling.

Martin, were you still boiling last week? Or was the sap still running, but not worth boiling, while you guys were cleaning up camp? Just curious if you still managed to pull sap out of the trees last week before it got bad on Friday..
..

[butler]

Just a quick question for eastern Ontario maple producers...I’m looking to expand my operation to a neighbouring property... what is a fair price for my neighbor to charge per tap?

[Galena]

Just a quick question for eastern Ontario maple producers...I’m looking to expand my operation to a neighbouring property... what is a fair price for my neighbor to charge per tap?

Hmmmm...good question. Mostly in my area, you simply ask permission and give them a few jars of syrup as a thank you. But I guess it depends on how many taps you want to put in, and how much you would be on neighbour's property collecting sap. Maybe a more general-format section of the site, like the Sugar Inn, would be a better place to ask - and likely have a few more people browsing. Good luck!