Low sugar content

[maplenutter butter]

Question for some of you. My sugar content has really dropped of. I'm getting 1.4 percent sugar and the weather here has been perfect with freezing nights and highs around 44. I'm about a third way through my season hopefully. Is there a chance the sugar content will come back up? There has been a lot of moisture in the ground. Friday and Saturday will not get above 32. Any thoughts???

[Clinkis]

Mines dropped here too. Started season around 2.6-2.8%. Now it’s down to 1.8-2%. Getting lots of sap though. Hard to say if it will rise. Usually for me it starts low and then goes up as the season progresses and then will drop off later in the season. But every year is different. I guess be happy for what we get and make the best of it.

[sapman]

Lots of us are dealing with extremely low sugar, especially this year. I've been getting .9-1.1 recently. I started at 1.5 early, and downhill from there. A lot of work for a LOT less syrup. I'd love to be boiling 1.5%!

[tombaisley]

1 - 1.5% in North Afton, very disappointing

[hogisland42]

I guess the maple gods are making up for the high sugar content last year

[Geroldn]

2% at the start for me, then down to 1.3%. Last night I had 1.5% and was happy for that. Otherwise the weather has been good, lots of clear sap. I guess it’s not just my sugarbush that’s not sweet this year ☹️

[bill m]

Mine started about 2 and went up to 2.2% Now down to 1.5% I don't think it's going back up at all even if we do get a hard freeze. So my RO has to run a little longer.

[DrTimPerkins]

I guess the maple gods are making up for the high sugar content last year

I think of it more like the stock market. Sometimes it's high, sometimes it's low...seems to have some relationship to something that's going on, but never quite sure what that is.

[maple flats]

My best sugar % this season has been 1.8%, just one day. It started at 1.2 and after 2 freeze thaw cycles in a row it climbed. Today it is 1.0, my lowest, was also 1.0 2 days ago. If it falls any lower I will shut down and call it a season. Even with an RO it doesn't seem worth the time to process under 1% sap. Maybe if I had an RO that could give me 12%+ in one pass, but on mine it takes 2 passes to get between 9-10% and running the RO longer raises the concentrate temp too much. Based on the fact that I am cutting back on taps and will never again have more than 500 taps, I don't see a better RO in my future. I can however do better thinning to help with the sugar%. I have about 1/3 of my bush never been thinned. The issue there is that that area is heavy in poison ivy, thus all thinning has to be done in the winter. I seem to be ok working there in winter, even though I wasn't good to years ago.