First Boil Tomorrow

[MonmouthSugarmaker]

Hello all,

First time posting, just got accepted today. 34 gravity taps in 28 trees - all rock maple. 20 +/- gallons (mostly all frozen) to cook tomorrow. 2x3 stand alone steel hobby stove, wood fired, with a flat pan and warming pan. Looking forward to the fun coming up this week.

Been sugaring for 10 or so years. Had to take a hiatus of a couple years living in an apartment. Property I live on now has 60 or so viable rock maples - heavily forested. Plan on thinning at some point to give them some more room to grow.

First time using the new stove tomorrow so should be a learning curve. Good luck to all as the season progresses!

[newmaplah]

Hope you had a good boil today. I am a little late the party this year. Just got my taps in today. I got 64 into buckets and 21 into a new 3/16 line that will have a shurflo on it before next weekend assuming the necessary parts show up. I am just a little north of you in Fairfield. Would love to have 60 rock maple available. I tap mostly reds in a swampy area next to me. I do have a few rock maple around the house, but not many.

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

Our first boil will be tomorrow afternoon and evening. One of our bushes has opened up and is flowing, the southerly facing one. Other bushes still just dripping, maybe open up overnight or tomorrow. Nice freeze coming afterwards. It’s here, good luck to everyone.

[West Sumner Sugar]

Our first boil will be tomorrow afternoon and evening. One of our bushes has opened up and is flowing, the southerly facing one. Other bushes still just dripping, maybe open up overnight or tomorrow. Nice freeze coming afterwards. It’s here, good luck to everyone.

Glad to hear we arent the only ones in the area having a slow start. We will boil this weekend but man the sap just doesnt want to release.

[Rodger]

This weekend will be our first boil of the season. Have about 90 gals and hopefully add another 20-30gals today. before we boil. Some of our trees are not releasing either down here Washington.

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

Glad to hear we arent the only ones in the area having a slow start. We will boil this weekend but man the sap just doesnt want to release.

Everything is still running this morning but still only dripping in some places. Stubborn trees for sure but they will make it up for it later in the year. You are correct, doesn't want to shake loose in some areas. But we laughed about it last night, we go through this every year.........wanting everything to gush at once and it never does early on. We'll have over 200 gallons, maybe 250 gallons to do tonight. Sweeten the pans.

[West Sumner Sugar]

Everything is still running this morning but still only dripping in some places. Stubborn trees for sure but they will make it up for it later in the year. You are correct, doesn't want to shake loose in some areas. But we laughed about it last night, we go through this every year.........wanting everything to gush at once and it never does early on. We'll have over 200 gallons, maybe 250 gallons to do tonight. Sweeten the pans.

Completely agree. We can only get up to Sumner to boil on the weekends and always have high hopes of full tanks. Luckily we have about 100 taps in Lewiston to get us going early and we finish out in Sumner. This gives us a longer season. Im guessing we will have 300 or so to process tomorrow...but we always hope for more!

[West Sumner Sugar]

This weekend will be our first boil of the season. Have about 90 gals and hopefully add another 20-30gals today. before we boil. Some of our trees are not releasing either down here Washington.

Good luck on your first boil!

[Mvhomesteader]

Glad to hear we arent the only ones in the area having a slow start. We will boil this weekend but man the sap just doesnt want to release.

Same here in Mount Vernon. This warm weather was a bust for sap flow. I had 20 gallons each Tuesday and Wednesday but dropped to 10 Thursday and 8 today off 50 taps. Not cold enough at night I guess. Though weirdly, some trees seem to flow anyway.

I always get edgey when the trees let up......I've got 70 gallons stored. 55 for a boil Monday and the rest toward a boil the following weekend. The cold snap hopefully will get things going again.

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

We cooked off 215 gallons tonight. Same as last years first boil but 1 week later. Never got a draw but were close. Pans are sweetened. Uneventful day, we had everything ready and it went smoothly. Still haven’t seen over 13” on our Shurflo setup but we’ll figure it out. Looks froze up till end of next week. Going shopping tomorrow for something to do, the wife wins!
Sap was 1.9%

[Mvhomesteader]

We cooked off 215 gallons tonight. Same as last years first boil but 1 week later. Never got a draw but were close. Pans are sweetened.

Since I'm still relatively new to syrup production and I don't use a conventional evaporator, would someone explain what "sweetening the pan" involves? Thanks in advance!

[BCPP]

Since I'm still relatively new to syrup production and I don't use a conventional evaporator, would someone explain what "sweetening the pan" involves? Thanks in advance!
In a continuous evaporator the main evaporating pan takes sap from its initial 2-3% sugar to about 20% sugar as it flows into the finishing pan. So sap starts at ~20%sugar at start of channel to end up at 66.6% sugar at pan outlet. However, when you initially start up everything is at the initial sugar of ~3% and it takes about 6 hours for enough water to evaporate to get to syrup and then the syrup has to flow through the channels, gradually establishing the gradient in the finishing pan. Roughly 100gal of sap boiled off on our small evaporator. This process of establishing the gradient and getting to the point of continuously drawing off syrup is called sweetening the pan.
On a small evaporator like ours we dont really get to continuous draw. More of a continuous batch process!

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

That’s a good explanation. Different from batch boiling. Our syrup pan hit 216.5 degrees before we ran out of sap. Next time! Maybe Thursday. Not much sap here today and cold for the next 2-3 days.

[West Sumner Sugar]

We ended up collecting 570 gallons Saturday. Got the pans sweetened and pull out about 3 gallons of nice looking syrup. Looks like a good upcoming week after the Monday deep freeze.

[PiperHill]

Good morning,

I’m just North of you across the border and i collected 250g last week and i boiled Friday...but i the sap was not more than1.2 %sugar.. it was good to test the equipment and do some adjustment...

I’m just curious how was your sap?

Happy season.. starting this friday we should be good for for the next 10dYs of boiling.

Cheers
Erick

[BRL]

Here is what sweeting the pans looks like. We only had 120 gal to boil but we will draw off next time!

22235

[BCPP]

Our sap has been good this year and running at about 3.4%

[CanterburyMaple]

I've done 3 small boils over the past 3 weekends as I only have a 55 gallon storage container and I've collected 160 gallons of sap so far. I've made just shy of 2 gallons of syrup from 80+ gallons of sap but not sure exactly as I chucked a lot of ice to save space in my storage barrel. My sap is coming in at 1.5-1.6% pretty consistently here in Gorham. I have twice as much syrup already as I did last year, but I'm still doing crazy things like rinsing out filters and equipment and "re-boiling" on my stove top to save as much syrup as I can and use it for baking. I'm guessing if we get big flows this week I'll finally stop worrying about wasting syrup on the margins...