Steaming Drill Bits- 2010

[tuckermtn]

got back from the Northcountry this afternoon and headed out for some maple time-

washed tanks and set up three tubing runs-

tapped two 5/16 gravity runs- 50 and 30 taps each- were running well.

after dinner put headlamp on and headed over to one of our vacuum bushes and swaped out 130 5/16 taps to stubbies in anticipation of check-valves.

beautiful night to be in the woods- 38 deg, no wind, very little snow- easy to get around. Looked at a forecast tonight and someone is saying we might get two feet over the next few days....no thanks...

finally getting used to the two-handed tubing tool that a buddy made for me this fall. Wonder how I got along without it for so long...no more chewing on tubing...at least not by me- the squirrels on the other hand have been busy this off-season.

may tap rest Thursday/Friday in anticipation of warmer temps this weekend...

[michelle32]

Glad to see you up and running Eric. Did you figure out the ro? Saps been running very good down here. Not sure what we've made yet. Still have to bottle it. Keith

[tuckermtn]

Keith- no I haven't set the RO up yet- hope to get that on-line this weekend. Won't need it just yet as with we can handle the early season slow output of sap without the RO...when we are fully tapped it will be a big help...

good luck in your season...

[tuckermtn]

Got the first bush on vacuum up and running today- 130+/- on check valves.

started switching a bush thats new to me in Salisbury over to check valve/stubby combo...hope its worth the time.

got gas powered sp-11 set up today- just need to get 5 gal gas pail set up and that should be good to go

got two more stock tanks from tractor supply so should be set with tanks for a while-

electrician is coming tomorrow so hopefully rest of RO can get set up monday...

running a little bit here, but nothing gushing- think I missed the first good run last weekend- I told myself in August that there was no way I wouldn't be ready- but now its the end of Feburary and guess what- I not ready...

[KenWP]

Any of you NH people have any idea where West Manchester is I have a very old glass paper weight sitting here from a wine room there but can't seem to find it on a map of any kind.

Saps slowely working it's way north.

[jtthibodeau]

Any of you NH people have any idea where West Manchester is I have a very old glass paper weight sitting here from a wine room there but can't seem to find it on a map of any kind.

Saps slowely working it's way north.

Ken,
The West Side sits west of the river, as well as Rt. 293. If you use the Granite Street Exit off 293, it will put you in the heart of the "west side" of Manchester.

[KenWP]

Okay thanks. Wondered why I couldn't find it on a map. I am one of these guys that gloms onto lots of old things. Ones asleep right now.

[tuckermtn]

gathered 400 gals late yesterday and after a cleaning frenzy had our first boil last night - 8 hrs and finally 1.5 gals of some dark cloudy syrup.

only have 250 taps in to date, but hope to get rolling monday. Logging job is winding down and then its full time maple.

marginal temps yesterday so only stuff running was on vac.

no electrican yet- he has been full on with fixing generators for all the folks in New London and Warner without power. So no RO yet...

lots to do...

-Eric

[maple sapper]

Any of you NH people have any idea where West Manchester is I have a very old glass paper weight sitting here from a wine room there but can't seem to find it on a map of any kind.

Saps slowely working it's way north.

West manchester is about 20 mins from me. Im in Nashua. 5 mins from Massachusetts. Manchester is due north of me. Probably a 1/4 of the way up the state from the south.

[tuckermtn]

425 gallons this afternoon/evening-

my girls and I hung 60 or so buckets late sunday, and by tonight at 7pm I averaged 2 gals per tap. couple 16 qt buckets were almost full- strange when you figure it didn't really freeze last night and the wind was cranking out of the NWest all day.

Mark did some afternoon boiling- made another 3 or 4 gals of nice flavored syrup- no sense on grade yet.

heading home from logging early tomorrow to try and get RO plumbed and running- should have done that in Janurary-

once the RO is up and running bring on the BIGSAP-

[Amber Gold]

Sounds like you're making progress. Do you have a blower yet? You can't beat 20 min's from cold start to boil.

[tuckermtn]

Josh- have the easy part- the blower- just need to make the connections to the arch...might have to mcgiver something...

only a little new sap today- worked on RO connections tonight- looks good for later this week and into the weekend. will need RO then for sure.. Mark boiled most of the afternoon- around 12 gals of syrup so far...

[Amber Gold]

How is it you've made about the same amount of syrup as me and I've been tapped in a week longer...it must be the high test sap I process.

Once you get the blower on, see my post in the evaporator section in the "rear air gap" thread. I made some changes and the preliminary results look promising. Will know more tomorrow when I boil longer.

[tuckermtn]

we hadn't gathered since wednesday, so pulled in just shy of 900 gals yesterday ( I think we are right around 650 taps right now- hope to get 1000?)

figured it was time to give the RO its first run.

after an hour and a half of tightening fittings and tweeking, we had it making 8% concentrate. So far the best thing about running the RO is seeing all that water in the permeate tank and thinking- "I didn't have to boil that!" Love the fact that that the old memtek has a panel on the front of it that shows you exactly what valve need to be where, what your pressures should be, etc.
Call me uncultured, but the best thing is its all written in plain english!

Had the supposedly re-designed hobby releaser hang up yesterday - even after it was leveled and 40 deg out. I think I will trade both of the ones I got this year back in and get one regular one for the season and just run one vacuum bush this season. Pain in the A$$

looks like it should be a good one today- have my intermediate sugaring class at noon- then its off to get more sap...

best of luck to folks...

[3% Solution]

Hi Eric,
Glad to see almost everything is going good for ya!!
I've got to get over there one of these days.
Have a good one.

Dave

[tuckermtn]

different night with the RO last night-

we pulled in about 500 gals of sap from the last two days- pumped in to the 800 gal feed tank for the RO and started it up...ran great for 15 minutes or so- really high flow rates- processing 12-13gpm on average. walked away to check sugar coming into evap feed tank. around 7%- head back to barn and first thing I notice is my pressure is about 700psi. yikes...

for some reason my recirculation pump shut down. I got it back up and running for another 10 minutes then it shut down again. So I shut the RO down and let it cool for a few minutes and tried to fire up again. Now my supply (feed) pump would not start- motor would whine then shut off after a few seconds from overload. Could not get it to restart....

still have 150-175 gals to work though- might pump it out of the RO feed tank and manually transfer it to the evap. feed tank and boil the raw sap.

this sugaring with the RO- at least the older RO I have, is a bit like going from logging with a cable skidder and chainsaw- slow but reliable production- to logging with a mecahnized operation (feller-buncher. grapple skidder, and loader) - you get a lot more done in the same ammount of time, but there are a lot more things that can go wrong...

on a brighter note, my galvanzied base stack finally died the other day-

you can moan and groan about Bascom's being so big and almost monopolistic, but woudn't you know it- they had my exact base stack and three sections of 14" pipe in stock- going to need to wear sunglasses in the sugarhouse for a little while with that new stainless...

-cheers-

-Eric

[Amber Gold]

I've found the same thing with vac. Great when you have it, but sucks when it doesn't, and there's more stuff that can go wrong. Hope you get things worked out.

I was looking at my base stack just before the season and the bottom front lip is rotted out. It's on its last season, but should at least make it through it. I'll have nice shiny stainless for next year to match my stack. I am contemplating reducing the stack diameter though. The new arches come with an 11" stack.

[tuckermtn]

well after spending most of Tuesday installing a new feed pump for the RO and scratching my head as to why the sap wasn't running, today was a different day.

put in another 80 taps- 25 of so with the help of my wife who seems to be very keen to help this year- Then with the help of my girls, we gathered our buckets- averaged over 2 gals per tap on the buckets- then pumped out our one functioning vacuum run. Had that 425 tank a few gallons shy of full.
Mark hauled in another 200, and we were set to fire up the RO.

so 600 gals of sap and possibly 12 hrs of boiling worked out to 3 hrs and 150 gals of 8%

we are around 35 gal of syrup.

tomorrow we replace the stack and work on closing off the kitchen addition. Friday I'm headed to maplepro to pick up some more jugs and complain about their press not taking everyone elses paper size...

all in all a good day...

[tuckermtn]

put on the new stainless stack yesterday- took Heide and I less than an hour and it certainly makes the place look pretty spiffy...

gathered 600 gals yesterday from everything except our 80+ buckets. ran through the RO and made probably 13 or so gal of syrup. seems to be holding at Medium...

gathered another 300- mostly from the buckets we didn't get yesterday plus 100 from the vac bush and 65 from the 48 tap-all 5/16 tubing run. plan on concentrating but not as high tonight to have enough sap to boil.

still have another 200 taps to put in- hope to finish that us this weekend.

I like the NOAA weather forcast better than the Weather.com one...not much freezing temps the next few nights so don't expect much of a run over the weekend...keeping my fingers crossed...

[tuckermtn]

just did a tally- at 59.25 gallons so far- mostly medium, one batch of light...

[tuckermtn]

glad I didn't collect the buckets yesterday as the sap in them kept them from blowing away. will gather tomorrow mid day.

not much boiling or sapping, but productive maple day none the less...mostly worked on putting the pieces together for our homemade air tight front and forced draft blower. Still working on the rheostat set-up to slow down the blower as it is pretty high volume...not ready to cement the drilled bricks in place yet- need to test things out before I'll seal it in...

ten day forecast just got worse with a few days in the 60's and only a couple nights in the 20's....keeping my fingers crossed-

-Eric

[tuckermtn]

hadn't gathered since friday night so tonight we gathered 450 gals. Think we made around 10 gals- would guess its a dark or B.

4-5 buckets were yellow- not sure if from rain or what...

tying to get different vac pump running for a bush in Salisbury- hope to get that going tomorrow. They say its supposed to freeze tonight but its 1am and still 40 deg. out. Its clear, but there is a funky NE wind that seems too warm.

keeping fingers and toes crossed...

best of luck to all...keeping the faith...

[tuckermtn]

200 gals off of our one functioning vacuum bush (130+ taps) and 60gals off our 48 tap all 5/16 tubing run. Left the rest of the buckets and gravity tubing runs for tomorrow.

noticed how much of a difference temperature of incoming sap has on RO performance. with 42-44 deg. sap my RO was consistently doing 8 to 9 gals. of input per minute- tonight, with 54 deg. sap, it was doing over 11 gpm.

jugged up some dark amber- we are close to 75 gals. to date. Was hoping for 200+ but know thats not going to happen- now I' hoping for better than 100.

cheers-

-Eric

[wally]

eric,

sounds as if you're having a decent run of it, even if not spectacular. i'll have to stop by one of these days to see the show. i'm just about finished for the season - out of dry wood, but still have sap.

tim

[Brian Ledoux]

hadn't gathered since friday night so tonight we gathered 450 gals. Think we made around 10 gals- would guess its a dark or B.

4-5 buckets were yellow- not sure if from rain or what...

tying to get different vac pump running for a bush in Salisbury- hope to get that going tomorrow. They say its supposed to freeze tonight but its 1am and still 40 deg. out. Its clear, but there is a funky NE wind that seems too warm.

keeping fingers and toes crossed...

best of luck to all...keeping the faith...

Eric - I was wondering, what did you do with your 4-5 buckets of yellow sap? did you dump them? Or boil with rest of your sap?

[tuckermtn]

Brian-

the off yellow ones I keep and mix in...the mountain dew and apple juice ones I dump...

when I come to a suspect tree, I try and dump into an empty gathering pail- typically a white one- as I can then make the call to dump or keep...

[red maples]

seems like your in the same boat as the rest of us all expecting so much more but coming up a bit short but its not offically over yet.

[tuckermtn]

instead of "doctor shopping" I'm "forecast shopping" - looking around at the various forecast to find one that tells me what I want to hear. I like NOAA better for next week- a few nights in the 20s....

buckets ran well yesterday- but not much on the gravity tubing. Got a gal/tap off the vacuum. Finally got the replacement vaccum pump going for our Salisbury bush so hopefully get that up and pulling 22" today. Its a BB4 pump head on 130 taps so should be plenty of suck...

need to take the refractometer around today and see what the buckets are putting out for %...

still in the game...

[Russell Lampron]

Hi Eric,

It sounds like you ae having a good season but like the rest of us you're probably not going to meet your original goal. I was hoping to hit 200 gallons too and am just over 1/2 way there.

The nights have been colder than predicted and I hope that the trend continues next week when I am finally going to be on vacation.

How do you like boiling concentrate? I have been getting mine up into the mid teens and as a result I have only used a cord of wood so far and have made 106 gallons of syrup. Most of it is dark with some medium. I was still using my old membrane at the start of the season and was making dark instead of light or medium because the sap was getting too hot when I was recirculating it.

[tuckermtn]

had cousins from MAss. up yesterday so boiled most of the afternoon- pushed the 450 gals we got over the last two days (was 1.4% by the time I started the RO) with one pass and only 350 psi it was up to 7%. Russ- like the concentrate a whole lot...boiled in 150 gals of raw sap yesterday at the end of the boil and kept thinking "whats taking so long?"

took the digital refract. out when Heide and I were doing buckets yesterday- highest reading was 3.6 and lowest was 1.7. ITs funny b/c the 3.6 was from some trees that have hardly produced all season and the 1.7 was on a tree that we have been getting over 2 gal/tap per day. guess it all equals out.

had a close call with the syrup pan yesterday- went from 5 deg. over to 15 deg. over in about 45 seconds- I think we just saved it- will drain pan and look it over today..but the silver lining is when we added the heavy syrup to the already made syrup in the canner it mixed to make a really nice "smoke and butter" grade B....with this season I'm always looking for the silver lining...

best of luck to all still at it...

[Amber Gold]

Eric, I'm doing the same thing...shopping for the forecast I like the most. Right now I like NOAA. They're predicting mid-20's at night early next week.

[wally]

- highest reading was 3.6 and lowest was 1.7. ITs funny b/c the 3.6 was from some trees that have hardly produced all season and the 1.7 was on a tree that we have been getting over 2 gal/tap per day. guess it all equals out.

could be higher readings precisely because it hadn't produced much all season, and had more sugar "in the system". ;)

[tuckermtn]

was thinking it was going to be a low key sugaring day when Parker called this AM saying he didn't have enough to boil and would I like some...you bet- not sure what the total was, but somewhere near 600 gals of 1.4% sap. had a bit of color to it, but after one pass through the RO and into the evap. it came out as some nice tasting either dark or B...nice bonus- many thanks Parker...

buckets and vacuum ran a bit today- will gather mid-day tomorrow and see where we are at. approx. 97 gals of syrup as of today (the stuff that was a bit scorched last night actually graded out as dark amber, so we have yet to finish and grade any grade B) and I think our tap count is going to be around 625.

going to hang in till at least next weekend for our open house weekend. if it gets cold enough a few of the night might actually have some sap to work with...

-eric

[tuckermtn]

gathered all but 100 taps worth this afternoon- 310 gals from 500+ taps...not great, but I was surprised to see almost everything still running after no freeze and 67 deg. out this afternoon. Hadn't gathered since Thursday.

sap is holding at 1.9 average..will boil it in raw tomorrow and put the signs out at the end of our road and see if we can get some foot traffic.

pretty dismal per tap totals so far- looks like we are around .18 per tap where as the last three years we have been between .31 and .33 per tap.

most of the other producers I have spoken to in our area seem like they are 1/2 where they should- or would like to- be.

weather looks like its supposed to get wetter and colder for the next few days- then some freezing nights late in the week....just in time for maple weekend...

[tuckermtn]

15 deg here at 7am. supposed to get to 39 today...its going to gush today and tomorrow, I just know it...

up to 108.5 gals so far.

signs are all made for maple weekend- hope to get some traffic...hardest thing is going to be getting the feed lines un-frozen this morning so I can get hte evaporator going...

good luck to all still at it...

-Eric

[tuckermtn]

had a full maple weekend- got a bunch of sap from Parker to get me through- thanks a ton- was busy both days- sold over 30 gals of syrup- great help from Mark, Dave and my family- probably the best thing was seeing my daughters sell the "hand painted recycled sap buckets" that they had worked so hard on...they were very psyched..

sap was running very well tonight when we gathered- got about 600-625 gals of 1.6%- Dave ran it thorough the RO and made some decent looking 7.4%.
we had some buckets that on one side of same tree there would be 3 gallons in a bucket and the other side would be done dry...

we are around 125-ish gals and hope to get above 130. 130 would give us 2/3 of last years per-tap average. Time to start looking for some bulk...

keep it coming...

-best of luck-

-eRic

[tuckermtn]

best 24 hr run of the year yesterday for us- 835 gals of good lookin 1.5% sap- boiled it all in- were making 10.7% concentrate with one pass (concentrate flow was 1.25 gpm and running it at 425psi) and 0.0 in the perm. very happy with those #'s...

went to check vac pump is salisbury this AM and the pulley had cracked and thrown the belt off...been a stuggle all season with that set-up

few buckets were still dripping this morning and if I still had the vac in salisbury running I am sure the goddess would be stopping by...

near 135 gals now...

this last run is like getting a par or birdie in golf on the second to last hole- its what you remeber and what brings you back the next time...

cheers-

-Eric

[tuckermtn]

300 or so more gallons when I gathered yesterday (tuesday) evening. 1.5% Think we are officially making buddy commercial syrup

would guess we'll get 1/2 as much sap as last night if we gather today...need to do some finishing and filtering...think we have 25 or so gallons waiting around...

if we buy one new piece of equipment this year it will be a bigger finisher- something in the 20 gal range.

had two frogs in the sugarhouse on Monday night and one in there last night...like Parkers' salamander in years past, it must be a sign from Ma Nature that the end is near...

cheers-

[tuckermtn]

had not gathered in 48 hrs-

pulled in 375 gals of 1.6 last night and put it through the RO

the grade of has come up in the syrup but its got a complex buddy taste

so far the champion "bush" for us is our 48 tap-all-5/16-on-one line bush- it has put out 8 gals of sap per tap just since Sunday night...and it keeps on chugging...

keeping the faith...