Graduating Five Gallon Pails

Just being a rookie hobbyist, I can see the five gallon pail as a major tool. Buckets will get emptied into them. Likely sap before going into an evaporator will come out of a five gallon pail, and I will likely store my daily sap, in my supply of five gallon pails, before I put sap into my 55 gallon storage barrels.

It will also be a key measurement tool, knowing how much sap you have collected, or how much you have boiled. I thought it was too important of a tool to guess how much sap is in a pail. My guess that in Canada, a lot of people would use the Canadian Tire food grade five gallon pail. I will have 18-20 of them, with lids. (A rotating third will get cleaned each night.)

I used my 8 gallon graduated pot and I measure out 1 to 5 gallons and poured it into the pail and marked where on the pail each gallon will be. I then measured from the bottom of the pail, how high up each line was.

The attached picture shows the gallon marks and the height of each line in inches. On a rainy day, I will mark all of my pails.

I am not sure if this would be helpful for anyone else, or not sure if I am crazy for doing this.

Attachment 22544

I did the same thing last year. It was interesting to know how much sap I started each boil with and how much syrup it made. I could see the sap to syrup ratio change as the season progressed.
I went from 40.5:1 ratio on first boil to 43.3:1 ratio on last boil. I'm on red maples.

I have several of my five gallon pails marked like this that I use in the house for my syrup. Been doing that for years. Helps me gauge how many jars I am going to need to can it all up.

"not sure if I am crazy for doing this."

You're not crazy. All of my 5 gal buckets are marked every half gallon. I gather with them and can always tell how much sap came from a tree that way. I can also see when I'm done gathering how much sap I ended up with for the day.

Of every piece of maple equipment I have , the 5 gal bucket is the most used and depended on!!