sugaring in iowa

Upmep: My wife does most of the baking and she's a little gimped up right now (surgery next Monday) so I can't speak about the flavor of baked goods. However, Think about homemade pumpkin pie with maple sugar as opposed to white sugar! Or maybe apple pie? Oh wait, apple crisp with maple sugar in the crumbly stuff on top! How about sweet potatoes? As soon as my darlin wife can get around better I'm going to request some peanut butter cookies using maple sugar and see how they turn out. I can say that the sugar is good in coffee, tea, Raisin Bran and oatmeal. On another note, I pass a house north of New London (on my way to Burlington) who had 6 or 8 trees tapped in their yard. I was wondering if that was you? I finally decided it wouldn't be creepy or anything to stop and talk to them but they weren't home. Also, about filtering, I noticed a small cloud in the bottom of the jars from the second and third batches today, so maybe I shouldn't offer advice on filtering. Anyway, it's been a fun season and you're right it's good to spend time doing this with family. All the best, Ted

tbear, I live in between you and Des Moines so that wasn't me in New London. I was wondering what everyone else had for an evaporator. Mine is a barrel with a 2x4 pan I had made for it with a preheater. It doesn't boil very fast but it does the job.

I've got a flat 2x4 batch pan on a block arch. No pre-heater, but I used a shop vac as a blower this year. It was loud but made a big difference in the boil. I think I'm going to try a squirrel cage blower for next year to cut down on the noise. Upmep, how does your pre-heater work? If you could describe the setup I'd like to have one made. Ted

Done hear in NE Iowa, started to pull taps and buckets, pretty good year once all the snow melted, make close to 120 gallons of good quality syrup. I have made maple sugar before, made 200 lbs last year, pretty simple to do, takes some time to do it right. Hope everyone had a good season.

Well we made sugar this weekend - turned out great!!! Thanks for the recipe Ted - We run a 2X6 flat pan on a slanted arch - we average right at 25 gallon evaporation an hour - Jeff how many taps do you put out to get to 120 gallon of syrup - next year we are going to shoot for 50 gallon of syrup - that was our goal this year but the sap did not run all that great - Bill

tbear, My preheater is about 1 foot x 2 feet that sits right on top of my main pan. It has a spigot on it that I can adjust to whatever drip I want depending on how fast its boiling. It holds several gallons of sap. I sit it at the back of the pan and fill it with sap as it drains into the main pan. I had mine made in Wisconsin. It was one of the more reasonable dealers on ebay. I haven't tried the blower. How close does everyone try to get the fire to the bottom of the pan? Mine is probably several inches. I don't get the best boil rate but I'm usually not in a hurry.upmep

Hey everyone sounds like a good year for most. T-bear not ignoring your question just a bit busy right now. Between new pigs twice a week, taking kids shed hunting and turkey hunting and cleaning up sap stuff and then oh yeah work! I forgot about posting.
It wasn't a very good sap year here. Collected 450, made a little over 7 on a little over 100 taps. Second worst year ever only to last year. I should of made closer to ten buttttttt...... I had a small mishap:emb:
Boiled 120 down to about 5-6 gal of near, let the fire go out late one night. I got up the next morning pulled the pan off and started a new fire, pushed the pan MOSTLY back on the stove. Then the sap sloshed forward and back and flipped the whole pan off and onto the ground faster then you can blink! At least it wasn't hot cause I took a GOOD bath! GRRRRRRR!!! It seems I always have some strange thing happen, it's just the nature of my operation. But it gives the kids a good story to laugh at later.
I've never made sugar. Can I use some of my old stuff? I'm curious about this, thanks for the info.
I have a small squirrel cage blower on my cooker and love it. It's quiet and boy does it pump up the boil, but it devours wood!! Mine's mounted onto an old header pipe on the front of my stove.
Well hope all is well with everyone, type at ya later.

Godspeed!
Frank

Hi Everyone,

IowaSap, sorry to hear about the mishap. Glad the syrup wasn't hot, man, that would have been bad! It wasn't the year I was hoping for either but, you get what you get. Sounds like you're having fun with the kids. Those are some precious moments. Also, last years syrup will work for sugar, the first batch I made was using the last of last years.

bnbmaplesyrup: glad the sugar turned out for you. I made some more this morning and it still kind of amazes me to see it change.

Upmep: I have 12 inches from the top of my grate to the bottom of my pan and I load wood as high as I can without touching the bottom of the pan, getting the flames up there really helps. So, concerning your preheater, does it sit across your pan using the steam from your pan to heat the sap? How hot does the sap get? One foot by two feet, how tall is it? I apologize for all the questions, but a preheater of some form will be the only upgrade (that I can see) I can make without buying an evaporater. That of course would be expensive and I'd have to change the way I'm doing most of the process and what can I say, I'm just now getting the process down.

Jeffeich: x2 on bnb's question! How many taps for that kind of production?

Ted

upmep, Does condensation drip back into your pan from your preheater pan?

On the preheater, its about a foot high also. It has brackets on the bottom to keep it on my main pan. The steam warms it,so it doesn't stop the boil. It does get condensation on the bottom of it. Its made with stainless the same as the pan. I think it helps. It holds quite a few gallons. upmep