Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

Sap ran very well here yesterday, and probably will today with the low nighttime temps.
Last night I did my last boil, despite my having pulled some of my taps the other day. I could not stop! watching that sap flowing was to much for me I know Maple Trader thinks I am only an enthusiast, but I am addicted. I enjoy this way to much, and I did enjoy my last day with 10 more gallons of VD, and it was my first ever VD in my fourth year. Boiled and filtered very well. Just a little off flavor, but I have more in 5 gallons cans than I need for personal consumption anyway. I pushed my sweet through the pan with permeate, and soaked overnight for cleaning. Lots more to do, then lots of leisure weekends tending my roadside stand. I need it after 2 1/2 months of sugaring.
Went well over the 150 gallon mark. Not bad for a backyard sugarmaker!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins

Unless the forecast is seriously wrong (if they are predicting temperatures far lower than we actually get), I can pretty well assure you that the trees (maples at least) will NOT break bud next week. Although the forecast is for air temps in the 50s (at least here in North-central VT), it is supposed to be cloudy and rain...which will help to keep things cooler. Maple trees will resist the urge to bud next week because they've been around a good long time and are far better adapted to the climate than we give them credit for.

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I am gladly eating my words from early March when it looked like such a warm trend would cut things short this year. Sure am glad I don't bet!
Things rounded out well with cooler than seasonal temps in April, and my average temp here was 5 degrees cooler than last year.
What a great year....

Sap is running 700 GPH here at the border town. Hoping for a great day. Might be able to go till Saturday or Sunday but I think that will be it.

Spud

Did a test boil last night on the 40 gallons of sap i pulled on Sunday, it has a milky taste,with a bite, definitely headed buddy. I was going to dump it, but we got the idea to go ahead and process it anyway and use it for balsamic,vinegar and maple dressing... vinegar should cover the taste and the strong maple taste is nice in a dressing....

I will pull taps this weekend, reluctantly as my normal stopping point ( NO WOOD ), has not been met :lol:

Sap ran pretty well overnight. Made 75 gal of very nice tasting DR syrup with a distinct caramel taste. We're at 2,515 gal (0.585 gal/tap). We're done tomorrow regardless. We'll boil what comes in overnight and boil out the pans tomorrow. We are all just plumb worn out and nearly out of barrels, so it's a good time to end. Been a good year production-wise and research-wise.

It froze for a few hours last night at my place, but that wasn't enough to get the trees to run very well. I've got vacation plans so I was going to be done tomorrow anyway. Ground might have been too dry, tapholes might be drying up (even CV2's can't run forever). The trees still haven't budded and the sap still doesn't taste sour - but the end is here.

This season was very good for me. My 107 taps yielded 3590 gallons of sap (maybe I should try to squeeze another 10 gallons out to get to an even 3600 ;)) - that's 33.5 gallons of sap per tap on my hybrid 3/16 + vacuum system.

I haul almost all of the sap so I can only estimate a syrup / tap number. I do track sugar content and volume throughout the season in spreadsheet, and if you use the PMRC-recommended formula to calculate the amount of syrup from sap at a given sugar content (the 88.2 / sugar content - 0.32 formula) - the sap I collected could have made up to 87.5 gallons of syrup or up to (up to 0.819 gal / tap) - if I were to process this all myself obviously processing overhead would make the yield lower than that.

Ryebrye that is outstanding production. I hope you have a great vacation and a great summer. I am hoping to go a little longer up here at the border.

Dr. Tim. It looks like you will hit your .6 for the season. I wish I could hit those numbers but my sugar content is to low for a season average. How many GPT of sap did you get?

Spud

Still pretty clear sap here. Not running very hard though. Sugar has dropped to 1.2. Made another 25 today. Dark Robust. Ok flavor.

Flavor has been good still in all our syrup. Hoping to hit 40 barrels. Super easy boil tonight. lt's like its too easy, besides changing the filter press every 45 minutes. I know that the sap from our big bush had turned a few days ago but i'm not sure if it came back. Our guy is still picking it up though! I think they have taken about 300,000 gallons of sap from that bush, but the sugar content has been so low that I don't think we will do much better than 0.45 gpt. We will see. It's been a huge year it seems, i've heard of a few people doing better than 0.7 gpt. I think we have hit 0.5 gpt at our smaller bush but since we buy some sap i can't be sure without doing some math. That's with brand new tight tubing but a pump that only pulls 23.5 inches. And the mainline has bad slope in some places, even though its brand new :mad:

This does seem like the season without an end. Had 11,000 gallons of sap the last couple of days with the vacuum pump turned OFF!!. There must be a very large leak as vacuum dropped to 8, so made the decision to run out the season without vacuum. As of last night we have filed 76 barrels (3.040 gallons). That's a 30% increase over the last two years and close to the production in 2013. It has been a great season, but the end is near!