Central Ontario Tapping

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Originally Posted by NTBugtraq

You're measuring between 0 and 4%. there kinda huge margin of error in there.

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What are you referring to? You've lost me.

So I made my first syrup today after boiling some 2500L. In a whiskey bottle, its very dark except at the neck, which is what I've gotten in past years. Still playing with the brix (my first 5+L was 69.2), but as tasty as its always been. Actually got to crack the tap on my arch and let it drip drip drip into the finishing pan, and after 6L it finished in like 2-3 mins on propane. Not expecting sap tomorrow but hoping for a good boil day.

Four trees; total of 8 taps; in southwest Northumberland County.

Mar. 12 - 3.8 L
Mar. 14 - 40.7 L
Mar. 15 - 7.5 L
Mar. 16 - 25 L
Mar. 17 - 9.5 L
Mar. 20 - 26.5 L
Mar. 21 - 39 L

Total of approx. 150 L so far - first year.

Hi Folks! Thanks for all the nice comments about the video! I was pleased myself!

Dave

The 103 litres of sap I boiled down yesterday gave me 3L of lovely light syrup when I finished it off today. That's 34:1 instead of the miserable 70:1 that I had with my first batch. What a difference in boiling time!

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Originally Posted by NTBugtraq

You're measuring between 0 and 4%. There's kinda huge margin of error in there. Water with 2% sugar freezes pretty much the same as water with no sugar. Have you ever taken the ice and thawed it, and tested it?

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For years I'd always thrown out the ice out of habit / tradition. Last year I saved some ice / slush one morning after moderate freeze letting it thaw during the day. The thawed "sap" had a sugar content of ~0.2%. Out it goes.

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Originally Posted by Run Forest Run!

When you get ice forming in your buckets there is always less sugar in that ice than in what remains in your bucket. (I always check the sugar content in the melting ice with my refractometer to make sure I'm not dumping anything that is over 1.5 - 2%). If I get some slushy or crystally ice I usually end up dumping all of it, but it you get a hard freeze and the ice is a solid block then I let it melt down to about half or a third and use what melts off because more sugar is trapped in solid ice than in slushy ice.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by NTBugtraq

You're measuring between 0 and 4%. There's kinda huge margin of error in there. Water with 2% sugar freezes pretty much the same as water with no sugar. Have you ever taken the ice and thawed it, and tested it?

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Like I said, I always check the sugar content in the melting ice. There are lots of threads on here discussing the issue of sugar trapped in the frozen sap, including this current one http://mapletrader.com/community/sho...w-away-the-ice. Perhaps a quick search on this topic will explain things better than my attempt. Sorry I've obviously missed the mark on answering your question.

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Originally Posted by 67HEAVEN

Four trees; total of 8 taps; in southwest Northumberland County.

Mar. 12 - 3.8 L
Mar. 14 - 40.7 L
Mar. 15 - 7.5 L
Mar. 16 - 25 L
Mar. 17 - 9.5 L
Mar. 20 - 26.5 L
Mar. 21 - 39 L

Total of approx. 150 L so far - first year.

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Wow, good work so far! BTW, you're more than welcome to visit and chime in on any regional forum here, I just thought this one would be most relevant for you in a geographic sense. Feel free to pop in on Eastern Ontario and share your stories and questions anytime :-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Run Forest Run!

Like I said, I always check the sugar content in the melting ice. There are lots of threads on here discussing the issue of sugar trapped in the frozen sap, including this current one http://mapletrader.com/community/sho...w-away-the-ice. Perhaps a quick search on this topic will explain things better than my attempt. Sorry I've obviously missed the mark on answering your question.

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Karen, my apologies for the confusion. I couldn't see why sugar would separate from water while the sap froze (still don't understand how that happens, but I see that it does). I also didn't see where you said you tested the frozen sap. I have one bucket that collects from 8 trees and often contains a block of ice. I'm going to test that myself to see what my results are. My sap is averaging >3% atm.

I finally got my arch firing on all cylinders, boiling 15 gals/hr now. Since I corrected the issue at noon yesterday, I've boiled 9 hrs and now have 4.1 gals of my typically dark amber 68-69 brix syrup. I really gotta learn how to add some sap to bring it down a tad (although I like it sweet). But I guess for the price I'm charging ($25/L) its better to be on the high side. At least now the pans are sweetened, so I should be getting 4 gals a day each day I can boil.

Using the cold weather to finish my 2 weeks' worth of near up.

Batch 1 from week 1 (Mar 8-14) yielded 3.25L of syrup (257L of sap, 1.09% sugar content)
Batch 2 from last week yielded 9L of syrup (420L of sap, 1.84% sugar content)

I sure hope sugar content goes up before it starts its march downward.

Need to figure out a way to get the syrup through my filters though. Had a rough time getting the last 2.5-3L through. I ended up having to re-heat the filtered stuff to bottle.