That could be very dangerous for my wallet, its bad enough I live about 20 mins from Atkinson's.
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That could be very dangerous for my wallet, its bad enough I live about 20 mins from Atkinson's.
I found out the same thing I am going to empty my jugs every night from now on as that couple of inches of ice does not pout out very well. I exchanged the 4 I had with frozen sap for new ones and am trying to thaw them in the green house. We have a D&G in Compton and its just a small outlet but I still spend to much money in it. They have the two gallon buckets for 3 dollars there.
Well the poor man RO finally let go today and we collected 45 gallons of sap we should have enough to finally run off the first batch bi mid day tomorrow:) . if the temps hold true next week we should get BIG SAP.
Looks promiseing so far. A few more trees started to drip today but then some of the ones that dripped last week didn't go figure. Maybe my first year won't be so bad after all. Collected 4 liters of sap today more then I got in 3 days last time.
we're not quite in the banana belt here but we got great temps today. All bucket and bags fully deployed by early afternoon.
Collect 100 gallons from the buckets and bag and we have another 100 in the tank at the bottom of the pipeling. Late this afternoon I got the sap sucker going and was pretty impressed with the vac we got. Also got to see some mistakes in the tubing. Now debating if I should be trying to get the Merlin RO's going again tonight.
Should be big sap tomorrow and a marathon boiling session.
Good to hear it's running as far north a Trout Creek !!
well I got the evap finished today. 2x3.5 D&G syrup pan, 1 divider on a De Caro wood stove butchered to fit. Boiled 8 5gal pails, threw out the ice that was left over, tunnels with 2" thick wallls in 6 of the buckets, left me with 2" of concentrate in the pan. Took 3 hrs of boiling plus 1 hr start up and 1 hr shut down. Tommorrow should be able to boil for 6 hrs after I tweek my chimney and hook up my feed tank. I'm expecting 1 to 1 1/2 gallons of syrup, am I being realistic? Should I have kept the ice to boil? I tossed it because most of what I've read says it's not worth the BTU's to boil frozen sap because the sugar content is so low.
On a side bar, Brent I couldn't talk the wife into an RO to make our potable water for the house.
Sap should be like when you freeze a bottle of coke in the truck in the winter and its partially thawed and you drink off the liquid and all you have left is water when the ice melts fianlly.
MTBGUY
yeah you should get 1 to 1-1/2 gallons of syrup. If I follow what you did you had 8 x 5 gallon pails. Frozen took off the concentrate. Using the 40:1 rule
you should get gallon from that. Sunday's batch yet to come.
Good luck.
Just remember: to take 40 gallons of 2% up to 4% you have to boil off 20 gallons. When you nearly finished and need to go 2% from 65% to 67% you need to boil off less than a cup. The end game goes R E A L fast and is where most novices get caught. Don't lose your first batch.
have about 10 gallons in storage, I am out of town till Tuesday night but my son will collect, There should be full tanks when I get home for the looks of the forecast.
Fairly good run here today and yesterday, boiled all afternoon, will finish it tomorrow.