My plan 2022/23

I remembered I had forgot to add a drop to a pail yesterday and I did that first thing morning, then I realized that the tree that fell, took out a different maple than I thought and the maple I had planned to tap, was still there, so I tapped it as a drop to another pail. So there are 18 experimental taps.

More snow fell overnight so I the snow is getting deep to walk through. Warmer weather arrives tomorrow, the melt starts and maybe some sap will flow tomorrow, maybe the next day. It will be fun learning.

I spent the morning plowing snow and the afternoon playing with the grandkids.

On the first three shots you can see the two maple trees that still have their leaves on and on the next two photos you can see my evaporator shelter.

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It was fun today to see if any sap was running, but it was just not quite warm enough to thaw out the trees. Whether I get sap or not, I am enjoying the process. We will not have enough days as originally forecasted in the 4°/40° range, so I may not get any or much sap, but we will see. I am still happy I did it and they will be in place for any other thaws or for the start of the true season. I also tapped today two other very short lines beside my detached garage, so that totals 27 drops tapped. That leaves me with 151 drops to tap when the season starts.

In two days I will walk the three lines on the steep hill to look for any down trees on the lines. The depth of the snow should be measurably reduced by then.

I received a package from Amazon with my cone filter holder that I will put on top of the kettle that will catch the syrup I will pull off the divided pan. The pre filters I will be using primarily to catch and foreign objects and some sugar sand, should arrive in the next day or so. My main filtering will occur after I finish the syrup on the vacuum filter.

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The one thing about metal roofs on the sugar shelter is they sure shed the snow off of them when it warms up. I shoveled away the 2 feet+ of snow that came off the roof onto the other snow. I also shoveled out any snow that had made its way into the evaporator Tomorrow is supposed to be 8°/46°. If it does not rain the whole day tomorrow, I will put a up the two foot tall tarp walls around three sides of the shelter above the wood piles. That should keep most snow from entering.

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Next week I will contact my pan and base stack maker to see if there is any date yet set for when they will be built. Cutting the hole in the roof for the stack is the biggest job left prior to the season starting. Along with the base stack, I will be getting the base stack base that the base stack will sit on. My thinking is that I will have the base welded to the frame that the pan will sit on, to ensure a perfect seal between the two pieces and to give the base plate more strength. Not sure if there is a down side to welding the two together?

I went out at 11:30 pm and the sap was running in 3 of the four pails. Some pails have more than one line feeding them and one line is running and the other was not. It will remain 5°/41° overnight, which should continue to thaw the trees.

We will see in the morning how much I get.

Keep your line into the bucket up out of the sap. If not, when the tree freezes itvwill draw sap back up into it

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Originally Posted by DRoseum

Keep your line into the bucket up out of the sap. If not, when the tree freezes itvwill draw sap back up into it

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Thanks for the tip!

It is still dark out, I am excited to see what has flowed. Counting today, I have 6 more potential days of flow.

To be honest if I my new base stack had already arrived and was all set up, with the new pan, I would be tempted to add even more taps, but right now, my boiling capacity is two large 16 qt (15.1L) pots, so there is a sweet spot of just the right amount of sap, to make a few bottles of syrup, including one for my grandson who helped me tap and who named this edition of syrup, “Sappy Holidays”.

All good fun, I am a 67 year old little kid right now.

Gary

Now that's what it's all about! Doing a few early taps is definitely the way to go if that's when the grandkids are there.

My Grandson and I collected 11 gallons of sap this morning and it has been running all day to various degrees of flow. One pail had 3% sugar content, the other two were 2.5%.

I might end up with close to 20 gallons at the end of today. There are still five more potential days of sap collection. I might end up with close to 60 gallons of sap. That might be optimistic, but it makes for easy math. That should produce at least 1.5 gallons of syrup or 5.7 L.

When I see my Grandson next weekend, I will bring him one or two of the bottles of what he calls Sappy Holidays syrup.

I am boiling the sap in two large pots and one small one. This is certainly a low event boil compared to last year.

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I collected another 6 gallons and all of the lines are still dripping, however slowly. I might collect again at 10 pm, we will see.

The temperature never dropped below freezing last night, and I believe whatever flow I got during last night and today is from the trees coming out of their winter freeze.

Tonight it will get close to freezing, but may stay just above. After that there should be a freeze thaw cycle.

The boiling with the pots is going slower than expected, one large pot and one small pot are boiling well, but the other large pot boils, but is not boing near as briskly as the others. Tomorrow I might replace the under performing pot with a smaller pot.

My goal is to get all 11 gallons collected this morning, to a boil. I will not come close to making syrup today.

I will have to decide whether at one point to stop adding sap to the large well performing pot and make syrup. I was hoping to do that once I had boiled 40 gallons, but I may do that after 25 or 30 gallons.

In the morning I collected 11 gallons, this afternoon 6 and just now 3 more gallons for a total of 20 gallons. That is two days of boiling with my pots or less than two hours when I get my evaporator running in March. 5 more days to collect sap before it turns cold. I really don’t want and don’t expect to get 20 gallons each day.

Each 12” diameter pot should boil .79 gallons per hour. I have two of those, plus a 10” pot, but I doubt I am getting anywhere close to that boil rate.

I think I have to run the pots with a lot shallower sap levels. Right now they are a half to 2/3’s full. I have to think of them as pans.

TAKE THE LIDS OFF! Let all that steam escape!