My plan 2022/23

Collected 25 gallons of sap this morning, sap that flowed after 4 pm yesterday. I got it collected before the snowstorm arrived. The temperatures will warm late this afternoon and overnight and we might have 11 hours above freezing.

I am going to boil a little less often to reduce the number of setups and cleanups, so boils will occur every two or three days. That will also give me more sap to boil and allow me to have drawoffs with out fear of running out of sap. Next boil will be Monday.

The highlight of the day was I made maple syrup snow candy for the first time for my neighbour’s four kids. It tasted great. Some lessons learned on when to place the popsicle sticks into the candy. We made it inside my garage as the snow was falling sideways with the strong winds.

It made me very happy to make it. I used 500 ml of syrup heated on a turkey fryer.

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What a great guy you are. You certainly made their day, you can tell by all the smiling faces.

I know the smiles on their faces made you feel fantastic!

I am boiling again today. I have 90 gallons of available sap to boil and the sap is running in the collection barrels. Yesterday I had my best flow day yet, despite appearing to be the least likely with the snow and it not getting above freezing until mid afternoon. Today it is bright and sunny, but it only dropped a little below freezing last night, so the trees did not have a huge opportunity to fully recharge.

I put some ceramic blanket material between my wooden door handles and the concrete patio stone door. It seems to have slowed the handles burning away.

Today so far is going very predictably. I am probably the most relaxed I have been for a boil this season. I now bring lots of water out to drink. I found I was not drinking enough before. I like the canola oil as a defoamer. I use an eye dropper to dispense it.

One thing I do, that I know others prefer not to do, is I finish, filter and bottle on the same day I boil. Just something in my character that wants to see the end product of all of my hard work that day. I have had zero issues with focus or making mistakes. I finish it in my heated garage where I have a TV. So tonight the hockey game will be on while I do the Finishing, Filtering and Bottling.

Finished, filtered and bottled 10.75 L in time to watch the 3rd period in the house. The syrup tastes amazing. The vacuum filter impresses me each time I use it.

I will boil again tomorrow, I believe I had my best flow of the season today, we will see tomorrow morning when I collect it.

Glad to hear everything is going well. You have worked very hard for well over a year to get to this point, now ENJOY, ENJOY. Relax and get comfortable running your rig.

Boiling again today and should boil again tomorrow. Gorgeous day and the sap is flowing well.

I have always heard that things happen fast before you draw off, but it seems to take forever to get from 58 Brix to 64 Brix. I want to get closer to 65 or 66 Brix, but I have either run out of time or sap, and this is after 6 or 7 hours of boiling.i have drawn off at 62 and 63 Brix as well.

All is good and I finish it in the garage and make great syrup, but I just trying to understand the happening fast. Maybe it happens fast when it is closer to 66 Brix.

I will have a longer boil today and I have lots of sap so I will see if I can get closer to 65 Brix today.

Why are you drawing off early instead of taking it all the way to syrup? You are fighting yourself by doing so and making it harder to sweeten the pan if you are constantly pulling off low density syrup to boil elsewhere. Example the other night i had a large draw off of syrup right before i shut the rig down (last five gallons of sap) and then the next time i boiled it took a while to get my first draw. Usually my first draw happens within the first hour of getting things going again but it took a while to get things back to syrup for my draw because i took so much sugar out the night before. That not a bad thing just something to understand.

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Originally Posted by The Heldeberg Sapper

Why are you drawing off early instead of taking it all the way to syrup? You are fighting yourself by doing so and making it harder to sweeten the pan if you are constantly pulling off low density syrup to boil elsewhere. Example the other night i had a large draw off of syrup right before i shut the rig down (last five gallons of sap) and then the next time i boiled it took a while to get my first draw. Usually my first draw happens within the first hour of getting things going again but it took a while to get things back to syrup for my draw because i took so much sugar out the night before. That not a bad thing just something to understand.

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I have been drawing off early because I was either running out of sap to have enough for the cool down period of the evaporator or running out of time. Today I have lots of sap and lots of time, so I will try to get it to 65 or 66 Brix.

Thanks that was interesting fact about drawing off early affects the next boil and that is exactly what is happening to me. I have to wait 6+ hours for the next draw off. I will be more patient today.

Thanks for the advice!

I changed the interval between firing times from 8 minutes to 10 minutes. It has not hurt my boil rate and may have helped it. I will know for sure in 15 minutes when I finish another hour of boiling time. I am getting my 13 gph and it might be a hair better.

Whenever I opened the door and loaded the wood, I noticed I lost a little bit of the boil at the front of the channels momentarily. By opening the door less often that will reduce the lessened boil times.

My evaporator is at ground level. To load the wood, you have to squat down and your face is fairly close to the door. My face is getting a little red from being slightly cooked. Opening the door less times will also help with that.

Also loading it less often makes the pace a little less hectic. If I drank alcohol which I don’t, I would actually have a brief time for a sip of a brewsky.

I changed the sound of my timer. The old one was wearing on me, my current one is much more pleasant.

I have made four batches of syrup so far. An amber colour, but a little lighter than last year’s.

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