Northeast Ohio?

I had a good sap run on Thursday night and Friday morning before the freeze set in. It was right at 3% sugar. Sunday did not run a much as Thursday.

I initailly had strange results with my beer hydrometer initially. It is calibrated at 70F. I tested sap from my tank at 32F. It read 0.5% sugar. I thought at lower temperatures it was supposed to subtract from your reading not add to the reading. After it warmed up in the house to room temperature it read 3%. It didn't seem like much water evaporated out of my cup because it still nearly filled my hydrometer sampling holder.

This was an exciting weekend for me as I made my first syrup ever. The first two batches were pretty light in color and tasted great!

Gathered 185 gallons tonight, some trees ran well and some didnt. Trees on the edge of a field ran extremely well, the ones deep in the woods did not.

For those of you that tapped @ the end of January how are your trees running? Sugar content? I got one good run in the last couple days of January but things do seem slower now. I know it's only mid 40's and not 50's or 60's like the last good run. I am glad I tapped when I did, I had some bugs to get worked out before we got really going. So if you were in @ the end of January, how do things look now?

i tapped in my tubing on sat. repaired those darn pesky squirrel chews sun. ran pretty good for me and got to boil in about 600 gallons last night. made some really nice medium amber

got tapped sunday gathered 500 gal of 2.5% sap no buckets tapped yet. good early run to get things going. Christopherh, did you find a gathering tank?

Tom, Still looking. I might have one built this spring. For now I'm still using a 65 and 35 gallon tank in the Gator. It's tough pouring the sap in the 6 inch opening. I did have a that Amish guy you mentioned build big funnels for them. Theyre not done yet. I think I'll hook up the 6 barrel tank to the Kubota this year to.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by christopherh

For now I'm still using a 65 and 35 gallon tank in the Gator. It's tough pouring the sap in the 6 inch opening.

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Chris
have you thought about tubing? some bushes are not the best layout for it but. ..

Yes, Tubing will be in the works for next year.

Collected 100 gal off of 323 taps put in about 30 more. My trees are all reds and silvers and not very good producers. I really need to find a bush I can put vac to!!!

forth boil last night, got ruffly 60 gal. sap off 90 taps. still getting tons of sand & med-dark color! trees i taped on 1/12 are still going well. we made 20 gal last year off of 80 taps & the 30 i put out in jan. produced close to 2-1/2 gal,syrup! glad i rolled the dice.