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Yes, that happens occasionally in some spots. Our larger problem is that about 1/2 our taps in our main bush (so maybe 1,400 taps) run through a small culvert under the road where it's pretty flat. Inevitably there are freeze-ups there. The dry line helps deal with that most of the time, but it's been an issue the entire time I've been around.Quote:
Originally Posted by blissville maples
Our first sap totals this season were recorded on 2/14, so probably the first sap run was a day or two before that. We dumped about 1,000 gal of crappy sap on 2/13 that had collected prior to that.Quote:
Originally Posted by PCFarms
We record the sap yield (gal) and sugar contents in the morning from each of our two major sections, although there are additional sap monitoring devices in other areas for different research projects to evaluate different equipment or practices on yield. Those two totals are the amounts ending up at the sugarhouse from either flowing down from the main bush (above the sugarhouse) or the other part of our woods where the sap is pumped up from lower down. This is the first year that all the sap from our entire operation is pumped directly to the sugarhouse and none is being trucked up. That was one of the goals I had before retiring.
Many people will build their tubing systems to handle average flows because it is simpler and cheaper and it works fine a lot of the time. The unfortunate thing is that these systems don't work so well during the PEAK flows that happen 3-5 times a season. Those are the periods when you make your money. When the sap is running hard, you want it to be able to get out of the tree and through your tubing system to the tank as quickly as possible. If it gets slowed down for some reason, you may not get the chance to get it the next day -- it's gone.Quote:
Originally Posted by blissville maples
I don't feel so bad now... this year I've dumped 3 full 330 gal tanks because it was just plain lousy looking "stuff"...Quote:
Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins
Are you getting pretty close to retirement date? Whenever it is - enjoy yourself and hope you get lots of boating in..!!
And thanks for your contributions. John
So I have 1 1/2 wet line carrying 1300 taps, a 1 1/4 carrying about 1200 and a dry line of 1 1/2. Handling both for this year. Some mornings like yesterday there was no issues, other mornings there is I feel like it has something to do with how much sap freezes in the main line while the trees are still running. I swear it has to do with volume vs how fast it freezes, time will tell I supposeQuote:
Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins
It opened up yesterday with the sunshine,. Probably a gal of sap per tap, nice run. Looks like a good couple weeks. Hopefully I can find some barrels only have eight left! I am told there will be some available Tuesday if you need any this year you better scrounge them up!
Some years we dump very little, but most years we'll dump at least a small amount.Quote:
Originally Posted by johnallin
Technically my last day is June 30, 2023. However, I've got another 8 wks of vacation to use up between now and then, so probably won't be around much after May 1st...other than the Bascom Open House in early-May.Quote:
Are you getting pretty close to retirement date? Whenever it is - enjoy yourself and hope you get lots of boating in..!!
And thanks for your contributions. John
I've been sugaring my whole life and have run into something this year I've never seen. Our syrup started fancy, but then within the first 10 days was already nearly grade B dark. Not only did this happen fast, but the sap in the buckets is still crystal clear. No yellowing or fogginess. The taste is very dark with even a slight sourness. I'm hoping it is not something I'm doing and just a unique year. I boil with wood, and so it's possible extra smoke or debris is getting in there, but again, I'm not doing anything different than in the past. Are there reasons that mid season clear sap can be so dark outside of "user error"?
The darkness was definitely my fault and not the tree's. More burnt nitre build up than we had all year last year in the bottom of the pan. Flues and syrup pan. Cleaned it out and did a full reset. Still beautiful clear sap. Onward!
Yup...that'll do it. The slight off-taste was probably what is called "burnt niter".Quote:
Originally Posted by GrowlingMaple
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins
I find my dry line works on freeze up at night, so in the morning it ices up also. I am thinking about adding a second dry line in which I leave the valves off so they cannot fill on the overnight freeze up and then turn the valves on in the morning for the start of the days run. It's always heavy first thing so that first hr you can miss alot.
Pretty quiet on here! Not too many regulars posting updates anymore.
Had a big boil yesterday about 9500 gallons of sap ended up with around 190-200 gals of amber Rich still. We may have touched on dark Amber for a few barrels but nothing dark robust. God I hate this new system there is no way to accurately represent dark Amber without kicking it into the b category which there's nothing robust about Dark amber. It's amber...just slightly darker!!! I guess color is more important than flavor, until the last barrel is made then it's like oh my God that's end of season syrup. Yeah? Well color is there, oh but that didn't matter with my barrel of dark Amber you graded dark robust!!
Yeah...sorry. I've been a bit remiss in posting updates. Only working part-time these days.Quote:
Originally Posted by blissville maples
Nice run overnight. About 1.6 gal/tap, running 2.3 and 2.1 Brix in our two different sections (has been a tad above what is normal for us). Sap-wise we're at about 60% of a "minimum" crop for us (20 gal/tap of sap). Syrup-wise we're a bit behind at only about 27% of a "minimum" crop (0.5 gal/tap syrup), but we've got over 1,000 gal of 33 Brix concentrate chilling in the bulk tanks and about 8,000 gal of sap in the storage tanks and silo to process. The Lapierre HyperBrix is running and concentrating to 37.3 Brix right now and the crew is boiling today, so that'll help us catch up a bit. Mostly a nice amber/rich, which is what typically makes up most of our crop. Doesn't take much boiling time to make syrup when you start at 33 Brix.
Our vacuum is a bit lower than we'd like. That real cold snap a week or so ago seems to have loosened up some of the spouts on the larger trees. Hopefully they'll get that squared away soon.
Looks like it'll keep running most of tonite too. Good stretch of sugaring weather forecast over the next 10 days or so.
Blissville, I'm a little confused about your grade angst... hasn't it always been by color, and hasn't it always been the same 4 colors? We just have changed some names? This is a genuine question... I'm a long time Vermont syrup consumer, very short time "producer".
my woods hasn't really produced much yet. we've had some real cold weather up here the past 3-4 weeks and the trees don't want to wake up. yesterday was our best run of the season... a little bit less than 1/2 a gallon of sap per tap. good news is the sugar content was 2.5 which is very good for us! typically happy to see it get to 2%. i've done a lot of thinning over the past 5-6 years so perhaps i'm starting to see the benefits of that? last night was our 4 boil and i'm sitting at 1/10th of the crop i'd like to get! So, hopefully the trees open up soon and we can salvage a good season. Baring some real warm weather, we should still have 2-3 weeks of good sugaring season left... i hope.
Tcross are you around Lyndonville area? My woods is doing the same but I check my raw and the first 3600 gallons came in at 3%! I have CDL techs who can substantiate my story! This woods has never run above 1.9 before. The snow is definitely limiting my runs.
In the last 24 hour run I had 1.7gal/tap of sap but the sugar content was actually lower (1.6%) then what I’m seeing from other folks and what I had last week. Hoping this week continues on with the good runs we’ve had the last two days in NW VT.
ultimatetreehugger... i'm in Derby. We're still sitting on 2-3 feet of snow in the woods. yesterdays rain started melting the snow away from the base of the trees so i'm hoping some good runs are coming. It trickled in all night last night. my 400 trees gave me 170 gallons of sap yesterday. 30 degrees here now... not supposed to get above 34 today.
What's the proper amount of airspace to leave in the top of a barrel? Is there a standard? We use rigid 15 gal kegs and regular 40 gal drums. I shoot for around 1/2" of space at the top but am sometimes slightly over or under.
It has always been by color but not the same colors.Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy VT
It used to be light, amber, dark Amber, b and commercial (without looking at old sales slips from Bascom)
Now it's golden, amber, very dark and commercial.
The problem is that Amber has a wide array of flavors in colors more so than any other grade. When you take a syrup down to bascom's and it has a rich flavor nothing robust whatsoever and simply because it is one slight shade darker than Amber they grade it as very dark. Very dark syrup has a robust taste a dark Amber does not have a robust taste however a dark Amber does not make the Amber grade. With the old grading system that Amber syrup would have never been put into the dark category.
There's a huge difference between light Amber which is not golden and dark amber which is not dark robust. They're both Amber syrups just on either end of the spectrum and I don't think it's fair to bump them one way or the other
Get as much in there as you can because it'll shrink down once it cools I prop my barrels up on a rock so that the bong is the high point they seal much betterQuote:
Originally Posted by drewlamb
Slowed way down yesterday afternoon once sun went behind clouds. Need freezing night again! That's the problem down here in the valley we lose our freezing nights quick but they're on their way back. Managed to make about 100 gallons of Amber rich putting us up at 2275. Usually we're into the dark by now but not yet. We still have a fair amount of snow cover which is a bonus I'm thinking we have at least another 10 days down here in the Southern Champlain valley
I'm wondering if it's going to be a good season for the higher elevations?
Only time will tell if colder bushes come out of this season with a decent crop. I am higher in elevation and cold. It's not been a great year, but my neighbor on the other side of the mountain (north facing) is having it worse (only boiled 2 times so far). Funny thing for me is the sap is hardly running but isn't the sweetest sap like everyone else is seeing.
As little as possible. You want all the barrel to get heated by the syrup to kill anything in there. Also, any amount of oxygen in the headspace will cause the syrup to darken (from the top down).Quote:
Originally Posted by drewlamb
Quote:
Originally Posted by ecp
We're down to 1.3 after the 2 warmer days with no freeze and marginal Thursday night. A small freeze last night forecast said 24 but I woke up to 30.
Out sugar hasn't tested over 1.8 all year as far as I know, if was higher wasn't for long!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by ecp
We're down to 1.3 after the 2 warmer days with no freeze and marginal Thursday night. A small freeze last night forecast said 24 but I woke up to 30. Definitely a better year for us in lower elevation
Out sugar hasn't tested over 1.8 all year as far as I know, if was higher wasn't for long!!
Surprise run last night during that gnarly wind storm. 1.7 gal/tap sap at 1.5% for the last 24 hours. Should be a good week for us NW folks.
sap ran well for me yesterday between 10 a.m and sometime last night. was kind of neat watching the sap run while getting a 5-6" snow storm. picked up 3/4 gpt testing 2.25. making some tasty amber syrup. sap should run well today!
Decent run over the weekend. Picked up another 13,250 gal, running 2.3 and 1.8 Brix in the two sections of our woods. RO is running now to concentrate the 12k gal of sap from Friday and the weekend. The guys are boiling now (about 825 gal of 35 Brix concentrate they banked up in the bulk tanks last week).
Had a good freeze last night in the mid-high 20s, so the sap should run well today. About 31 deg F now...expected to be 42 deg F, sunny, no wind. Forecast for the next 10 days looks excellent with the exception of 1 day that'll be too cold...which is nice to get to give everyone a little break before it starts up again.
Sapwise we're at about 3/4 of a minimum crop (0.5 gal/tap syrup). Syrup totals always lag behind due to storing concentrate in a bulk tank.
We had a good week. We collected 185 ga Monday through Saturday morning. Tested 2-2.25%. Boiled all weekend with the sap still running and ended up with an empty tank and 4.5 gallons syrup canned in jars. That puts us at 8.375 ga for the season that already beats our previous record of ~7 gallons on 40 taps. What we thought was a "reach goal" of 10 gallons should be achieved next weekend!
pretty good sap run for us yesterday. picked up about 1 gallon per tap. sap tested 2.5% which was very nice! it ran really hard from 9 a.m to about 4 or so, then slowly petered off. very happy with the sugar content this year! the nitre... not so much. made for some very tasty amber syrup!
Decent run yesterday until a little after midnight. Another 1.2 gal/tap, so at about 82% of our minimum target crop in terms of sap. Sugar is starting to drop a bit - normal for this time of season. Down to 2.2 and 1.7 Brix in our two woods sections. Still a decent amount of snow in the woods, and no hot weather predicted for a while (58 deg F high on Saturday, but accompanied by a little rain which should keep the trees from getting real hot, and provide some soil moisture). Other than that good weather forecast for the next 10 days. Crew boiled yesterday and make 520 gal of syrup. Nice to see those barrels getting filled.
Dr Tim, when you say minimum crop of .5 gallons per tap... by this you mean a sort of breakeven point?
Any thoughts or studies on tapping practices/sanitation affecting sugar content or do studies only show there is affect on sap yield? My guess is that sugar content is really out of the control of the producer?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mooneybc
Don't overdrive the spouts is your only way to help this, and possibly tapping later in the year
Wish we had some sugar in our sap, down to1.0. but making some great tasting almost Amber syrup. Next week will probably do it for us here in the lower elevations. We're currently at a .49 so that's good for our production. Hoping to see a .55
Why does the sugar drop? All the carbs are gone or the tress just don't convert as many carbs to sugar? Weather not cold enough?Quote:
Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins
It is a normal pattern. Sap sugar typically starts off fairly high, rises a little, then drops off as the season progresses. It can pop up a little after a good freeze. This is due to the physiology of the tree. https://mapleresearch.org/pub/mn2020sapsugar/Quote:
Originally Posted by blissville maples
Most of the carbs in the wood rays are converted to and stored as starch, but as the spring gets close, a portion of that is converted to sucrose (more readily useable for tree metabolism) where it is important in providing some energy to fuel the growing tissues (roots, cambium, buds) and, to a slight degree, important in the sap flow process (although wood temperature is by far the larger driving factor in sap flow). Only a small portion of the starch gets converted, there is a lot left after the season is ended. Temperatures falling below freezing tend to push the enzymatic conversion of starch to sugar.
This isn't an abnormal thing in biology. If excess energy is made (or consumed), then a portion of the excess can get stored for later use. In people that's as fat -- in plants it is a starch. It may be converted later and get used, or may just hang around for a long time. The difference is that in trees the starches tend to be laid down within the rays of annual rings, but more can be added and some can be remobilized down the road as needed. Rays are the tissues that 1. are living and 2. cut across annual rings, so the mobility of the sugar is higher than many other compounds in the wood.
The sugar we collect by tapping comes from many annual rings of rays in the wood. In fact, the average age of the sugar molecules in maple syrup tends to be around 3 yrs, but ranges from less than 1 to 20-25 yrs. The hydraulic conductivity (the ability/rate/amount of sap to move through the stem) and carbohydrate levels tend to be highest in the outermost rings, then drop off as we get deeper. That's why drilling a taphole beyond a certain depth doesn't get us a lot more syrup yield. These reasons (higher sugar in the newest rings and higher hydraulic conductivity in newer rings) are why we've designed the barb spout https://mapleresearch.org/pub/innova...ystems-spouts/ currently being tested in several places in the U.S. and Canada. The new spout design allows better collection from shallower parts of the taphole and allows better collection during the frequent short thaw periods (when only the outermost portion of the wood thaws out) in which normal spouts do not run or run much.
At a certain point (decades), some amount of carbs are lost due to continued tree growth when the sapwood deep in the tree eventually converts to heartwood and is thus lost to the tree (and to sugarmakers).
Before the season starts, from the fall through the winter, the sap in xylem tends to be quite low in sugar (it's all being converted to starch and stored for future use). That's why when people try fall and early-winter tapping the sap tends to have very low sugar so syrup yields tend to be lower.
Another 5,250 gal of sap yesterday. Sugar dropping a bit. Hard freeze overnight. RO is running. 700 gal of 33 Brix concentrate in the bulk tank, so probably boiling sometime within the next few days. Good sap flow weather forecast with a several nice freezes through the end of next week at least. Tally ho!
Decent run yesterday afternoon/evening. Started late since the temps had dropped into the upper teens/low 20s overnight and it took some time for the trees to thaw, even with no wind and good sun. Collected about 7,300 gal of sap (about 1.1 gal sap/tap) running at 1.9 and 1.7 Brix in the two sections. Crew is running the new sap through the RO and boiling the 700+ gal of 33 Brix concentrate we had in the bulk tanks through the evaporator today. Still making GD syrup. Should be a total of just over 400 gal of syrup headed into the drums.
Sap surely isn't going to run for a few days (too cold).
No sap today -- too cold. Crew made 480 gallons of GD...close to the line of AR. That puts us at 73.6% of our minimum target crop (0.5 gpt of syrup), not counting what we'd get in the boil out of the evaporator. Should run starting tomorrow afternoon thru early-Sunday morning, then freeze solid again most of Sunday until late-morning on Monday. Shaping up to be a couple of real gushers (fingers crossed).