Welcome Highlander! :-)
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Welcome Highlander! :-)
We really should standardize our reporting - I know we're Canadians and trilingual between GALLONS, gallons and litres - but still ...... (If I'm asked "how much sap?" - my usual answer is "10 Gals to make a litre". Every Canadian understands that math )Quote:
Originally Posted by Yellzee
I'm sticking with CDN gallons for sap collection - I don't have enough appendages to count in litres and I only deal in US Gals when boiling. (My collecting tanks are marked in CDN Gals, the storage tank in USG - I bring 65 gals home and pump it into the tank and end up with 80 gals - gotta love that - wonder if I drain it out and pump it back in again if I would then have 100 :) )
We collected 65 gallons yesterday from 150 buckets. There were no full buckets, and the trees seemed to be all over the place. Some with nothing, some with half buckets. No correlation with size or location. We did not connect Wednesday.
Little frost overnight and supposed to pour rain all day today so not expecting a good run today. Will boil what we have Saturday and see. While the forecast doesn't look good for the next few days, there's still plenty of snow in the bush keeping things cool, and absolutely no signs of budding, so season is far from over even being into April.
If we're not boiling over the weekend, we'll be gathering more wood for the next boil.
Agree with you on standardizing Big Eddy,
I base mine on my storage, 2 garbage cans with the gallons sitckers still on them and the blue sap buckets that are sold as 2 gallon pails.
Wondering what tool you use to measure sugar content? Have Silvers and Norways and didn't think they sugared as high as Karen's at 3.5%, sounds awesome though, had thought they were half of Sugars?
Newbie so bear with me,
TurkeyJohn
unless I get totally swamped in SAP... seems to be a non-issue this year... I always pump my collection barrel into one of two old pickle drums that are both 190 litres. I don't actually even try to keep close tabs on what I'm collecting... I go by if the back 200 gallon (US or CDN>???) tank is 1/2 full its a pretty good day. the important number... syrup produced is in litres... because I'm filling 1 litre and 500ml jars. I don't count the syrup that gets consumed in the QC testing process.
I am having a heck of a time filtering this year... like most I stack 3-4 pre-filters on top of orlon filter.. but I also stack 2 orlon filters... always worked decent in the past.. but I just can't seem to get a full 2 gallon pail to go through... pre-filters getting clogged, then the top real filter getting clogged.... I tried to finish right on 66 last night to have it as thin as possible and it still didn't all go through.
I am also filtering through Orlon as it comes off the evaportator... tonight I might try filtering just before it is finished and still thin... then hopefully the final filter will go better. I just don't want it to cool down too much sitting in the final filter.
TJ, because Silvers and Norways are often lawn trees, they don't have to compete for sun and water etc. like forest trees. That can often result in pretty decent sugar levels in their sap. My soft maples are decent producers and never register below 2%. Yesterday's reading was the best yet. I think my trees were presenting a peace offering to me for jerking my chain for the past month and a half. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by TurkeyJohn
I use a sap hydrometer that I purchased from ebay. Here's the link if you are interested. I love it.
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/0-10-Portable...item4d1a489414
With the hard freeze we got Wednesday night it didn't start running much until late yesterday morning. By early afternoon our double vertical releasers were dumping every 2 minutes! We ended up with 3100 USG of sap for the day. The RO was fired up about 3pm and the Beast roared to life about 3:30. All the sap was through the RO by just after 9pm and the last fire went into the evaporator about 9:30. In 6 hours of boiling we made 324L (what we say is 81 gallons). I'll take 15 gallons per hour coming off the evaporator any day of the week! It does make filtering and bottling a challenge...
Thanks Karen, great info, guess there are some perks to not having to trek through the woods to my trees,Quote:
Originally Posted by Run Forest Run!
I'll look into that new-faggled gizmo you mentioned, looks reasonable enough, Boy, do I sound like my Dad,
TJ
TJ, I should have referred to the item a sap refractometer, not a sap hydrometer. Whoopsie.
Yes, lawn trees provide a very civilized way to have access to good sap. Plus, I see all of my taps from inside the house. If they aren't dripping, I can tell without having put my coat and boots on. On days like today I won't be getting rained on to find out that my buckets are dry.
Pretty impressive Ennis! Love to see that in operation.
Eddy,
I think we should standardize on syrup, not sap...after all, not everyone refracts their sap to figure out its initial brix, and it makes such a difference.
I like the one test that I know I need, am I getting more sap than my evap can boil off? Other than that, its; am I getting lots or not? Really doesn't matter if that's L, GAL, or gal...;-]
Cheers,
Russ