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Clinkis that's really got to hurt. Our washer has a rinse drain and spin cycle that I always run prior to throwing the filters in. I have my filters sitting in a pail of hot water for about an hour to slip all the niter off first. Dump that in the yard beside the barn, cows love to lick it up. Dumped it down the toilet one night, too tired to go up to the barn, BIG MISTAKE, niter doesn't really flush very well, especially in cold water.
As much as possible I scrub out all the stainless steel hardware I use for boiling using hot water from the tap that is coming straight from the ground - not through the water softener. My reasoning being that as the trees are tapping down to the same source of water as my well, should minimize as much as possible any taste difference. Been leaching off the nitre and leftover syrup in batches of sap as I put em through, that way I get clean filters without worry of residue. In terms of nitre I make small enough batches that I usually just scrape it out and eat it myself. All those minerals, and syrupy too...numnumnum...:-)
BruceL - holy liftin, that must have been a lot of niter you were trying to flush!!! Maybe just scrape it off filters, put it in a plastic feedscoop (the square little giant kind, 4qt, should work), tamp it down, freeze it, un-feedscoop it, and let the cows go to town. Knowing cows, bet they would LOVE a nitre lick!
In terms of run, didn't collect today. Too much wind pretty much cancelled out the brief periods of sun. Only about 1 l out there max between all 6 trees.
FWIW, nitre is a carbonate...and softened water is water that has had the carbonates largely removed...meaning, it has room to absorb some...so you might want to consider washing your pans in soft water. I assume you filter your syrup, so you are trying to remove carbonates from your syrup, so using water that has had carbonates removed would be more harmonious with your efforts.
I got nothing today too...;-[
Cheers,
Russ
Makes sense...or will, once I have more coffee! :-) Thanks for the info Russ!
Today is sunny and windless and supposed to go to +5 (though I am listening to an Ottawa station and out here in the sticks we're usually 2 degrees warmer). Hoping for something today than just the few drips and drops out there now.
As an aside...this hobby is almost as frustrating as wildlife photography. You spend $$$ with good gear, go to where your subject is supposed to hang out, set up and wait...and wait...and wait...and then should the critter or bird or in question appear, it's either a) too far away for a good shot or b) too close or c) backlit, or d) has its backside to you or e) doing nothing but just sitting/standing there (generally you want to get a shot of critter/bird in action) or f)hiding behind some shrubs or trees...you get the idea.
Picked up another 25 gallons yesterday. Hoping for a good run today. Low was -5 and looking for a sunny high of 4. Not impressed with sugar content. Sitting right around 2.75%. We are used to 3.25-3.5%. Collection #'s were off too. With yesterday's count we are just over 100 gallons now........ Friday is not looking great for a run. Temp swing is perfect but calling for rain. Regardless, we'll be boiling this weekend.
Just home at lunch, visited my 15 trees, Norways and Silvers, pulled about 6 gallons out of the buckets and dripping like crazy, hope to do a repeat when I get home tonight,
Have about 60 gallons so far, ready for a boiling on the weekend,:lol:
TurkeyJohn
I am swimming in sap today! :)
It is going like crazy. In only 2 hrs I collected 20 gallons with 80 taps. Started to boil this morning with my 45 gallons in my storage tank.
probably another 40 to come by day end. That's a lot of sap for a hobbyist. Lol.
Greetings from the Kingston area! Yep, another good Kingston boy, here.
My trees seem to have been hit or miss since early Feb, but going over my numbers I'm at roughly around 140-150 gallons of sap from 20 taps. Today alone was about 20 gallons. I think I may finally have enough syrup to last us the year. :)
TurkeyJohn,
You're getting better than me. I've retrieved ~90 gallons from my 130 taps in 5 hours. Luckily, my new 100 gal storage tank arrived early this morning. Issue is my evap is boiling at about 12gph, and I'm getting 18gph...
Cheers,
Russ
You guys are depressing me. Maybe 70-80 gallons all day here. Still running some though
Come on Yellzee, you should only get depressed when you can't light your arch...;-]
Cheers,
Russ
Nicely done! Here is the handy helperAttachment 9561Attachment 9561
I bet all you gotta say is; "Pose!"...haha, I have never been able to get a pic of all 5 of my dogs at one time, so grtz...;-]
Cheers,
Russ
Good run here today. I would say my best one day run of the season. The RO will be busy tonight. Now I just need about 7 or 8 more days like this!
Ok pretty happy with my run today...29l of sap from 18 spiles (actually only 17, one seems to need some persuading to get going again. So glad, I was afraid the April Fools Day run was a one-off!!
I collected 55 ltr's today(roughly 14 gallons) from 17 taps, had another 2 buckets but I didnt have room to bring that back( these numbers are from 2 days as I had to work late last night and didn't make it in to the forest yesterday),boiling some right now,but this dude needs some sleep so going to shut it down for now probably and get back up in 4 hrs and start again before heading to work.
Hi Folks, I've been lurking in the background. We gathered 725L off of 245 taps today. Have made 12L so far this year off of a 2x5 Lapierre. Been a learning experience so far!!! BTW my location is Eastern Ontario...even though my profile says OH.
Galena, I got just about the same as you did. 30L from 18 spiles. Once I re-read Bruteman's instructions to me from last year on how to properly start up my propane burners I boiled down a total of 68L in 5.5 hours. The first boil of the season always seems to require a refresher course. lol
I'm now left with some "nearup" that I will save to finish to syrup in a larger batch. I'm done with making small batch after small batch. Too much clean-up. It was a great day to be playing outside. :) I hope for many more days like this one.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention.....box elders were running at 2.5% and my Freeman and silvers were clocking in at 3.5%.
Yesterday i collected 85 gallons, and still has a bit left this morning. this is about the limit of my 2x5 flat pan. The snow is still a pain gettign around the bush, only got stuck twice. We only bottled 8 liters but my whole pan is nearing syrup. commons satuturday.
I'm going to convert to litres as it will make me feel better maybe.. actuall collected 2 190 litre drums worth of sap, so 380 litres which is close enough to 100 USG... so better than I was thinking originally.
bottled another 10 litres last night... little darker... very sweet.
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
Uhm Big Eddy...just a teeny bit confused...what exactly IS a Canadian gallon? I've lived here (almost) my whole life and never heard the term before. USG is 3.78l,, and Imperial is 4.5l. So is Cdn a dead-on 4l??
Meanwhile got 31 litres today...2 full 15l water containers and an extra l and a bit in a third. Yesterday's collection is still boiling away like mad at the moment to get it down to *nearup*, don't want to get swamped...would like to leave the house at some point in time this weekend!!
You're a lucky girl Susan. Send some of that sap down here.
Ya, I was surprised at how well it ran today! Good times
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You guys must have had a totally different day, weather wise, than we did. There was squat here. I'm glad that you got some decent runs.
I just finished boiling what I collected on Thursday, its filtering right now, if I had to guess I would say close to 2 ltrs finished syrup,it's really dark though, darkest so far this season.
Between what ran yesterday and overnight we have over 3000 gallons of beautiful sap ahead of us to start the day. The RO will get a workout today! The releasers are only dumping every 12 minutes which means we're getting about 100 gallons per hour but it's better than nothing!
Wow, I am so glad the trees were slow today and gave me *only* 15l...still haven't finished boiling off what I got yesterday though the end is in sight (I hope). And got just over 2l of beautiful crystal-clear light amber syrup from 50l of sap. Happy! Now just have to make sure I'm not up til midnight tonight making nearup....tomorrow is gonna be insane.
Been boiling every day steady for several days now, not real long boils, but average 15-20 gallons of syrup a day will add up. Tapped another bush tonight as there wasn't much today. Vacuum is making a big difference as our neighbors that are all buckets or tubing with no vacuum had nothing to boil on days we ere boiling.
Nothin here the last two days....today might be a huge day though!!
We ended up with almost 4600 gallons of sap between yesterday's and Friday's run so my brother had a late night. I just got the report back from the bush that the releaser in our new bush is already tripping at 1m45s intervals! Should be a good day.