I had the same problem with my filter press last night. After the first 7 gallons I had to stop and change papers. After that the other 13 gallons went right through no problem.
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I had the same problem with my filter press last night. After the first 7 gallons I had to stop and change papers. After that the other 13 gallons went right through no problem.
We boiled a bit on Friday, then again today. We had to battle frozen feed lines going to and from RO.
Right around 50 gallons so far. Sap up to 2.9 and 3%, helped by the ice in several tanks.
Left permeate in the back pan tonight. Hoping it loosens things up...
Keep on keeping on...
I though it was just me because I am new at the filter press thing. I had the same issue of spiking pressure with not much syrup. it seems to be better now. although I would need to use it a little more to really see. should be soon!!!
boiled again yesterday and a good chunk of the day today. made 12+ gallons of amber yesterday and 35 gallons of I'm guessing amber again today.
seem to have fixed filtering issue (more DE), but now having pellet auger issues. We will be cruising right along, and then start hearing the auger feeding the evaporator running metal on metal (it is silent when full of pellets) we have run the day hopper empty to check for pellet/sawdust clumps, but nothing gagging the day hopper. never had it happen last year.
sap is between 2 and 2.7%, so thats a good sign. but only have 400 gallons saved up for maple weekend. hoping for some more tomorrow.
keep on keeping on...
-eric
I wanted to boil last night but decided to save the sap I've got to boil Saturday. Anything that comes in today and Saturday is for Sunday's boil. I hope things let loose soon because it is almost April.
Eric- hope you have a good weekend. Good luck
excellent maple weekend for the crew at Tucker mountain maple. lots of help from family and friends to make things go smoothly. only one significant mess up- forgot to open the valve between the float box heading into syrup pans. have to check when we drain the pans tomorrow morning to see how bad it got in first cross flow pan.
syrup sales were excellent, especially today. glad I had a barrel of very dark syrup left over from last year that we jugged a couple weekends ago. almost sold all of that today.
managed to make 19 gallons of syrup on Saturday + about 26 or 27 gallons today. I think today will be very dark since we probably burned some.
Interesting demographics of visitors between yesterday and today. about a third of the people yesterday knew from before. Today, it was the opposite - I knew probably two thirds of the people already visit us today.
regardless it was excellent weekend with our sales being the best for a single weekend we have ever had here. tired but very content with our efforts.
keep on keepin on
-Eric
3000 gallons of sap hauled in today. 2000 processed this afternoon-evening. sugar content was between 2.2 and 2.7 for tubing, 3.0 for buckets. grade coming back up to borderline amber.
will rotate pans in AM as we sweeten the big tank...
keep on keeping on...
-eric
been steady since my last post. not since tuesday morning have we had any empty tanks. up to a touch over 400 gallons, which was my minimum goal. just crossed back in to very dark grade.
plan on listening to opening day for the Sox tomorrow afternoon while boiling away in the sugarhouse.
huge help with all things maple from a good friend Patty. She has been on sabbatical this year, and in mid March showed up at the sugarhouse and said "i have some time to help, what can I do?" she has been a tremendous help everyday since...keen to help, willing to do just about everything. Awesome... and another friend Deb just showed up on Friday and the same thing - "what can I do to help?" first thing she did was to work on cleaning out the cross-flow syrup pan we had just swapped out. and imagine that, she came back saturday and sunday for more!
keep on keeping on...
-Eric
lots of Sox games and boiling to end off our season. boiled the last of our sap this afternoon. at about 560 gallons so far, so suspect we will be right around 600 when all is said and done. lots of dark and very dark, but all with excellent flavor.
had RO feed pump go out on us Friday afternoon. on the horn to Eric at Lapierre and a few hours later Patty from our crew picked up a new pump in central VT. turns out solenoid crapped out on old one, so we will replace solenoid and keep old one for back-up.
good luck to those still at it...
keep on keeping on.
-eric