Eastern Ontario 2016

Good morning Lesley. I saw your new signature stats and CONGRATS on surpassing last year's total! I'm sure there is going to be a tsunami of sap over the weekend with temps like we are expecting. :D

I set up a little make shift wood burning arch a month ago in case I needed it this season, but haven't tried it yet. The jury is still out on whether or not I'll need it this year. Since you've tried yours, I have one question for you. What impact has an open wood fire had on the flavour of your syrup vs. the propane boiled syrup? I know that smoke and ash will get into the pans, and wonder how much change there is in the taste? Any thoughts so far?

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Originally Posted by Run Forest Run!

Good morning Lesley. I saw your new signature stats and CONGRATS on surpassing last year's total! I'm sure there is going to be a tsunami of sap over the weekend with temps like we are expecting. :D

I set up a little make shift wood burning arch a month ago in case I needed it this season, but haven't tried it yet. The jury is still out on whether or not I'll need it this year. Since you've tried yours, I have one question for you. What impact has an open wood fire had on the flavour of your syrup vs. the propane boiled syrup? I know that smoke and ash will get into the pans, and wonder how much change there is in the taste? Any thoughts so far?

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That's a very fair and good question, and one that we have been wondering about ourselves. The jury is still out on it so I will definitely let you know when we finish our first wood batch. It's true that lots of ash float into the boil, and am hoping that this adds to the flavour and not the contrary, but time will tell.
The greatest part about this system is the money.. We were able to boil down 70 litres in 6 hours yesterday... Roughly the same speed of propane with two steamer pans for nothing where as propane would have cost $20 to do that amount.
Also the ease of this system surprised us. I thought it was gonna be a big ordeal with getting enough wood to keep an even boil, but as the coals built up in the fire pit (mainly using yard scraps and dead fall) the boil got bigger and better - way more btu and efficiency than we ever got with propane though it took the first 4 hours to get the fire up to that quality. In fact, if it hadn't been for the packs of coyotes in our neighbouring farmers field, I would have kept going and prob couldve finished another 70 litres in half the time - we still have 260 litres awaiting boil down..
I would give your arch a whirl Karen, if nothing else but to test out the flavour difference!

Lesley, this is what I put together with materials that were here, and at my Dad's. I put it inside our existing fire pit. The chairs are the most important element. ;) I also got a length of stove pipe from my father's collection of odds and ends that I'll install should the arch get fired up this year.

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This is a really good set up. I would try it out. Do you use turkey pots? ( I know you have the burners) but was wondering about the surface area you get for evaporation.

I use 4" deep restaurant steam trays. There's more surface area for evaporation than a pot. I also have a 6" deep one that I haven't put into service yet.

Lesley
If you make up some kind of grate to get your fire up off the ground it will help a lot. And find a piece of sheet metal to use as a makeshift door to stop the cold air from getting under the and and you will increase the boil rate substantially. Just leave a couple of inch gap under the "door" to let air in.

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Originally Posted by Big_Eddy

Lesley
If you make up some kind of grate to get your fire up off the ground it will help a lot. And find a piece of sheet metal to use as a makeshift door to stop the cold air from getting under the and and you will increase the boil rate substantially. Just leave a couple of inch gap under the "door" to let air in.

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Good tip on the grate.. As for door, we left both ends open for an escape as there is no flue on this set up.. Is it necessary to have an escape?

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Originally Posted by Run Forest Run!

I use 4" deep restaurant steam trays. There's more surface area for evaporation than a pot. I also have a 6" deep one that I haven't put into service yet.

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Oh that's good..We have same, we actually have 4 of them and so added a third pan today.. Possibly fourth if things get crazy, I'll keep u posted on our progress

Yep, step in the right direction for sure, Lesley!

Now, much as I love this crazy hobby, the one part of it that drives me absolutely around the bend is getting it to Brix. Which I didn't care about before too much. But now I want to enter competitions so that means getting it Brix or at least in that area. So after a nice scenic drive to Covell's, I have some more 1/2g jugs, plastic lids and a so-called Quebec hydrotherm - meaning it can be used in hot or cold syrup.

So after checking the therm's calibration using my resident jar of grocery store syrup (and using Bruce's patented, shatterproof way of using the therm and therm cup :-) I filled the therm cup with cold syrup from my two best batches so far. Well, one batch finished a good 8 hashmarks or more below the red line, and the other was 1 or 2 hashmarks over! Rinsed off and dried the therm between uses with warm water, don't think that affects anything in terms of the reading, just keep syrup still clinging to it.

Oh, and my therm cup is only 10 inches...do I really need one that's 12 inches? And why?

There is no need for an escape you will loose a lot of heat that can be directed on to the pans. I found to get the best boil in hot table pans in my first ever cinder block arch keep the bottom of the pans no more then 15 to 18 inches Ave your fire. I have never boiled down on propane (only to finish) I have never had anybody hint or say my syrup has a smoke flavour to it.

Thanks Jeff,

from an experienced arch guy those are very good tips. I'm glad to hear no difference in taste. We will try bringing the fire a bit closer to the pans, and put on a door

Warm water won't hurt the hydrometer I use mine withh boiling syrup I keep the cup and meter in the SAP pan as it boils to keep it preheated( fill the cup with raw SAP) if you do this. When your ready to use dry off meter and rince out SAP with hot syrup and test.
Just a FYI if you don't know , give your meter a little time to compensate for what ever tempatures your testing at to get a really accurate reading.

Thanks, I tested all my finished syrup off cold. I don't have an arch or a SAP pan so cannot immerse the therm or therm cup, or make nearly enough per batch to rinse out therm cup with hot syrup...reason why I bought a *Quebec* hydrotherm was because it was same price as all the other therms and it is meant to measure hot and cold syrup. I doubt that a quick rinse with warm water would affect readings.

I'd just much rather do testing with cold syrup cause then I don't have to worry about syrup getting too hot and more nitre forming, not to mention even a small saucepan used to bring syrup back up to heat would still end up being coated with syrup that I have to scrape out. Much, much easier to just get therm in therm cup, fill with cold syrup and let the therm bob til it reaches its happy place and stays put. Then I can just dump the cold syrup, only from the therm cup, back into the batch and lose very little syrup from inside the therm cup.

Happy Easter everybody Sat and Sunday were great days boiled off 260 gallons, down to concentrate I am going to finish this morning.
Still have glitch with my new set up I'm trying to work through.
Over all impressed with my boil rate of about 19 to 21 gph.
I'm looking at maybe 1 more run this week and hoping my trees give me 1000 liters to do 1 more boil,weatherr looks good for it so crossing my fingers.

I'm back lol,
Just finished and bottled 28 liters from my 2 day boil.
That's a total of 8.5 gallons for the season ..
After bottling I went to the bush and my trees are pumping collect 500 liters of Sap between noon yesterday till 3 PM today and it's still flowing like mini rivers on the mainlines ;)

Since this am I've collected 50+l, and just walked the trees, at least another 5g out there, and it's only been 3.5 hrs since last collection...trying to wait til 7pm to go collect, was able to press the castiron woodstove and the 4in deep hotel pan into play with pre-heated sap to reduce a few litres...I hope to see a gallon or two gone by morning once it's stoked up for the night cause the burners will be off!!

Argh!! how am I going to be able to go to work this week, come home and deal with all the frickin sap and not lose a) my mind; b) my sanity; c) my sap or d) all of the above? Fer example last night I turned off the burners at midnight, walked the trees, my best trees were still going. Fell asleep about 1am. Woke up 7am. Collected 23l at 7:30am. Noon did another collection of 31l. And the weekend's almost over, I have to work tomorrow and all week...definitely going to be running on fumes most of the time. Argh!!!

From dusk last night to dusk today I collected 185L. :o I think the sap gods took pity on me and the trees after hitting them so hard with the ice storm.

Wow what a day. I emptied everything around noon and went back out at 7:30 and everything was flowing over. Collected over 300 gallons today. Unfortunately due to family obligations there was no boiling. I have a busy next couple days trying to get caught up and it was still running hard when I came in. I think the end is in sight for me. A couple more good days will put me over 50 gallons of syrup and then I will pull the plug.

75L from 8 trees today. Had to go empty the buckets at 10pm 'cause they would never last until morning.

Had to collect the buckets three times today,have NEVER done that before,good thing there is only 40 of them!! Sap from tubing I think was around 2100-2200 gallons,hard to keep track of since the tanks were constantly either going over or threatening to. Had to shut down for Family supper,went back down and ran another 800 gallons through the rig to take the edge off.

Whew! Had to bring the inlaws over to help today . It got so ridiculous that we had to allow the buckets to overflow as we had no room for more sap! Wow what a season!

I'd be pretty sure that buckets are overflowing out there tonight, but I'm pretty much out of storage as well. Sounds like you had a good day Lesley. I fired up the wood burning arch today and have tweaked it nicely with a little help from my Dad. The flue works great! I still love the ease of propane however, and will only be using the wood on a nice sunny day. I kind of like the luxury of hanging out in the shelter of the garage out of the wind and snow and rain.

So as to the question in difference in taste.. much as bruce said yesterday.. none! My husband says it tastes better! And let me tell u .. a ton of smoke and wood exudate etc. And a ton of nitre. . But man tastes great!
Glad to hear your collection today was so good Karen. . It's great isn't it

wow, sounds like everyone had a great flow yesterday, if my tree's are like what everyone had yesterday then I will have full buckets and containers, sadly yesterday I had to go to a family get together and never made it to the forest, and I am working today, so I wont make it over till after 5 pm tonight :(

Al...maybe you can ask your neighbour's wife to collect for you?

I got a 101l of sap total yesterday, no idea how much I just brought in but 6g at least from #2...thankfully all the others were holding back a little, but overflowing south spile there! Gotta run off to work though...:-(

Lol ! I see you 2 ladies have wood burn bug ! ! ! Good for you.
Wood burn arch is the way to go, boills faster, taste better not to mention the time diffrence to boil down.Just a little
hint: split ur wood into wrist size pieces and stack wood in a log cabin form and keep the wood piled up as close as u want to the bottom of your pans. THEN SIT BACK AND WATCH YOUR PANS RIP ! ! ! !
Oh ya a good pair of welders gloves found at TSC or Canadian Tire for 15 bucks will sure come in handy i tell ya ! ! !
Let me know if you try my suggestions and what you think about boiling on wood after yoy do.
Have fun !

How much can one hole pump out!!!? It turned into a crazy day of collection for the afternoon and up till 11PM. Somebody once commented that with 160 taps I could get up to 200 gallons of sap on a heavy day, that statement was a tad low I ended up with 375 gallon (1437L)!
Just too much and everything was still running when I said at midnight screw it I'm beat. If it's running out onto the ground at the moment so be it, everything is full at the moment.

Yes, it's been quite a week. Got back from a few days away to find my 2 barrels overflowing. Emptied them on Saturday night. Full again Sunday night. Then overflowing again this morning...and still running harder than I remember from previous years. I'm sure the new pump is adding a lot. I collected 400L on 85 taps overnight!!

Karen, are your trees still running today?

Hi Steve. Hasn't it been crazy???!!!

I have collected close to 300L since Saturday night. All of the 2 gallon pails on the sugar maples overflowed overnight, even after emptying them at dusk last night. I gathered this morning before the wind picked up which was a good decision. The sap has slowed down in the past hour because of the wind, and I'm busy boiling my brains out over propane in the shelter of the garage eave line. Tomorrow I'll add in the wood burning arch to help with the overflow. The sugar content has dropped about a point, but with tonight's freeze I'll chuck ice in the morning if I'm lucky to get any.

Add me to the list of people affected by the recent tsunami! I happily cleared 1L of syrup per spile when I finished a batch early on Sunday morning. The trees had started to slowly run Saturday evening but were still not enough to collect late on Sunday morning. When there was enough to collect to get a boil restarted, I did just that early Sunday afternoon. This morning I collected for the 4th time since yesterday afternoon and, in less than 24 hours, have hauled up roughly 850L of sap. That's 17L of sap per spile!!! Same thing happened last Easter. I was thinking it was a good season that was winding to a close and, WHUMP, here comes the sap. Now, if I can just somehow manage to boil it all...

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Originally Posted by Bushfrosh

Add me to the list of people affected by the recent tsunami! I happily cleared 1L of syrup per spile when I finished a batch early on Sunday morning. The trees had started to slowly run Saturday evening but were still not enough to collect late on Sunday morning. When there was enough to collect to get a boil restarted, I did just that early Sunday afternoon. This morning I collected for the 4th time since yesterday afternoon and, in less than 24 hours, have hauled up roughly 850L of sap. That's 17L of sap per spile!!! Same thing happened last Easter. I was thinking it was a good season that was winding to a close and, WHUMP, here comes the sap. Now, if I can just somehow manage to boil it all...

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Sounds similar to us! Though, We've lost a lot of sap simply as We don't have the capacity for this volume.. It's a pretty good problem to have!

It's picking up around here too, finally! Collected as much yesterday as I did in two weeks previous. Sap slowed right down today, cold rainy day. Catching up on boiling yesterdays sap. This rain sure has me thinking about a shack for next year.
Had some company on Saturday while boiling:

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Well yesterday I got a record 101l sap and today, *only* mere 82.4l...which brings total sap this year up to 421l. Made nearup last night and plan to make more tonight, would like to make batch #4 tomorrow night but still have to tackle that 80+l sitting outside in cold storage!!! #2 is really killing it this year, the south pail was about to overflow this morning even with all the crap weather it's still showing off and producing gallons of sap while all the others are playing it safe and easing up!

Gave my nephew 30L of the 110L I collected this morning. He's trying his hand at making syrup for the first time this year. Boy it felt great to see that sap leave the driveway. :lol:

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Originally Posted by Run Forest Run!

Gave my nephew 30L of the 110L I collected this morning. He's trying his hand at making syrup for the first time this year. Boy it felt great to see that sap leave the driveway. :lol:

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Now your pushing the addiction! It's dealers like you that give syrup a good name. You should be ashamed.

I starting boiling this morning at 5am. I had 4000 gallons in the big storage tank plus all the tanks where full at the bushes. I can go through 540 gallons an hour, mean while my brother hauled sap all day. It's 8:30pm and I still have 3000 gallons left. What a run!!

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Originally Posted by psparr

Now your pushing the addiction! It's dealers like you that give syrup a good name. You should be ashamed.

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I also gave him some spiles, jugs, totes, filters, mason jars and a bottle of this year's liquid gold. He's toast. :lol: It was self preservation really. I have to have someone in the family that isn't sick and tired of hearing about making syrup. I can usually clear a room in under five minutes.

Home from work at 2pm, went out to the bush and collected 287 gallons WOW ! That's a 1080 liters..
Seriously thinking on pulling the plug on 2016 season, I have almost have 1500 liters in tanks and I'm running out of time to boil dam work stuff is interferring with my maple season!!!!!.
On a good note I resweetened the pans as well this after noon and boiled off 90 gallons in 4 hours.
Waiting to see if lines run Tuesday and decide on if I pulling the taps out.
THEN WHAT ? Lakes are not frozen enough to ice fish and not thawed enough for boating lol

Hey Karen
Did you see my post earlier today directed at you and Glenda ?

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Originally Posted by JeffB

Hey Karen
Did you see my post earlier today directed at you and Glenda ?

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I thinks you mean me, Galena, not Glenda...and actually it's Karen (Run Forest Run!) and Lesley (LesPetras) who have recently got or built arches. Meanwhile I am definitely thinking about it, saw a teeny tiny li'l evap for $500 at Covell's