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My brother is doing our last boil of the season today. We got about 1 GPT from Sunday evening until this morning but the releasers are only dumping at 20 minute intervals. We have no sub freezing temps forecast for 2 or 3 nights so it looks to be over. Reports from the sugar camp is the RO is having trouble processing the sap and the flow rates are way down. You struggle with ice and snow to start the season and then struggle with mud and slimy sap to end it.
After the last 2 weeks' craziness we won't shed a tear that boiling is done for 2017! Now we just need 4 days to get everything cleaned up.
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The last fires of the 2017 are on now. The sap is almost impossible to pre-filter and process through the RO. The foam is extremely difficult to keep down in the pans and the syrup is not filtering well. We are definitely done.
The first syrup of the day was definitely Very Dark with a strong taste - likely from the evaporator sitting for 2 days. As fresh sap came through the colour came back to about 30LT and the taste softened up a little. I don't have final numbers yet but it will be our 2nd best season for total production and on a L/tap basis. Total sap collected was down from 2016 but the excellent sugar content made up for it.
Update: Apparently the sap in the RO feed tank was so slimy it took 25 minutes inside the tank with the pressure washer to get the stainless cleaned and shining again! I am not looking forward to cleaning the tanks and releasers this weekend...
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Well I have batch #5 nearuping down on the woodstove, maybe it'll do what a couple other batches have done this year and go to perfect Brix all on its own overnight....but not counting on it though!
This coming Easter weekend looks like the last possible chance to salvage something from the sap tsunami that never happened (unless of course it happens this weekend). Pails had moths in them and in a couple of cases, nice clear sap but only in small quantities so I watered the tree with it. A couple other pails had sap with that ropey snotty texture to them. Most pails had swfa in them. So after some thought I brought in all the pails, cleaned em with hot water and bleach, let them air-dry...then put em back out on the trees. Still fairly cool temps here, warm next couple days at least. Let's see what happens now!
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Finished everything off last night. Tonight bottled the last of it, cleaned up evaporator, RO and sugar shack. Still have to pull taps and clean lines. Overall it was excellent season. We made 345 litres from 268 taps.
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Well, what sap I am getting today is clear and perfect...but only 4 spiles are producing it. Bummer. Planning on finishing batch #5 today and see if I can get 5-6l out of it.
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Just finished off #5 at perfect hot Brix, somewhere around 5.5-5.75l. Finally, after 3 batches of light and medium light, a prima donna medium batch that refused to nitre out completely, a decent batch of MAPLE syrup with brown sugar notes. Took long enough!!!! Will collect what my trees gave me today, then pull spiles tomorrow, nearup down their offerings and chuck it in the freezer til next year. Somewhere around 475l total, so not a dud season...just a very long, very painfully drawn out one. And no sap tsunami.
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Finally finished pulling spiles and filtering out a little batch of salvage from #4 and #5, which I don't count in the total of 15.75l...some of which already been given away! Grand total of 474l sap. And that little 2-spile bush maple, Surprise, did indeed kick butt and produced almost 80l sap, beaten only by the long-time dark horse of #5 with 101l.
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Very impressive total this year Susan. It wasn't an easy season, but you did great. :)
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Thanks Karen, it was such a crazy year but quite happy all things considered. I kept a daily journal of days I collected and those I didn't - either due to the spiles being dry or a freeze-up -, and the # of days I didn't collect, outnumbered the ones I did. Let's hope for a lot more rain this summer!
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We managed to get all our taps pulled this weekend, the releasers and tanks washed plus a bunch of other misc cleanup done. One producer I know was planning to boil Saturday evening and dumped it because the sap was too slimy. With what was coming out of our lines Friday there's no way we could have still been boiling.
