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Usually can tell a bit by taste of sap but to be really sure put a small bit of sap in a pot and boil it. If it's buddy then steam will smell like dirty socks. If it still smells sweet your good. I would think we should still be a couple weeks away from buds at least but maybe not in your area.
Thanks Clinkus,
Again, hard to say that they truly are buddy yet, but don't want to stress the trees for crappy sap either... Great tips there though...
TurkeyJohn
As Galena would say - we need our "floaties" on.
As always happens, I booked last week off work for the Maple break. Monday was nice but cold, so I cut wood all day. Tuesday through Thursday were not conducive to working out in the bush, so I went back to work. Stayed home Friday expecting it to warm up, and it did - but not until after 5pm. I checked buckets about 6pm and it was a symphony in the woods- every tree was dripping like crazy - but there was less than an inch in any of the buckets. Left it there, expecting that Saturday would be a good day. It wasn't. The ice hardly even thawed, and nothing flowed. However, late Sunday - after all my help departed for other locations - the trees opened up and we collected over 130 gallons. And Monday was even better - another 175 gallons collected. Of course - I'm back to work, so there will be some late nights this week.
Nice clear sweet sap, although the woods are getting pretty muddy as last week's snow melts.
You've already stressed the trees by tapping them. Collecting the sap and boiling it for as long as it is palatable will not stress them any more than pulling your taps and letting the sap run down the bark.Quote:
Originally Posted by TurkeyJohn
When your syrup gets buddy - you'll know! We can tell the season is done by the smell in the sugar camp. We've also made some pretty good looking and tasting syrup out of sap that looked like skim milk!
LOL floaties hell, I'm getting on my wetsuit too! Two of my best trees ran all night so collected prior to leaving for work, and just as well by the looks of it. All the other trees but one have also produced a decent amount of sap, guessing about 30l. Time to roll on floaties and get going. I'll need flippers soon!Quote:
Originally Posted by Big_Eddy
Still early for buddy syrup John, when you hear the frogs look at the buds i gathered 700 liters today and boiled it down tonight and syrup was amber but tasted great.
Thanks Ennis and Quabbin,
No frogs yet and with last nights freeze, I think we have a ways to go, but those trees like to fool with me...
TurkeyJohn
i am just starting to tap on fri and looking to go till easter! ribbet ribbet ! lol
That's why, ever since I began tapping 9 yrs ago, that I record every. single. collection. of. sap. from every. single. tree. I tap. That way I can chart how each tree *performed* in previous years, and how is likely to continue to perform. Otherwise how else will you know which trees may be weakening and which are doing as expected, and which are kickin it up a notch?Quote:
Originally Posted by TurkeyJohn
Howdy folks!
In the North Grenville area of Eastern Ontario and we just started tapping this year to get our feet wet!
4 whole taps with buckets LOL, nothing big but we didn't have much time this year to setup anything larger.
We setup on Sunday (19-Mar-2017) and have collected about 22 litres so far. Yesterdays colder temps stopped the flow but we're hoping today's temps will bring some flow back.
We do have buds on the trees and the sap taste got stronger with the rainy day earlier this week, however we put that collection aside and will boil it down separately to see the end results.
We'll start our boil down this weekend, we hope for a whopping 1 litre of the gold, again, this years plan was just to get setup and see how the process goes!
Good luck to everyone!
Have fun Fort Wisers! We can all tell you how it's going to go - I guarantee you that we'll see you here again next year. ;)
LOL, yeah we already know that....although this is our first year actually tapping ourselves, we've been addicted for a while.Quote:
Originally Posted by Run Forest Run!
We always do a family gathering at one of the local sugar houses and have planned on tapping for a number of years now.
This year we almost didn't bother again (always a time thing) but, thanks largely to my wife, we finally just bit the bullet last minute and got started.
Been learning a lot and that's half the fun!
Kids seem to enjoy it too......
Thanks Karen, have fun as well.
Welcome to the addiction Fort Wiser,
I have yet to figure out why I didn't start out smaller...........Oh yeah Because I don't listen to my wife well. :lol:
Enjoy the fun and excitement not to mention the planning, the trying to find new ways to budget for new gear and supplies.
I keep telling myself well at least now I have something to do to get me outdoors in the nasty part of spring I don't really like.
Thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Snappyssweets
Yeah last year we had grand plans of building a sugar shack and even semi-seriously looked into purchasing a small arch.
But this will have to be our start!
Over the last couple of days, my son and I have made a good dent in the sap supply (and the wood supply). We have somewhere around 60gals of (frozen) sap left that should thaw out enough to boil on Saturday. We're thankful we had a couple of colder days to get caught up. No idea how much syrup we've made, but all 6 finishing pots are full, and it's time to start filtering and bottling.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big_Eddy
Looking at the forecast today, the next few days may be it for freezing temperatures. Cross your fingers for more cold weather.
Welcome Fort Wiser the addiction has started all it takes is 1 tap and you have 4 ...start planning for next yr you can never start planning early enough lol.
Just boiled down the 100 gallons of 3% sap. I ended up with 16.5 liters finished and bottled today . Day started out a little rough my storage tank had ice that had to be melted before I could pump it to my feed tank..
4 hours later I was out of sap .
Our yearly total for this yr is 42liter bottled .(more to come with luck )
Weather calls for 3 days of snow rain followed by plus 8 or more with no freeze up in site .
Hope this isn't the start of the end of the season
We're up around 400L of sap. It's all between 3.25 and 3.5%. Hardly ran today and don't expect much over the next 3 days due to rain/snow mix with wind and only a high of around 2 or 3*C. Haven't even had a spare second to brick the new evaporator. That'll be Saturday's job after I'm done coaching the young lad's hockey practice. We'll be boiling on Monday no matter what. Then most likely again on Wednesday / Thursday.
Fort, I am probably 5 min drive from you. Feel free to PM me with any questions!
Will do thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Galena
Thanks for the welcome, yeah we're planning the future already! LOLQuote:
Originally Posted by JeffB
Boiling today, never thought watching a pot of "water" boil could be so fun lol
Thanks Galena we've come to same conclusion that if it doesn't smell or taste bad it's useable, and patterns seem to be about freakish snow (ahem last night) or sleet ((yesterday) and colour change in bucket . Someone said test boil a bit in a kitchen pot for the dirty sock smell. May try that later when budding is questionable. We're not there yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Galena
Sent from my SM-G903W using Tapatalk
Of the approx 1/2 gallon sitting out there in buckets, I've currently got more tree pee than clear sap out there, so no way am I dumping it! It'll be part of batch 4. Hmmm come to think of it batches 4+ usually do contain tree pee...and they all taste really good...;-)Quote:
Originally Posted by ashadedacre
Hey everyone, been real busy the past week with appointments and so forth, getting old sucks, anyhow I collected 70 L yesterday, everything was running real good yesterday afternoon, I had not collected anything since last Sunday, all afternoon yesterday until bedtime I was boiling what I had, with the 70 L yesterday and the 47 L I collected last weekend, I had some catching up to do, I currently have about 40 L more to go, its steaming away as I type.
Sitting here twiddling my thumbs, trees not liking this weather at all. Great test of patience, good thing I have other projects on the go to keep me occupied!
Just dumped the last of our preheated sap into the main boil. Nothing left in storage. I'd say we got 30litres total since last Sunday night. And as Gelena pointed out, the tress haven't let go of a drop today. So we'll finish this batch tonight.
We filtered and bottled for the day yesterday. Was surprised to find about 60gals of sap last night so we have been boiling all day today. Have about 40 gals to go from Friday plus the 60 from yesterday. Evaporation rate seems to be a bit down today. Must be the humidity and low pressure. Can't consistently beat 20gph today even running at 3/4"
I am still struggling around here to get enough to boil. I have 30 gallons in the freezer, that's from the first 12 taps a month ago. Haven't got any sap since I finished tapping. How many taps are you drawing from Big_Eddy ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Big_Eddy
180 bucketsQuote:
Originally Posted by maple75
Collected 250 gallons Friday and Saturday thanks to the vacuum pump. Just finished getting it all RO'd and boiled and was surprised to see sap is running here like crazy. We'll see how long it lasts but will take whatever we can get at this late point in the season. Here's hoping for a strong finish.
Just got back from checking one bush,still frozen solid,was walking on ice in the swamp next to the bush. According to accuweather supposed to warm up around 10:00 tonight,might be sap in the morning
Well, we finished our first little batch yesterday afternoon.....got all of 1.2 liters LOL
As mentioned in previous posts though, our goal was 1 liter just so we could finally say we did it, next year we'll be sizing up for sure.
All in all, considering it was our first year we were happy with how the whole process went.
The only part of our process we found more tedious then expected was filtering, next year this will be different as well!
I'm sure our little production amount has some of you snickering (ourselves included LOL) but we're pleased with our 5 little bottles of gold!
Buckets are still on the trees so we'll see what the next run brings.
Happy sugarin' everyone!
Attachment 16236
Great job! No snickering here.. we started 3 years ago and our first batch was very similar in size! It's the process that keeps me intrigued. Sounds like you nailed it!Quote:
Originally Posted by Fort Wisers
So frustrated!
On my 3rd filtering job with one small batch.. I'm almost ready to throw the batch out!
I just don't understand ... it's so frustrating.. the last filtering on this batch took over 12 hours!!
First year giving this a go. Tapped 7 trees 3/17 and by the time we were able to boil this weekend we had about 95L of sap.....
Built a cinder block evaporator and used a single 14"x19" stainless pan.
Saturday we boiled 35L of sap in about 4 hours making just under 1L of syrup
Sunday we boiled about 60L of sap in 6 hours making just under 2 L of syrup.
Having a lot of fun with family and friends coming over and making a day of it.
Weather looks good for this week so we cant wait to do it all over again next weekend.
Nice work! Nice evap rates for a backyard rig, one thing we plan to improve upon next year is our rates....Quote:
Originally Posted by SRATHWELL
Ya the rig surpassed my expectation.
I always had another pot pre warming on the front that would get to a slow boil before I would add it to the pan. I was also firing pretty hard, 4 or 5 wrist sized sticks every 15 to 20 mins.
Attachment 16240Attachment 16241Attachment 16242
This forecast is about what we want to see - now the trees just need to cooperate! We have waaaaay too much wood left in the shed right now and too many empty drums!
Attachment 16250
My last batch of just plain ol nearup, what will soon become batch #4, took forever to filter through too. Don't try to rush it like poking at the filter, stirring etc that will only force nitre through. Just change filters frequently!Quote:
Originally Posted by Lespetras
One thing I can say as a first year person about filtering is get yourself some fabric cone filters that are for syrup and a bunch of the prefilter cones that go inside. Never wring then out. I actually use the pre filters new for final filter then I rinse real good with hot hot water and u use three or four together to filter my sap when I take it of the arch. Really makes the final filtering much faster. I have had what I think is lot of sugar sand (what do I know) this year and in the beginning was having trouble filtering also.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fort Wisers