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I'm missing why 210-211 should be used as a base? My thermos are adjustable (for the boiling point of water), so I just stick them in a kettle outside near my arch and bring the water to boil and adjust accordingly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Galena
I've been using this app. Uses the closest weather station to your location. I've calibrated my thermometers many times this year and numbers were spot on. I've tried to prove it wrong a couple times but it's super accurate with the boiling temp of water. I set my drawoff to the syrup temps also and I stay .2 degrees below the posted syrup temp and it was spot on. Give it a try.
http://mapletrader.com/community/sho...ght=Saptapapps
That would be for my location, not necessarily yours.Quote:
Originally Posted by NTBugtraq
Hey Les,Quote:
Originally Posted by Lespetras
Only 16 spikes, we've only silvers and norways, no sugars, so I collect a lot more for less.
Bumper crop this year though, best year yet. I really need to start tracking and writing stuff down. But I'm more a roll with it type....
Finished our season today, pulled spikes while the last bunch boiled. Surprised that some buckets had no sap, only a bit of mold to clean up....
Great season had again, but they still don't charge enough in stores...
TurkeyJohn
Les, remember how you were saying you had insane amounts of nitre? Same here, batch #4 been a mutha to get filtered through...and it's still several hashmarks under Brix, grr. So have to fix it. Debating whether or not to add sap from today but think I won't, it'll just screw things up further. Glad paper coffee filters are cheap!!
If anyone has run out of bush to filter, I still have a ton of sap to boil, on Country Rd. 48 just west of Balsam Lake Provincial Park, just west of Coboconk. Any and all are welcome.
What size pans are you currently usingQuote:
Originally Posted by TurkeyJohn
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
I'm thinking of upgrading to a 2x6 raised flue pan set for next yr ...so I might have a 2x4 hybrid pan for sale . I can let you know if your interested
.
Hey Jeff,got a young lad near me thinking of upgrading to a flue pan next year. PM me pictures and price and I can let him know
All good here! Nobody messed with my stuff yet, though I'm just down the road from where the theft was.
Sap still coming in well with help from vacuum. Fired up pump yesterday at 2 and by 9 had a 100 gallons. Fired it up again this morning around 9:30 and brought in another 100 gallons by 1. More then triple per tap then my buckets. Looking like the end is in site though. Calling for a freeze tonight then nothing for a week. Hope for another run tomorrow and then probably time to pull the plug unless the forecast changes.
It's sure been a strange year! A year of extremes. Reasonably please with my results but I'm sure glad I tapped early when I did against my good judgement or it would have been a very disappointing year. Should end up with a little over 300L. I would venture to guess I would have ended up with less then 200L without vacuum.
I know it's been a disappointing year for some but here's hoping that it finishes strong for everyone !
It's been disappointing here. I tapped a few trees in February's warm spell to see how things were. Wasn't much flowing so I waited it out. Put my 80 taps in march when forecast started looking better. The weather just never seemed to cooperate. I collected 280 liters (60 imp gallons) of sap so far this year. Boiling it all his weekend. Hopefully this week will bring a little more but the forecast doesn't look good. Last year I had 40 taps and finished 38 liters, I think I will be lucky to see half of that this year from twice as many taps. I guess it ain't over yet though!
I know it's been a strange year. Hopefully you get some more sap.. your up in Pembroke area, you should still go for a few more weeks yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by maple75
@ maple75...don't call it quits just yet! Now that there is finally a warm spell you may get a few more good days of sap.
@ KyleBaker....glad to hear that they haven't tried to pilfer any of your stuff. Are you tapping the bush near Merrickville too?
Hey John,Quote:
Originally Posted by TurkeyJohn
That's fantastic that your having a bumper crop year. I wouldn't say the same for us, but February probably gave us much more than expected! Had we not tapped back then, we wouldn't have made as much. I haven't actually pulled the spiles yet.. gonna wait another week, but I don't expect much, just want to bring my totals up to 50 litres of I can
And Susan,
I hear you about the niter.. what a bugger the filtering is.. we think it could be sugar sand.. it settles a bit different than the nitre.. looks grainy
TJ,Quote:
Originally Posted by TurkeyJohn
Not sure exactly what you are looking for but I may have a 24"X48" flat pan for sale. It was purchased new from Atkinsons a few years ago. All stainless and welded. We've upgraded to a hobby arch setup so it's kind of just sitting up in the shop. I can grab some pictures this week if you want.
Drew.
Just got a call from Scotch Corners. We're now swimming in sap. Apparently we now have over 600L stored and with a freeze tonight expect another big collect tomorrow. Looks like we'll do a 2 day boil starting tomorrow.
Pleased with the results so far and not a single spec of cloud. We almost always have a cloud like precipitate form in our bottles within 24-96 hours. Not huge and it always settles within 2 weeks but bad enough that other than a couple "test" bottles we bulk bottle everything, let it settle, then break it down into 2501ml and 500ml Kent's. Wouldn't want to offend someone by giving them free, less than perfect syrup. (sarcasm abound on the last comment!)
Attachment 16317
Those look gorgeous Drew. I'm jealous to hear about your sap tsunami. We didn't get a single one of those here this season.
Hehe, Les sugar sand and nitre are one and the same thing! Both grainy though this batch does look more like sand... got something like almost a good 250ml of nice tan-coloured nitre as opposed to the more usual grey/muddy/black sludgey stuff. but it's all good ol potassium nitrate, aka saltpetre, and just for fun this year I am collecting my nitre and drying it out...want to see if I can make my own explosive out of it! muwahahahaaaaa ;-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Lespetras
ETA: collected almost 38l sap today, so happy....and yes I am bracing myself for the sap tsunami cause my trees produced from 10am on. All weather conditions favourable and they've been ready to go for awhile now. And now they're going.
Pretty sure I will be pulling my stuff come Wed or Fri. I collected 27 ltrs on Saturday, and added it to what I was working on boiling, shut down boiling around 9 pm saturday night due to sleepyness, and just left it sitting in the garage like I always do tucked off to the side where it is safe.... so I thought.... grrrrrrr !! Sunday morning after breakfast, the boys went out side, about 20 mins later the oldest comes in from the garage crying and says, "daddy I am sorry, but I tried walking by your syrup and spilt it, not all of it, but allot of it". WELL, dad was not a happy camper at that point, they were not to be on that side of the garage, to many things on that side that can harm them, they know this, that side of the garage is dads work area, that is where all my tools and wood working stuff is, so they know not to be over there, all he could tell me is he was walking by it and it fell over. GRRRRRRR, thank god it was not on the turkey fryer boiling when that happened, good grief.
Thought we would have a good day yesterday for sap, but come 4 pm when I went to check, probably not even 1 ltr. I will collect either tonight or tomorrow and that will be it, not the greatest of years for me. No idea just yet how much I collected or have finished, not going to do any addition until everything is done.
OK.. good to know, because this definitely looked different from our other usual niter experiences!Quote:
Originally Posted by Galena
Yep I should post a pic...the nitre from batch #4 is a nice warm beach-sand look to it unlike the more grotty lookin stuff. Usually it's muddy grey/brown but I think last year was the year I got nitre that was almost black!Quote:
Originally Posted by Lespetras
@ Al...ouch on all levels. Probably not practical to try and partition off the garage and kids will be kids. Maybe you can squeeze a gun safe or similar container which you can securely lock up?
On a happier note, glad that I was able to rescue my professional-chef grade $$$ Taylor digital thermometer, where the LCD end took a dunk in water when I was cleaning it off...hell I went all the way to Hendrix in Brockville to get it and at $30+ they ain't cheap...so I did the only thing you can do with damp electronics, put it in a bag of rice and tightly sealed it up, left it for two days....and was actually planning to go back to Brockville to get another, as today I am planning on bottling and like to take the heated syrup off at exactly 185...but dug this one out of the bag o' rice, hit the button and it turned on and it back to working as per normal. Yay! :-) And trees gave me a good amount of sap yesterday and anticipate a good run today. Tomorrow not so sure as it'll be rainy but we'll see.
Ouch that hurts AL.. good to hear kids didn't hurt themselves in any way ..
Just remember you can always think " I know you don't like
table syrup on your pancakes but if u hadn't been "walking" by you would have real maple syrup " lol you can think it but never say it lol .. kids will be kids tho
Hey Galena.....
If you want to eliminate that sand, wait til your syrup is below 190 degrees before you filter it. Syrup still produces niter until its below 190. I think I read that once in Dr. Perkins posts. Since we have applied that rule, all of our syrup has been crystal clear with no sand or impurities.
Using a single 12x24 by 8 inch deep pan, thinking of doubling it next year for my barrel evaporator, hotel steamer like LesPetras is using...Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeannette
TurkeyJohn
Yeah, I pulled mine Saturday as well, whilst the last batch boiled down. Didn't catch much the past week and the warm forecast and rain this week didn't inspire much confidence in any further runs. It's been great, quite happy with this year, already making plans for next year, need to shorten boil downs, so need a bigger outfit or pans....Quote:
Originally Posted by Lespetras
TurkeyJohn
That might be just what the doctor ordered Drew, please do send pics, I'll measure the barrel up tonight and see if it'll fit, may have to MacGyver it, but sound good...Quote:
Originally Posted by DrewCP
TurkeyJohn
The rule is not to go above 190 when reheating to bottle. If it's already been boiling then the nitre has already formed but reheating cold syrup above 190 can cause nitre to reform. All my syrup is filtered strait off the evaporator at around 221 and I have no issues with nitre. I tend to go a little heavy because it's easier to thin heavy syrup when bottling then have to boil more off because you need to filter again.Quote:
Originally Posted by JDP
Thanks JDP, good idea, I do ensure that it's at 185 when bottling it....and with 99% of all my batches, take it to 224-225 when finishing it, and have had nowhere near the problems I've been having with this batch in terms of sheer volume of nitre. The fact that my good digital thermometer was also out of action til recently didn't help matters.Quote:
Originally Posted by JDP
I'm sure the sap is pouring today! Friday's sugar snow made the trails really sloppy but it also added a bunch of moisture and kept the sap crystal clear.
Thursday was a monster day. A couple of drums we made got up to 74LT with great clarity.
Saturday was a surprise. We got more sap than expected but had great sugar content. It was a later night than expected.
Sunday morning we drained the evaporator pressure washed the flues. Overall they were pretty clean which we attribute to the reduction in foam because of the auto-defoamer we got from CDL. The RO was on just after noon and we fired up about 3pm. The RO was done by 7pm and we were out of the camp by just after 9pm. The sugar content was again excellent and we had several drums of syrup made that were over 70LT - not bad for the first week of April!
I've always said we can make half our syrup in a good week. We got close to that in 4 boils over a 6 day span! Hopefully the snow we have left plus the ice on the lake keep us cold enough to get through this week's warm spell.
Doesn't that just figure..3 days of good runs collected 1400 liters and now I can't boil it..grrrr:mad:
Work called just after I collected today and I got thrown into a caustic soda holding tank spill ....there goes my chance of getting home before Saturday .
That pretty much ends my season ! :mad:
Anyone else disappointed with this season? I tapped in March just after the nice weather in Feb and got next to nothing. With the weather looking brutal and warm for the next week I am pretty sure my season is over and my biggest daily haul was 60 gals from 118 pails. Most of the trees that over flowed buckets last year seemed to struggle to make even a quarter of a pail. Thought today we'd have some sap and left the bush with 9 gals. Guess I am buying syrup this year.
Motoman89, I'm with you. No big sap runs and crazy weather. On. Off. On. Off. I'm just over 1/3 of last year's syrup total. The biggest downside is that it takes just as long to clean up your maple syrup supplies when you make 10L as when you make 100L.
I did not tap until March 17th an have made about 30L of Syrup off of 110 taps. Aboutb1/3 of last year as another poster mentioned.
Really wild weather and I don't know what I missed from mid Feb to mid March.
I added lines and Shurflo pump to half the trees and built a mini RO system so a little frustrated that they did not get a good workout. Now it is just more stuff to clean.
Will boil the sap that ran yesterday in the monsoon tonight.
About to go out and see if monsoon resulted in more sap flow or just lots of tree pee. Frustrating season. Off and on, like Karen said. And despite having carefully filtered yet again, still have suspended nitre in the batch I bottled last night and yes I took it off at 186. *sigh*...
ETA nope. Same amount of sap in all buckets except for #9 which is traditionally a late starter anyway. Starting to think that there may be no sap tsunami this year :-(
I think I'm done. We collected about 45 gallons of sap on Sunday evening and there was nothing yesterday. (not surprising) Forecast is not encouraging.
Last night I boiled down everything that we had in the tank and now I just need to drain the flue pan and finish what's left using the syrup pan only. Probably get that done tonight.
It was an on and off season for us, but overall better than 2016
………………………………………..2016………..2017
Buckets…………………………..185……………180
Tapped…………………………..27-Feb………19-Feb
Done……………………………..03-Apr……….03-Apr
Days…………………………………36…………….43
Sap Days………………………….19…………….20
Sap Total Gal Cdn………….1347……………1235
Syrup Total litres……………142……………..150
Ratio……………………………..43 : 1……………37 : 1
Syrup l / tap…………………..0.77…………….0.833
(Note that the ratio is calculated based on bottled syrup versus collected sap. It does not take into account spillage, tasting, amounts absorbed in the filter or over filling. It always surprises me how 20l of syrup in a finishing pan ends up as 15l in bottles)
Just checked weather and forecast appears to have changed for later this week (at least in Peterborough area). Looks like a good freeze Friday night and sunny Saturday. I thought I was done collecting yesterday. Managed another 150 gallons off of vacuum which I was surprised and pleased with. Barely a litre from 10 buckets around the house. I was planning on starting to pull taps tomorrow but may hold off til weekend to see if weatherman is right. Buds still look tight.
Keep your fingers crossed folks maybe we're not done yet!
We've got about 1 GPT that ran Sunday evening through this morning. Not bad but not the sap tsunami we hoped for.
If the long range forecast holds we might be done by early next week. We might get one freezing night between now and then. The +18 C forecast for Monday & Tuesday will likely be the end of it.
I estimate we missed about 0.25L/tap by not being ready for what ran the week after Family Day weekend. That amount would get us from it being a meh... season to an OK season.
I checked our forecast based on what you posted. Same here! OK, so the buckets are staying up until I see what happens. Maybe there is a little more I will be getting before I start cleaning everything for the season.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clinkis
Here in the northern part of syrup country, (North Bay) We've had 2 boils and produced a wopping 14 litres from 100 taps. looks like 2 or 3 night of -2 to -5 later this week and then double digit highs into mid april. I tapped March 18 and since then we've experienced the deep cold and then the extreem warm. The snow cover went from 12-16 inches to exposed ground on the south slope in 3 days. So far looks like a poor 2017. I'll definitely hold out for a couple weeks and hope for good sap run. Good thing we have a reserve from last year.