I agree with you Galena been crazy here to, ideal conditions today thought there would be a tsunami in the bush today but just a slow and steady drips, and now rain tomorrow
Printable View
I agree with you Galena been crazy here to, ideal conditions today thought there would be a tsunami in the bush today but just a slow and steady drips, and now rain tomorrow
Hi all, I have collected 205 L in the last 2 days, it has been crazy here. I pulled all my taps on what I call the Hilltop last night, and left all the buckets sitting until I could collect tonight, there is still another 100 L sitting in buckets on the forest floor right now on the Hilltop.
The other part of the bush I tapped is called the Wet Bush... it is kind of wet and muddy down there and it produces like crazy, there is at least 200 L down there that needs collected. I will do that tomorrow, going to put it all in my big 1000L tote and leave it for the next week and see what happens. I have to leave Sunday night for a week, I am off to Kohler Wisconsin for training so that is why I pulled a bunch of taps, plus I am over run with sap right now. I also have a barrel buried in the snow bank full of sap, and a half barrel that I am currently working on boiling.
Anyone want sap??? Come get it lol
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I really need to up my woodstove. It takes a huge firebox, takes frickin forever to get a 4in deep hotel pan of sap to boil, and of course has to fed and maintained constantly to keep at least a light boil going. At least it's cast iron so when I do decide to call it quits for the night - soon, I hope - I can just chuck in a few more bits of wood, shut it down and leave it and let it evap off what's in the pan with the residual heat.
Karen, I tried your trick with using a foil roasting pan with a couple of holes in it as a prewarmer...it does work well. However I forgot that you use propane, which is a lot easier to control than wood! So more than once I heard the ominous hissing of overflowing hotel pan as the prewarmer holes continued to let sap flow, including when the boil was low or nonexistent.
Don't know about anyone else, but because there is so little sap but a high sugar content, I am making really small batches this year. Batch #2 is pretty much done evaping away on the house stove. I figure I will get around 1- 1.25l syrup from that 22l of sap.. The current batch outside is approx 30l, and the next batch in holding is around 27l.
Going to be a long one today. I'm on call this week and sure enough I got a call at 03:30 this morning. Got that all wrapped up. Might as well head out early and get a boil on. Gunna be such a long day.....
Haha hear you on that one Drew. Hit the hay about 2:30am, planned to sleep in til about 10am. Nope! No such luck. Body wanted to get up and out of bed at 7:30 so poor little brain trying to keep up :-)
Mini-batch #2 looks like it will be syrup once it cools down to 60 on the Kebbec 'ydrot'erm...only about 4 hashmarks over at the moment. Mini=batch #3 evaped down to about 12l by this morning so get SW going again, just low, to continue taking it down while I get more supplies in. Want that batch down to 3l, finish it indoors, get batch 4 started. So much fun! That's what I keep telling myself!
Our sugar is high this year too. We got 8.25 L from 238 L first boil (3.4 %) and 11 L from 306 L second boil (3.6%) which is pretty high for us and mostly red maples.Quote:
Originally Posted by Galena
Weird morning, woke up to being in a dark snow globe. So much for that nice spring day we had yesterday. I was expecting a sap flood yesterday, but just slow drips. Still managed to collect 13L for the day, although 5L was just from one big tree, it seems it woke up. Not expecting much today, but ironically my closest tap is running this morning and hasn't been doing anything over the past days so who knows... Weird. Maybe a pressure change?
This is only my second crack at it, but it also seem my sugar content is higher than expected. I noticed when the jugs were half frozen, the stuff that was still liquid already looked like syrup. I guess the water must freeze first leaving a sugary concentrate? The boil I did with the liquid definitley yeiled more syrup than what had melted the next day. I'd say right now I'm somewhere around 30:1.
Hehe you have just discovered the poor man's RO...ice! You are exactly right, the water freezes and leaves a sugary concentrate. Some call it 'sweet'. So, save and boil the sweet, and toss the ice. Or if you're super-picky, let the ice melt into a container and taste it every so often to see if it still tastes sweet. If it does, keep that and add it to the boil. But once you can't taste sweet any longer, just plain ol water...that's what you have. Straight ice, which can then be chucked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Backcountry
When it was still cold I was lucky enough to have my little 22l batch freeze up. I took off about 16l in straight sweet, then another 3l of more watery sweet. So from 22l I got 19l sweet; the final 3l was straight ice and was tossed.
Problem is now that it isn't cold enough to freeze sap, at least not for long, this option isn't viable. Unless you have access to a chest freezer or similar place to freeze it in.
Last night kids only collected 45 Gal from last 2 days! I figured we would have 2 full barrels..
Looks to be running in the rain today and only -1 last night... I will be dumping lots of tree pee tomorrow am..
Very strange runs this year.
I just walked the bush more for exercise and a break from running out to Shack Whacky all the time....yesterday I got the bulk of my sap from only one tree, #5. Well that tree is on hiatus today and getting the others to pick up the slack! They all have sap except #5! Too funny :-)
I just bottled my last batch. Another 9 L makes for 30 L finished this season.
I haven't pulled taps yet because it's cold and rainy out there and I don't wanna go out. If there is anything in the buckets when I go pull them, my friend gets it all.
Nothing today. 10 gallons from 110 spiles. Plus there was probably a fair bit of rain mixed in... Looking like a bad year.
Sadly I'm afraid you're right, Mike. At least for this area. I feel bad for the commercial producers who have quotas to meet.
Bottling day for us. All caught up now.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...74d1f249ae.jpg
I can't answer that. Anything under 10" is too small to tap. We tend to start at ~ 14". When I say larger I'm talking 24" and above.Quote:
Originally Posted by Syrup By The Sea
Big +1. Tapping trees that are too small is a great way to induce a lot of stress in them and cause damage that will now last the rest of their lives.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big_Eddy
I agree it might just be me, but the ice in our bush and what I can only assume in frozen ground still. Has made for a very frustrating season. Our bush hasn't even opened up yet. Since the 17 of March we have only collected 4000 gallons of sap, (1000 gallons this week since Monday) plus a total of 2000 gallons off 800 buckets. By this time last year we were almost at 16000 gallons of sap off 800 piped lines and pulled in another 10000 in the last two weeks. Here is hoping that the last week or two end with a bang..... Not a lot of cold nights. Last season we produced 308 gallons. This year 127 gallons to date, with double the taps....
Still very slow and short sap runs. GOt 26l over last two days and don't expect much if any today. Batch #2 will make about 1l or slightly over, and Batch #3 is done at 1.80 l.
Snow tsunami! Went to sleep to freezing rain, woke up to 8" of fresh powder. When is spring again?
I don't know if the taps will be running today or not, but it will be fun rebreaking my sap line trail. :) Guess I gotta find everything I left outside first... Collected 15L yesterday when I thought the taps would be dry. Curious to see what happens today...
Attachment 19895
Just got back from the woods and surprised to see sap has started running well. Here’s hoping this rain and snow has finally woken the trees up in our area.
Wow.. I emptied all my buckets Friday night (170 L, which is up from my counts of 120 on Wednesday (didn't empty them)..so not bad for 2 days) and had a look at them all this morning.. I"m lucky if I have 5 L in total from all 30 taps!Quote:
Originally Posted by Galena
Stupid snow has slowed the run. Most trees barely have any drips. But tree #9, always a late runner, is happily providing me with some tree pee :-) Have three batches of syrup finished, Brixed out, ready to bottle. Some golden light and light amber, pics once I get some of each in uniform jars for fair colour comparison. Batch #4 evaping down on house woodstove, Batch #5 out there working down in Shack Whacky.
ETA: decided to blend batches 4 and 5 and toss in the 7l I got today. May as well finish off March with at least one big batch. Should be close to an Imperial gallon.
Wow, always a new surprise. I thought with all the snow and ice the trees would be sleepy today, but for the first time all the taps were running at the same time. Managed to collect 23L today which is the best haul yet...
Fun, isn't it, Backcountry? This weather is so whack that I'm not paying attention to any rules, cause they have all flown out the window. I collected sap at -3 last night from trees still dripping, my ratio is WAYY better than 40:1 or even my usual 33-37:1, the little trees will run great and the big ones not at all and vice versa...no consistency at all this season except for outrageous sugar content.
I checked the buckets around 3 in the afternoon yesterday.. I'm lucky if I have 5L across all 30 buckets! I had high hopes for the weekend as I've seen it where a low pressure system bringing snow and +2 made the trees run like crazy.. but I don't think we even got much past +1 this weekend so perhaps that had an impact.. or maybe the trees are still a little too frozen for them to be affected by that weather?
Hoping for a good week this week as other than tomorrow night, below freezing every night.. but long range forecast for my area shows that could be it (if it holds true.. this weather seems to change even more erratically than it did during the winter!).
So far I've got about 40% of last year's sap haul but with 50% more buckets.. I should have heeded my daughter's advice and double them this year! LOL.. hindsight is 20/20 though!
Have a great day everyone!
The weekend was underwhelming for us. Less than 0.75 gallons per tap in total from Friday to Sunday. We pushed it through yesterday to get it cleaned up. Hoping the end of this week and the weekend it will finally open up and give us a big run. We need 2 big weeks to get to a good season!
What a Saturday...
Dad had run through about 225L on Friday leaving me with about 725L to deal wit on Saturday. Yikes.
Had a good boil going before 6AM. Ran hard all day and at about 10:30PM we were down to a small enough amount of very close to syrup concentrate. Shut it down for the night. To close to mess it up now. No way I could stay awake another couple hours to finish, filter and bottle after being up at 3 whatever AM.
Fired up on Sunday and finished it off. We ended up with a touch over 30L.
We run a CDL 18"x48" flat pan on a hobby CDL arch. Math says I ran between 40 and 45 liters per hour on Saturday. How did we achieve 40-45 l/h of evaporation on 6 square feet of surface? Well really, we didn't... We pitched all the ice.
I ran a bunch of tests to see what the best way was to manage the large amount of ice in our storage containers. Both chunks from buckets and the stuff that froze down the sides. I came to the sweet spot of draining the ice for 10 minutes then pitching it. Once the ice chunks drained for 10 minutes the ice remaining contained sugar content between .4 and .6% sugar. The concentrate left over was 4.5-5% sugar. This essentially doubled our production. Concentrated our sap and reduced the volume to run. Typically running 400L in a day is a big task for us.
In the end I really have no idea how many L of sap we boiled. What I do know is that boiling sap at 4.5-5% and throwing out volume with very low sugar content is way better than running all of the volume at a fluid 2-2.5% sugar. I encourage everyone to buy a sap hydrometer and play around! So much fun! Poor persons RO at it's finest.
Drew.
Thanks again MikeC82. You were right. After 2 days of above zero temps,the sap continued flowing and I ended up getting over 200L from my 50 taps. They were still running when I went to check them on the weekend, but pretty slowly after the 3rd day in the pluses. Not a bad haul for the area that I'm in. I think the sap is only averaging 1.5-2% though, as I only ended up with a gallon of finished after my boil. LOTS of boiling.
Hoping to get one more in before my reds start to bud out.
I'll try to stay away from the 8 inchers next year BIG_EDDY. They are everywhere, but I'll need to be more patient and let them grow...
Syrup by the Sea, if you're tapping soft maples - reds, silvers, Norways, Freemans - you are going to have a low sugar content compared to sugars and will have to collect much more sap. Fact of life.
And truthfully you MUST stay away from the 8-inchers, no matter how many there are, unless you don't mind the risk of causing severe damage and ending up with a stand of 8-inch standing dead trees.
Sap slowed some today, but still managed to grab about a dozen litres to bury in the snow for another day. Starting to see some sweet results. The jar on the right is from last night/todays boil and came out significantly darker than previous boils. The only difference that I can think of is this was Sunday's sap after the storm. Strange...
Attachment 19915
There are all kinds of theories as to why syrup darkens during the course of the season but yeah apparently things like how long it's been stored is one of them. I dunno, I just treat it as a natural and welcome progression through a spectrum of colours and flavours :-)
Hey everyone, looks like we have some catch-up reading to do!
We were out of town this weekend visiting family, helped them RO and boil some sap as well.
Last night the kids and I collected and got 42 litres, but this would be from Friday afternoon before we hit the road.
Much warmer weather coming so who know what this will bring......our larger tress still have yet to become the big producers they have been over the last two years!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Syrup By The Sea
Glad it worked out for you Syrup by the Sea! Like you, I don't have a lot of sugar maples. Mostly Reds - and they run and run when they start - especially the ones in lower areas. We got like 35 mm of rain here on the weekend and all my low areas are flooded and those trees just took off. For the smaller trees (9 inches is about where I draw the line) - I find the 5/16 taps are much easier on the tree compared to the larger metal composite ones. I've had smaller trees split a bit with the metal ones during really hard freezes. Not nice to see. The bigger trees take the metal ones fine and heal up well - at least in my limited experience.
This looks to be my week. Things really coming to life yesterday with that sun and some good freeze-thaws with warm days predicted. My only problem is the flooding and water everywhere. ATV goes through it fine - but I predict some wet socks over the coming days!
Attachment 19918
Syrup by the Sea, there are lots of other species of trees that produce sap which can be tapped and made into syrup. That might be an option til your maples grow to tappable size. Box elders, aka Manitoba maples, grow everywhere and are often multitrunkers. Birch trees too. I know there's a whole bunch more, like both black and white walnuts, but try Google and see what trees in your area are profuse and can be tapped.
Good run today, 51 litres of sap since last night at 5:00pm.
Our largest tree is still reluctant to give much sap......]
Galena you're not far from us, how are your big trees doing?
Two words: SAP TSUNAMI!!!! Went from mere dribbles to having to gallop upstairs and get the 5g pails set aside specifically for the 4 big maples on my south property line. If it's any consolation, my biggest tree, #2, gave only about 2g as opposed to the much smaller neighbour, who has given quite a lot more. Haven't measured it yet, and just off to shoot some geese (with a camera ;-) so will be counting sap when I return.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fort Wisers
Murphy's Law...this week is pretty busy in terms of work and now the dam breaks. Next week is relatively quiet though so IF the run is still good at least I can catch up.
Wow do I hear you on this one.....LOL.Quote:
Originally Posted by Galena
Good luck with the geese hunting!
Ok....approx 50l fresh sap inholding so 63 or so l total. But I'm busy as stink the next two days so have to go out and dig bunkers and hope I don't get too much more sap (harhar) or I'll have to break out the Brute. Which means I will be here Friday afternoon on and all through the weekend. And yes I got the goose shot I wanted!
BIG run today,made 41.5 gallons of the old grade of medium or above. Went out gathering buckets around the sugar house in the dark when I was shutting down so that they wouldn’t run over.
Sounds like the sap is running back home, here I sit in a hotel room in Kohler Wisconsin wishing I was at home boiling the tree pee.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk