Tapped in Rochdale

[Maplesedge]

Looks like Saturdays are gonna be boil day this year. Weathers finnally warming up a bit and this snowpack just starting to melt away. Felt great to be outside boiling the winter away once again. But first had to hack my evaporator out of the ice.

Thursday and Friday were so cold and windy that I got nothing! Yesterday I collected another 3 gal. with a warm south wind. That put me at about 16 gal. of sap for a week and a half in, not much, but enough to fire up the pan, so I'm happy for it. Today is supposed to be over 50, so hoping for much more.

This years trees are real sugars for once, sweetest sap I've ever tasted. The flower buds are still small and tight so should have a long season with any luck.

Got to show my brother-in-law the ropes too. Gave him taps and other stuff to get started and he's gonna tap today. Much better than just giving them syrup.

So, boiled 16 gal to about 2 gal, transfered to stock pot on turkey fryer gas jet to about 1 gal, less several cups of maple tea with rum to celebrate. And I'll finish it on the kitchen stove today. It's pretty close now, hope to get close to 1/2 gal. But I don't care, it's just a fun way to end a winter. And this winter really needs ending!

[Maplesedge]

Finished. Just about enough to float the hydrometer, but enough. Fills the whole house up with the aroma of maple. Nice golden color.

Ended up with 5 cups. Not counting the maple tea/rum glogs. Roughly a 40/1 ratio overall.

Filtering very lightly this year, just pre-filters really, the wool and heavy felt filters just suck up too much syrup. Gonna try letting it settle out and syphoning the clear syrup off later.

Also gonna try Rink Manns's trick of freezing it instead of mason jars. Always seem to get about half my jars with a little mold skin no matter how careful I am in bottling.

[Maplesedge]

I saw 43 today in north central MA. I'll be collecting in the morning. Hopefully things will get to normal soon. This cold weather is a bummer. It's time to get things flowing and going .

Looks like a good week upcoming. Good luck.

I was looking at the hobby evap you're using, by it's too pricey for me. My little pan will have too do. But after having to dig out my rig from snow and ice this year, I sure wish I built a shed around it.

They recomend 1 - 50 taps for your evap, you have 147. How do you work that out? Boil 16 hours a day?

[Maplesedge]

Tapped on Valentines day and have collected 121 gallons on 20 taps. have a couple gallons in bottles and a sweet pan.

Cool. What are you boiling on? Homemade pan?

Mine's an old stainless steel sink, but it'll do 7 gal./hr. if I keep it stoked and the fan blowing.

Gonna add an extra pre-heater pan, just above the boil, fed by the copper stack pre-heater, and see if I can coax it to be a little faster.

Can only boil one day a week, so can't handle much more than 50 gal. of sap.

[Fishgill]

Looks like a good week upcoming. Good luck

They recomend 1 - 50 taps for your evap, you have 147. How do you work that out? Boil 16 hours a day?

Actually he recomends 1-100 taps. It does about 10 gals/ hr. 100 of my taps are on Reds so I don't get the biggest amounts. I'm hopeing to get 50 gals a day. After being in the elements the last couple of years it was nice to be indoors.

[Maplesedge]

Warm wet weekend was good for sap. Just pick up 9 gal. That's more than half of what I got in the last week and a half.

Upcoming couple of weeks look good too.

Snow's melting off fast.

[Maplesedge]

Maybe 2 gpt! Flowing out in a constant stream! About time. Woooohoooo!

[Maplesedge]

2 gpt min.

Some at 2 1/2 gpt

Fast flowing and sweet

[Maplesedge]

Flow slowed to 1.25 gpt yesterday and .5 gpt today. Too warm at night? Supposed to cool off a bit so hoping it hangs in.

Still, had 50 gal to boil Sat. And finished 1-1/4 gal today so still at 40:1 ratio.

Whole house smells like maple.

Bees liking to clean the pre-filters.

[wcproctor]

How did you all find you sugar level this year? mine was all over the map from .5 - 3.5%. all last week my sugar maples were 1.5 - 2% not so good.