Amen to that Spud!Originally Posted by spud
Amen to that Spud!
Remember to keep on ticking while the sap is dripping.
2016- 50 buckets. Made 4 gallons.
2022- 3750 taps + Smartrek! Made 1300 gallons.
2023- 3750 taps after removing a pump house and connected two woods. Made 800 gallons.
Amazing run the last couple of day, especially for so late in the season. We tapped from mid-Jan to mid-Feb (using mostly CV2, one section of 750 with new drops/spouts). In a 27 hr period ending yesterday (Friday) at 5pm, we had over 15,000 gal of sap...or about 2.9 gal/tap, averaging 1.8 Brix. Good amount of sap in the tanks again this morning. I don't have the sap totals for today for the production bush yet, but a good number of my research chambers were full by noon today (measured late-morning yesterday). Sap coming into the tanks is starting to smell somewhat yeasty this afternoon with the hot weather, but still not bad.
Long boil yesterday (our 4th of the season). Ended up making 728 gal of syrup yesterday, for a seasonal total of 2,783 gal or 0.54 gal/tap. All of it GD or AR so far.
We've got about 500 gal of 35 Brix concentrate in the bulk tank now waiting until we boil again. Probably early-middle of the week.
In other news....peepers started up in the pond this afternoon. Let's hope they're just jumping the gun a bit. Cooler weather coming tomorrow, but no freezes in our forecast...however the actual weather has been trending several degrees lower than the forecast for quite a while, so given that we hear the packers need dark syrup, we'll keep at it until we reach the buddy end (but stop when we get there). If it keeps going much longer we may need to buy more barrels.
Dr. Tim Perkins
UVM Proctor Maple Research Ctr
http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc
https://mapleresearch.org
Timothy.Perkins@uvm.edu
We're at 0.44 gal/tap in our Westford bush right now, not including what's in the rig. I think we just need to make another 3 barrels or so, plus cook out whatever is in the rig and we'll be at 0.5 gpt. I think we'll make it through this warm day and continue until end of next week. A couple of possible freezes monday night and tuesday night. So we''ll see. We won't make it without the freezes.
Was walking lines two days ago in our jericho woods and as it warmed up, sap started hammering. Most of our drops over there are 3 years old (4th season on em) and we're running CV2s. They've been in the trees for between 14-15 weeks and running great. Still running good now for us, near 70 degrees here in both bushes. Think we're gonna have a really good year all things considered. Helped a buddy boil yesterday for 12 hours straight. He's running 30k taps on a wood fired rig.. Was a good experience learning a new system and understanding what a pain wood can be
The fact that actual weather has been below forecasts is what i'm banking on to keep us going.
That's it for us. Hot one in the shack last night and today. Surprisingly good year after such a late and stunted start, even though we must have sat on our concentrate too long this week and ended-up tossing the last few gallons of almost finished syrup. We couldn't add anything but the lightest heat or it would completely turn to foam, and even at boiling temp, it had this sticky, gooey "stringy" quality. Taste wasn't bad, but it wasn't what we're used to... so the ants and bees get a treat. Live and learn.
Finished at .36 gallons of syrup per tap. Even with the final dump, that's 72% of last year's (record) syrup tally on just 66% of last year's sap haul. Neat.
On to cleanup, then fishing
Good luck to all still at it!!
Last edited by MJPJ Sugars; 04-13-2019 at 03:57 PM.
I spent the day outside scrubbing my (incredibly generous - thanks again Steve j) neighbors pan and getting it back to tip top shape. Took advice of several folks here and used a crushed piece of half inch copper and made a spade scraper out of it to help where the niter was heavy. Took a bit with vinegar and the scraper followed up by the green sponge but came out great.
Also collected and pulled all of our taps and buckets. Was sad to dump the remains but was very cloudy and a lot of them full of small bees. Definitely not the same characteristics it was 4 weeks ago! Some trees have turned off but most were running hard. Such a gorgeous day to spend outside that was for sure! Thanks again to everyone for all the help and great information I have learned the last couple months in order to make this year such a great success!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Mead Maple "It's for the kids..."
Paul Cerminara
2019 - First season ever
-Goal: 3 gallons
-Season Total: 7.5 gallons - pulled taps after running out of firewood and time
2020
Built 2'x8' Oil Fired with Thor drop flue pans
-Goal: 20 gallons
-Season Total: 55 gallons
All done here, sap was coming through the RO at 70 plus degrees yesterday finally got a funny flavor little sour, and that's after the sap sitting in the tank for only 4 hours!!! Sap still running almost one gallon per tap still in 24 hours, sugar just over a percent. Not bad for the southern part of the Champlain valley, still getting sap just can't use it!!
1545 gallons on 3500 taps, just over 90,000 gallons of sap. 200 of them saplings that have never been cut, and another five to six hundred of them are cluster soft maples 8in diameter or less. I'm pretty sure my good trees are well over half a gallon per tap, with these much smaller trees coming in way less.
With all the setbacks I would have never thought we would have got that far. Been running old dairy pump on 17 in on one sugarbush do to a pump issue on a high vac pump, 1 mechanical releaser that wanted to keep failing, and 600 gallons of sap down the driveway!!!
I think the best part about it was we boiled for less than 4 weeks compared to 10 or 12 weeks last year I made 100 gallons more syrup on 3000 gallons less sap so it was a very nice laid back easy season so to speak, with three weeks of prep time and 4 weeks of boiling and probably looking at a week of clean up- not bad.
Hope everyone else met their mark!!
Last edited by blissville maples; 04-14-2019 at 08:55 AM.
18x30 sugarshack
5100 taps high vac
3x10 inferno with steampan
7'' wes fab filter press
10'' cdl air filter press
D&G 3 post reverse osmosis w/recirculation
Went down to 30 degrees last night even though the weather person predicted 37 for a low. Last night at 9:00 pm sap was almost to a stop. Sap is now starting to roll again at 200 GPH and I think that will increase as the day goes on. Safe to say we will be running till next weekend with 2 more freezing nights to come. Sap tested at 1.4% this morning.
Spud
That's a wrap. Boiled today what I collected since Friday afternoon; about 1500 gal. of milky sap. Made about 30 gal. including boiling out the pans, but only got 15 through the filter press. Will try for the other 15 after cleaning the press but it's definitely not table syrup. It just got too warm yesterday and the sap flow and quality dropped way off. Even a freeze isn't going to bring it back at this point so doesn't make sense to keep at it.
Ended up at .56gpt for the season which I am very happy with. 12 boils in just about exactly a month. A great season overall. Now it's time to clean up and move on to other things including getting ready for the farmers market season. Good luck to everyone still in the game!
About 750 taps on High Vac.
2.5 x 8 Intens-O-Fire
Airtech 3 hp LR Pump
Springtech Elite 500 RO
14 x 24 Timber Frame SugarHouse
16 x 22 Sap Shed w/ 1500 gal. + 700 gal. tanks
www.littlehogbackfarm.com
Boiled twice yesterday. Close to 80 gallons. About 27 today. Today we finally made some dark robust. Not looking like a good freeze coming so not sure how much longer. Still filtering ok and flavor is still good....
William
950 taps
3 X 12 Thor pans on a Brian Arch
CDL 600 expandable
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