Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[MJPJ Sugars]

1.25 GPT of sap today and still running solid.

But the air was very different today... Spring has arrived. Buds on the reds have doubled or so in size in the last 24-36 hours... saw some weird little black bees that marked the end of last season for the first time today... methinks Mother N. is going to do her darnedest over the next few days to catch-up to where she thinks she should be.

[GeneralStark]

A good run today. A little over 1 gpt since things thawed and still coming in strong. I boiled the nearly 1800 gal that came in the last 7 days and made 15 gal. DR and 10 gal. AR. Despite the yeast in the tank, the grade came up pretty dramatically. Sap was going into the ro at 33 degrees...

Sugar content is down but the sap is perfectly clear and the boiling and filtering was real easy.

[spud]

I froze last night so I hope to see some sap today. Things are really slowing down for me. If I don't get much today I will shut the pump off. I am at about 90% of last years numbers. I had a ton of problems this year with Vacuum pump and releaser. I replaced the pump and now plan to buy an electric releaser for next season. It's fun to see just how well some of you are doing. General I think you may hit .6 and the would be great. Look forward to seeing more end of season numbers from everyone.

Spud

[rhwells2003]

I hear you spud, a couple of these last couple days I thought would be great and they've been sub par for me for sure. I'm not sure whats going on. I might have gotten 1/4gpt yesterday. odd. But like you I had a slight freeze last night. we'll see what today brings

[GeneralStark]

Spud you are going to like that electric releaser.

No real freeze here over night though the flow did slow way down. Up to almost 1.5 gpt since late morning yesterday. I think it is possible I may hit .6 this year. At .56 now...

There are more and more signs of spring every day so not sure how much longer the trees will stay dormant. We have a large native elderberry shrub whose buds usually start to swell before the maples do and it is just starting to pop. The wetlands below however are still full of ice so not sure what the peepers are up to. The forecast sure doesn't look too spring like, but at this point anything can happen.

[DrTimPerkins]

Spud....I agree with the General....you will like the electric releaser. We have a CDL with submersible pump. Been bulletproof since we installed it. However, because we like to keep our lines separate and monitor sap flow from each section, it doesn't serve well in the research setting. Neither the RO room or our pockets are big enough for 4 of them, so next year we will likely sell it and change over fully to Hydra releasers (we are testing one this year) since they are smaller, less expensive, and allow us to track flow from multiple sections better.

Trees finally thawed out enough to start running yesterday around noon, but didn't really take run hard before it froze up again around midnite (see attached graph from our Smartrek tank sensor). Nonetheless, we got 3,684 gal of sap at 1.8 Brix. Concentrating that now to add to the 147 gal of 37 Brix concentrate already in the bulk tank. Together that should put us right around 0.5 gal/tap. Sap is starting to run in again fairly well today early on (again, you can see the uptick in the graph at around 7am before we started to empty the tank), and should continue overnight, so hoping for full sap tanks come tomorrow morning.

RSTank1.JPG

[MJPJ Sugars]

No Mas!

Over 3 GPT in the last 48 hours — no freeze last night. Still running solid.

I’m over 28 gallons of sap per tap... not at this very long, but after a couple years in the 13-16 range, this year is an eye opener: probably a little too much for this bucket-lugger. If all this yeast doesn’t foul the syrup, I’ll have made more than the last two years combined.

[Sunday Rock Maple]

Not a Vermonter and so my apologies for intruding, but what is a Hydra releaser?

[mellondome]

Not a Vermonter and so my apologies for intruding, but what is a Hydra releaser?

http://www.northwoodsugarworks.com/hydra-releaser.html

[Flat Lander Sugaring]

we got 1.654676259 per tap in last 48 hours all gravity on 3/16, 230 gal 1.4% on 139 taps west facing slope with 15% grade. Gathering today and pulling taps this weekend.
looking like .33 a tap.
we missed the first big run in Feb. but hey can't complain, lost high vac pump second week of March so used old milk pump for rest of season. Have to say that old Delaval 77/76 did 24" non stop, looking to rebuild this summer.
so we gathered approx 9400 sap, so lets say we lost 20% of our production due to vacuum pump issue, that would have been another 1880 gal which would have been approx.40 more gal syrup. Our sugar the whole season until just recently was 1.8%.
So 240/600=.4 a tap It is always nice to dream