Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[smokeyamber]

Went out and pulled buckets yesterday... a handful are still running and are running clear. Biggest angst is that I have 60 gallons of sap that I will likely dump... maybe do some kind of "return to the trees ritual ? ". I will plan on twice the wood for next season. Good luck to all who are still going ! 11 gallons from 80 taps this year.

[Ultimatetreehugger]

Ultimatetreehugger- when did you tap your trees this year? Those are some good end of season runs!

I tapped 3rd week of February. It's been a very strange season. I've only had two gallon +/- days so far. Today might be another good one though.

[blissville maples]

Pretty good numbers, I have one bucket tree that has 3 buckets, I get 60-80 gallons of 3-4 percent sap from. You must have some alike.

[skixcvt]

A bit on the cold side yesterday, so only 1,503 gal at 1.7 Brix collected. Vacuum still very good. Sap never ran hard, just a slow trickle all afternoon, then stopped around 7:30pm due to cold. About 2" new snow.

In any case, we have 615 gal of 36 Brix concentrate waiting to be boiled in the bulk tank, which should make about 240 gal of syrup. Did a test boil of the concentrate and no sign of buddiness. Will be firing up within the hour. Should take about 3.5 hrs to process (syrup production ~75 gal/hr, total processing rate ~180 gal/hr). Today was our 24th concentration and this will be our 11th boil. Averaging about 275 gal/boil.

Our first boil was Feb 21st. Tomorrow will be 2 full months making syrup, with a lot of fits and starts in there.

Looks like decent weather for sap flow over the weekend. We only need another 8,500 gal of sap (at 1.6 Brix) to get to the 3,000 gal syrup mark, so hoping we can get there before all its over.

Afternoon Update
Finished boiling. 228 gal of AR (65% LT), which puts us at 2.778 gal (0.564 gal/tap). Very nice, but mild flavor still. Not a drop of dark or very dark syrup yet this year. No sap running today...still snowing a good bit up here. Hoping for a couple of good runs over the weekend and early next week.

How much darker syrup was made last year boiling the high brix concentrate?

[802maple]

This was the year that if anything could break, it did twice. The 2 of us with bad knees couldn't keep the vacuum up to levels that we liked vacuum pump broke down, main electrical entrance blew up, lost a electric releaser pump at the worst time. Both high pressure pumps on the RO went and our manual releases out away from the sugarhouse were a constant problem. We didn't get tapped until March 3rd . Which is later than normal for us down here in Middlebury. But after all of that said, we are coming in on a half gallon per tap and still making decent quality dark amber.

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

This was the year that if anything could break, it did twice. The 2 of us with bad knees couldn't keep the vacuum up to levels that we liked vacuum pump broke down, main electrical entrance blew up, lost a electric releaser pump at the worst time. Both high pressure pumps on the RO went and our manual releases out away from the sugarhouse were a constant problem. We didn't get tapped until March 3rd . Which is later than normal for us down here in Middlebury. But after all of that said, we are coming in on a half gallon per tap and still making decent quality dark amber.

802,
Are you gonna quit in time to get those bad knees up to Swanton? Looking forward to seeing you!

[Paul VT]

First I want to say please don’t think we are crazy. Our buckets have been tapped for 2 months and most are still running strong. Have been full our running over many days this week. Sap yesterday still tests 1.7%. Making amber rich almost delicate syrup with dark robust flavor. Our 3/16 lines haven’t produce a gallon per tap in 3 weeks. We are at .4 gallons of syrup per tap. We have never had a season like this! Anyone else having luck like this with buckets?

[DrTimPerkins]

How much darker syrup was made last year boiling the high brix concentrate?

It's a bit hard to compare. We made a large number of changes to our system over the past two yrs. For the 2017 season, we changed to HyperBrix RO and Lapierre Volcano 4'x12' pans. Our syrup was a bit lighter I think, but we were mainly concentrating to about 30 Brix, but then we also were putting the initial concentrate and the purge into the concentrate tank, and we were adding the filter press rinse to the concentrate tank also, so overall the Brix of what we were boiling was in the low 20s. This year, we changed our sap filtering and storage, concentrated as high as we could (always over 35 Brix), ran the RO start-up and purge back to the sap tank until it reached a stable high Brix, and put the filter press rinse into the sap tanks. It's also been a cold year, so lots of modest sap runs. We also got a refrigerated bulk tank for concentrate. We now concentrate for 2-3 days, store the high-brix (35+) concentrate at 23-24 deg F, and boil only when that tank is full (705 gal). So the concentrate has been around for a few days, but it is REALLY cold. Finally, this year we went to filtering directly off the rig (draw-off tank) instead of putting it into a finishing pan and reheating/filtering the next day.

So overall, hard to say what has had the biggest effect this year on cold....season, sap filtering, storage, RO processing, bulk tank, filtering directly off the rig. I do know that boiling only every 2-3 days and not having to handle the syrup twice (coming off the rig and coming off the finish pan) has been GREAT! Huge time and efficiency savings.

[802maple]

Not sure yet...

[DrTimPerkins]

Ran pretty well overnight, then froze up around 3am. Started running around 9am and running well today (see attachment). Sugar holding at about 1.6 Brix. About 3,000 gal in the tanks now. Will likely let the tanks fill overnight and tomorrow and start the RO on Monday, hoping to make some darker syrup. If all goes well, every tank should be full by Monday morning, and we'll break 3,000 gal of syrup for the first time ever, which would put us above 0.6 gal/tap.

Had one spout pop off this morning at 8:30am. Looks like the sun hit the spout on the south side of the tree, and the drop went around to the lateral on the north side, so the tree/ice pressure pushed it off. Haven't had many of these ourselves this year (although many others have reported it), so it was a bit of a surprise. Vacuum dropped off a bit before I found it, but it's back up above 24" Hg now and still headed up. Absolutely gorgeous day for a walk in the woods. Good time to remind myself that I almost took up chemistry as a profession -- glad to have dodged that bullet.

Walked by the pond on the way out to the woods...mostly open water, but no signs of peepers yet.

ST Main Tank1 Level - retouched.JPG