Eastern Ontario 2014.

[Kyle Baker]

Wow!! looks good Kyle,by the looks of it you also got allot of dark syrup,I got 3 liters of dark with my last batch being almost black and tasting like liquid brown sugar.

Yes, I find that the sap from my silvers always produces lighter syrup, but the sugar maples I tap often give me a very amber colored syrup. I'm not sure why... I had a lot of yellow sap from them this year. Could have been the year maybe. Im wondering if its geographic and somehow has something to do with the location. Who knows! its good though!
And Susan, you gotta love a good window sill shot! It's the only way to capture the color on camera.

[Big_Eddy]

Backlight with Sunlight can give some interesting effects too. These would need some cropping and some better positioning before they would be worthy of Susan, but I'll share them for fun. (The pictures lost a bit of quality shrinking to web size, but the effect still shows)

[Run Forest Run!]

Eddy, nothing makes all of your hard work look better than a ray of sunlight through it. Nice job!

[DrewCP]

All Done!

Fired up Saturday morning around 07:00. Had around 115usg in stock and had not collected in a day or so. Checked the buckets on the trees. Looked cloudy and some yellow dumped it all. Was less than 20usg anyway. Ran the 2'x4' pan at around 12usg per hour. By 17:00 we were down to less than 2" in the pan. Pulled it off and transfered to turkey fryer. Good day. No issues. Setting up for an easy finish on Sunday.

I took the morning off on Sunday. Dad fired up the turkey Fryer and started boiling it down. By the time I got there the concentrate was at 218*f and all the buckets and spiles were pulled and washed. Awesome timing! Took a brix reading at 219*. Still not syrup. Hit solid 220*, bouncing to 221*. Took a sample. Bang on at minimum density of 66.5. Let it boil 5 more minutes and then pulled it off. Filtered it and botteled it. Ended up with 2.5usg. Darker than last week but tastes the same.

Will post pictures later. Will do a final cleanup of the storage bins and pan next weekend.

[Yellzee]

well... who is gambling the next few days are the big sap runs and the sap is still good? I am hoping for a huge run as my father-in-law took it upon himself to "boil down" the sap in our flue pan while finishing off a couple batches on the turkey pot... I walked in the door as it started to get to pan bottom level in the finishing area and threw pails of water on the fire to put it out... I think we salvaged everything but glad I wasn't 2 minutes later getting home.

so need enough to make it worth sweetening the pan all over and still getting more syrup.

[Run Forest Run!]

I'm definitely gambling on it. Hopefully it will salvage my season so that I have some syrup to see me through until next spring. These hurricane winds better simmer down though or there will be nothing but empty buckets flying all over the place.

[Big_Eddy]

well... who is gambling the next few days are the big sap runs and the sap is still good?

Not sure how much gambling is involved, but I'm hanging in. I'll be out tomorrow afternoon tipping out any rain and other less-palatable stuff before what I hope will be a few good days. I bottled up everything we've made so far this year and I still have empty glass and shelf space so why not stick at it? If I don't - my "after syrup's done" excuse will expire and I'll need to get to some of the other tasks that have been building up.

Plus - my helper crew is being bolstered for Easter - be good to put them to work.

[ennismaple]

Not gambling - counting on it! With a few good days we might be able to beat last year's numbers!

[Yellzee]

Ennis did you have some good days last week when it must have been just a bit too warm at night here? I had three nights with frost but no real sap runs.

suspect vacuum would have made a big difference as it did trickle a bit.

[NTBugtraq]

Ennis, I'm with you, we ARE going to get some good days this week. Yellzee I totally agree, vacuum would've made a huge difference for me.

My forest sump is like 1" above the thaw pond...lolz, had to throw away 5 gallons of sap once over the weekend...but that's fixed now. I have hopes for tomorrow, but suspect it will be Wednesday before I see more sap. Luckily, some neighbors who tapped for the first time brought over about 7-8 gallons they were going to throw away. So I will probably boil tomorrow morning in the hopes that sap flows during the day.

All I know, I have no buds on any of my trees, and they ain't going to just bud without sap...;-]

Cheers,
Russ