We wound up with a little over 1200 gallons by the time we got going on late Sunday afternoon. 800 gallons from Hattans orchard in Salisbury (425 taps) was what impressed me.
took Mark and I a couple of hours to dial in the evaporator, but think we have a good sense of the "cause and effect" of more pellets vs. more burner air vs. more door air. We were running a stack temp of around 825 deg. with a good full rolling boil in the back pan. The evaporator was keep up well with the RO which was putting out 1.5 GPM.
We were too conservative and left more sap in the feed tank than we need for the shut down process. it is not as fast a shut-down as an oil burner, but it is way faster cool down than our forced air cordwood arch.
one potential problem is that our auger which is feeding from the bottom of the silo in to the smaller "day bin" inside the sugarhouse seems to be breaking up some of the pellets and making some pellets back in to saw dust. have to keep an eye on that one..
all in all, very happy with the new configuration. We ended up with around 10-12 gallons of what looks like medium.
drained the pans tonight for the deep freeze. will run sweet through press before returning to rinsed pans when it gets time to make some syrup again. 10 day forecast looks cold...
Reply With Quote