SmellsLikeSyrupNH Year in Review

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Overall I had a really good season, although I had many things happen that I never expected.

I started off my plan with tapping trees on my property and running tubes into 5 gallon buckets. I had hoped id double or triple the amount of sap I got this year over last year, with double the amount of taps. For some reason I never came close to that on my property. I did 179 gallons last year on 35 taps, this year I got MAYBE 60 gallons out of 77 taps. The trees just didnt flow, which I think is because I tapped TOO SOON!! I got excited when we had that 1st warm up in February then we had weeks before the next warm up, and I think I screwed myself.

Luckily I had a friend who let me tap on their property and the 35 taps I placed there more than made up for my lack of sap on my own property. I ended the season with over 630 gallons collected. I was VERY happy with that. They have already given me permission to run tubing next year in their patch of woods, and I will setup one of the ShurFlo Vaccum pumps and pump it into a storage tank. Will pull up with my truck and pump it into another tank on my truck. Im really looking forward to that!!
This is my graph I made to show what I collected by temperature and date.
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I wish I had more of those 97 gallon days!! I think next year with the tubing on this stretch of trees and the vaccum, that could become the norm for over there.

Stats:

• 631 gallons of sap collected
• 7 boils
• 8.9 gallons of syrup, all medium to dark amber
• Last boils sugar content was .95%, I believe a lot of rain water got mixed in.
• Best sugar content was 2.02% from my collection and boil on 3/29
• On days I collected I averaged almost 1/2GPT
• My Evaporator would boil about 12-15gph
• Best boil rate was 80 gallons of sap in 4hrs 15 mins, with all dry pallet wood.

[Shawn]

Pulled the plug here this afternoon. Sugar content not even up to one, sixteen gallons off from last year but all in all not going to complain. It is what it is as they say. Now the clean up and look towards next year.

[bowhunter]

Really liked your graph. It shows how important that day time temperature is. It looks like as long as you were at freezing at night and the day time temperature got above 50 F the flow was good.

[NhShaun]

Just stumbled across this post. I also like the graph, i am hoping to keep track of all my sap collection from each tree this season.

What kind of evaporator did you end up getting?

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

I have a home made one.....its a barrel stove with a 2x2 directly on top, and a 2x4 pan in the back. I thought I had some pictures posted on here somewhere. I dont have them with me, but its a decent mickey mouse setup for what I do.