2017 Season

[sbedilion]

Had a mishap last night...fell asleep while boiling. I was winding down and flooded my pans. Fire was still going...but stopped adding wood. Sat my timer for 15 mins so I could make sure Everything was good for the night. Well...I woke up at 5am! One pan...I had plenty of sap in...the other boiled down to thick syrup and started scorching the bottom. It wasnt horrible...but bad enough. I salvaged a gallon of thick syrup w very strong flavor. I added some water to thin it out and marked the jars (scorched)...haha

The good pan...I continued today and made 1.5 gallons of nice syrup. Made some labels up w my wifes nutrition business on and some silly labels w my inlaws farm on them.

IMG_9491.jpg

IMG_9492.jpg

[Run Forest Run!]

I love your labels.

Thank goodness the result from your incident last night was minimal!

[Dennis H.]

I have lucked out so far this season, I have not had too many issues to deal with.
Yesterday was one of them, a seal on the feed pump on the RO gave out. It did not leak much if the high pressure pump was running but if I shut that off it just gushed out of the feed pump.
I made it work till at least I got the RO rinsed and cleaned.
This morning I ran out in search for a new feed pump. I stopped at Lowe's, Home Depot and found that Harbor Freight had a really nice booster pump. And with a 20% coupon in hand the price was even better.
Cool thing is it almost fit back into the RO without any modification, I just had to drill 1 mounting hole.

So I am back in business for the coming sap run this week.


Pic1.jpg

[helptheold]

Had a mishap last night...fell asleep while boiling. I was winding down and flooded my pans. Fire was still going...but stopped adding wood. Sat my timer for 15 mins so I could make sure Everything was good for the night. Well...I woke up at 5am! One pan...I had plenty of sap in...the other boiled down to thick syrup and started scorching the bottom. It wasnt horrible...but bad enough. I salvaged a gallon of thick syrup w very strong flavor. I added some water to thin it out and marked the jars (scorched)...haha

The good pan...I continued today and made 1.5 gallons of nice syrup. Made some labels up w my wifes nutrition business on and some silly labels w my inlaws farm on them.

Eeks, not good! Love your labels.

[Paddymountain]

I'm sitting on 350 gallons of sap we collected today. Didn't boil tonight, thought I would start early
tomorrow and boil all day. In the afternoon I'll let my wife fire while we go get the days haul. Looking really good for the weekend,
28 right now and supposed to be high 50's Saturday, it should run well. Have my bottling caught up except for a 3 gallon batch which is going
into a bucket for bulk, still making Golden Delicate. Washed all my tanks out this afternoon. I'm thinking I'll need to drain my evaporator
on Sunday morning for its 800 gallon vinegar soak.

[KV Sappers]

I have lucked out so far this season, I have not had too many issues to deal with.
Yesterday was one of them, a seal on the feed pump on the RO gave out. It did not leak much if the high pressure pump was running but if I shut that off it just gushed out of the feed pump.
I made it work till at least I got the RO rinsed and cleaned.
This morning I ran out in search for a new feed pump. I stopped at Lowe's, Home Depot and found that Harbor Freight had a really nice booster pump. And with a 20% coupon in hand the price was even better.
Cool thing is it almost fit back into the RO without any modification, I just had to drill 1 mounting hole.

So I am back in business for the coming sap run this week.

Attachment 15477

Glad you got your problem fixed. Looks like the sap dams are about to break wide open. Going to be a busy time. Based on the extended forecast not sure how much longer the season will be for me. Trees are really budding up. I'm thinking maybe one more week if temps stay as forecasted.

[HowardR]

I'm going to be hard pressed to keep up with it. I expect to be running my RO all day and all night tonight.

By the way, the forecast for last night (both weather.com and accuweather.com) was for a low of about 35, but when I woke up this morning, the actual temperature was 28. Note to myself: I must stop paying so much attention to weather forecasts.

[Hoppy]

I guess I was expecting a little more sap with this weather. I found two more smaller maples out back and tapped them so I have a total of seven taps. Yesterday I only collected one gallon. I collected again about 10 am and got almost two gallons. Is that about right or should I have more? I was kind of hoping to fill all of my containers (gallon) today.
I'm just south of pittsburgh in bethel park

[HowardR]

Hoppy,

I'm guessing that the taps that you had in your original trees were starting to heal over. The sap production starts to slow when that happens. The other possibility is that your season is coming to an end. You are south of Pittsburgh, which means that your season started in January.

[sbedilion]

Im in Peters. My tree didnt run great yesterday even w the warmth..but were dripping good today. You should get alot today. Im out of town up in Tionesta for the wkend. My bags have to be over flowing when I return on Monday. They were dripping every second this morning.