I boiled down 98 gallons of birch, just finished it. Ended up with 5 pints plus a little more to taste in a day or two, after the Easter candy clears my tastebuds...... Lol
It boiled nice, I ran my flat pan at 3 inches instead of 2. Finished on propane slowly. It filtered real clean off the evaporator. Filtering at 66 brix, I ended up with 1/4 cup of what looked like wet sand, but the syrup filtered clean, and everything rinsed out of the filters. I think it smelled better than maple till it hit about 50 brix, then it got stronger smelling. It tastes a bit like mollases, and strong of earthy/nutty, hard to describe.
We had a freeze night before last, today I collected 18 gallons of maple, still at 1.4%. We have three nights of freeze, low 20's, I'm hoping to get a little more maple coming out of that. I'm thinking a barrel of maple and two barrels of birch cooked together to try that too. That should just about finish the propane tank for this year.
Sent from my LM-Q710.FG using Tapatalk
2013 15 Homemade Taps, Milk Jugs, Turkey Fryer, 3 Gallons Syrup
2014 Finishing my college degree, looked longingly at the Maples all spring
2015 26 1/2 Real taps, Milk Jugs, Homemade 20x25 pan on propane, 5+ Gallons Syrup
2016 50 Taps, Milk Jugs, Homemade 25x48 pan on propane block arch, 8 1/2 Gallons Syrup
2020 80 Taps, Milk Jugs, 25x48 pan on propane block arch w/preheater, 10 gallons syrup