2019 Tapping in Western Pennsylvania

[Gary R]

Wow, what crazy weather. Tapped yesterday and fixed leaks. Everything is clean and ready. Sucked some hot water through the mainline and dumped the first 30 gallons or so of sap. Sap is collecting in the tank now First boil should be tomorrow! Special thanks to my great wife who helped right along. Anyone else collecting?

[Gary R]

I’m boiling 200 gallons I got today. Made 3 gallons of syrup. Coworkers buckets did bad. It’s been 3 days without a freeze yet the ground is still frozen. Vacuum dropped a little and found some leaks. Water hydrant finally thawed. Was able to mop the floor! Looks like a freeze tonight and a good run tomorrow.

[iby]

I decided to put 50 taps in yesterday to test things out. After 14 hours I have gotten 50 gallons at 3.4% . Vacuum gauge at the top of the hill was showing 20 inches this morning... overall, very happy so far with my first run at tubing...

[cjf12]

Started tapping Saturday and have about 550 in. 315 are in red maple rest are in my original sugar bush and are all sugars. Got to R O ing the reds sap this morning and it's only 1.1 %. Knew it wasn't going to be what I'm used to but was disappointed with it being that low. What's others experience with reds? Normal?

[a.clarke]

Started tapping Saturday and have about 550 in. 315 are in red maple rest are in my original sugar bush and are all sugars. Got to R O ing the reds sap this morning and it's only 1.1 %. Knew it wasn't going to be what I'm used to but was disappointed with it being that low. What's others experience with reds? Normal?

I haven't tapped any reds until this year so I don't know what is normal for them but my 45 reds that I am tapping this year have been doing okay. The one run that I have collected so far was at 1.8%

[helptheold]

Just fired up our RO machine for the first time, it's working great. Started with 2% and it's coming out around 6%, fingers crossed it will go up later. I'm so very excited about this!

[sbedilion]

Just fired up our RO machine for the first time, it's working great. Started with 2% and it's coming out around 6%, fingers crossed it will go up later. I'm so very excited about this!

Very nice! The RO is so nice. Hopefully it runs smoothly for both of us all season!

Im in the middle of a big evaporator build. We scrapped a ton of 3in square tubing at work and the welders are teaching how to weld

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Im about 75% of the way done. front pan is a 2x3 flat and the top/rear is a 3x4 flat. Because of the 3in tubing...this thing is turning out huge! haha. Someone going to call the Peters Twp fire department thinking the steam is smoke. hahaha

[Moeferg]

Gary,

Where are you from? would
love to see your setup.

[Sugarmaker]

Folks,
Ok its official! We are fully tapped. Many thanks to Grandson Mike helping and learning how to tap!




Here is a sap sicle I found when tapping yesterday!


Regards,
Chris

[HowardR]

I finally finished building my second RO at 5:30pm today. (The way the sap was coming out today, I wished I had finished it earlier.) The new RO is almost identical to my first RO.

I've got a continuous process system going. The sap flows down from the hillside into my collection barrels into my side-by-side ROs which push out the concentrate into my stove-top evaporator, and at the end of the evaporator I've got a stainless steel bucket collecting a trickle of 214 degree almost-maple-syrup. While it's running, all I have to do is check every few hours or so to make sure everything is working.