First boil today....on April 12th!
First boil today....on April 12th!
2014 - 6 buckets, 4 coffee cans and a propane burner - almost 40L of sap and 1.6L of syrup
2015 - 103 taps on gravity. Homemade oil tank arch and a Smoky Lake 2' X 5' hybrid. - 2.66 gallons of syrup
2016 - 101 taps, 550 gallons of sap, ~10 gallons of syrup all dark.
2017 - 138 taps, 225 gallons of sap, 5.55 gallons of dark syrup, still procrastinating on the vac.
2018 - ~150 taps, I lost track of the sap it was incredible!, over 20 gal of syrup, all dark.
We dumped the sap we got on Saturday, didn't think it was very good. Had a tanks all full anyway, finished up boiling sap yesterday. Just have to finish off the rest of syrup in pans & drawoff tank.
We're at 160 imp gallons, so ended up with an excellent season. Probably get another 3 or 4 from finishing up. We bottled for 15 days straight, which was quite a stretch of weather for us.
Murray
Somewhere around 800 - 900 taps on Atlas Copco vacuum
1 Sap Ladder & 1 can
2 1/2 x 10 Waterloo/Small, with Piggyback & hood,
Air over & under fire
CDL autodrawoff, Homemade drawoff/filter tank with pump,
Lapierre Sirofilter, modified steam pan bottler
Good Season here too... finished another 12L on Saturday/Sunday, and puts us up to almost 65L on the year. I would imagine the warm weather will kill the season for my trees down south as some of them were dry last weekend when I collected early Saturday morning.
I suspect I will have little to no good sap this Saturday, and will be pulling my taps and cleaning the buckets this weekend.
Geoff
Big Daddy's Sugar Shack
2014 - 4 Taps
2015 - 8 Taps
2016 - 12 taps, propane boiler 6L
2017 - 100 Taps, 24L
2018 - 100 Taps, 100L
1.5x6 CDL Econo Evaporator
Pretty good season for us also, we're all done for this year, ended up with about 30 gallons of liquid gold.
675 taps
The sap came in 2 nights, filled all my barrels once. Boiling wise, I have one and 1/2 barrels of sap left to run through....temps are so warm during the day i had a slimy flue pan this am....almost lost my mind as I cursed my day job for getting in the way of my "illness" ;-) Worked through it and by the end of the day it was all good. I should have 10 gal in the end, hopefully.
2014 - 6 buckets, 4 coffee cans and a propane burner - almost 40L of sap and 1.6L of syrup
2015 - 103 taps on gravity. Homemade oil tank arch and a Smoky Lake 2' X 5' hybrid. - 2.66 gallons of syrup
2016 - 101 taps, 550 gallons of sap, ~10 gallons of syrup all dark.
2017 - 138 taps, 225 gallons of sap, 5.55 gallons of dark syrup, still procrastinating on the vac.
2018 - ~150 taps, I lost track of the sap it was incredible!, over 20 gal of syrup, all dark.
Finished up my pan contents yesterday. Ended up with 40 litres of syrup, mostly all dark. Very happy with my little 18X36. Good learning year with it. The end of the season wood wasn't as dry as my bigger pile and I quickly learned the difference dry wood can make. I could get 7gph with dry and maybe 3gph with not so dry. The turkey propane burner was on the fritz so I finished up on the camper stove, very sloooowwww process. Took all day for 5 gallons of sweet. Time for clean up.
Total for 2019 was 12 gal of dark syrup, excellent flavour, not as after-tasty as last year. The modifications and extra insulation to my arch worked very well. My best GPH was approx 30 with an avg around 25 using my rudimentary math.
Now to settle back and wait for next year ;-)
2014 - 6 buckets, 4 coffee cans and a propane burner - almost 40L of sap and 1.6L of syrup
2015 - 103 taps on gravity. Homemade oil tank arch and a Smoky Lake 2' X 5' hybrid. - 2.66 gallons of syrup
2016 - 101 taps, 550 gallons of sap, ~10 gallons of syrup all dark.
2017 - 138 taps, 225 gallons of sap, 5.55 gallons of dark syrup, still procrastinating on the vac.
2018 - ~150 taps, I lost track of the sap it was incredible!, over 20 gal of syrup, all dark.