Eastern Ontario 2019

[Vandy]

I guess the sugar % is very very high... 1 55 US Gal drum = 209L sap and I got nearly 9L of syrup... This is my lightest coloured batch ever.
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[Vandy]

Batch #2 darker and cloudy... Very tasty..
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[Run Forest Run!]

Gorgeous bottles of syrup Vandy!

[ennismaple]

Not as good a weekend as I would have liked but I got the first solo boils out of my system and now I'm up to speed. It always takes me a few boils to get the timing down for starting the RO, cleaning and firing up the Beast, washing yesterday's syrup pan, filtering, rinsing the RO, adding defoamer, changing filters, washing up, shutdown etc... Saturday was hectic with a lot of people in the camp and then I let myself get behind on filtering and didn't catch up until I ran out of concentrate. Yesterday I had great sugar at close to 3% and concentrated to the point that I was running off over 30 gallons of syrup per hour! I didn't fire up until just before 6pm (full fire after 30 minutes) and I had close to 100 gallons made in 3 hours!

The sap has been coming in cloudy due the short infrequent runs so not a lot of really light syrup being made so far. The first syrup of the day came off at about 45 LT (from sitting in the pans) and I finished with a drum and a half of 71 LT! The sap coming in at the end of the day was very clear so hopefully it stays that way for a while.

I'd say we are only at 20% of a crop but I'm hopeful a few good weeks can get us to where we need to be.

[Bruce L]

Finally back!! Trader went down the other day,lost without it,then I had to type in my password which I haven't done in years so didn't remember it. Asked for link to reset it ,found it in my spam folder,so have rest it and written it down. Sap ran good yesterday from 11:00 on,started boiling about 1:30, shut down at 5:30 with 30 gallons of golden made. Saved distillate from steamaway to fill the syrup pan after it had cooled down ,lots of nitre,looking like a mud puddle coming off into the pail and into the filter

[Galena]

Hmmm....ok...the 40l I have bothered to cook down to nearup is only a few hashmarks off of Brix....so it looks like I will get 2-2.5l syrup.

FROM ONLY 40L SAP. Isn't that like 20:1 if I get only 2l, 16:1 if I get 2.5l? That's gotta be a solid 4% sugar, right?

Looks like the syrup is pretty dam sweet this year, if slow af!

[FanshaweGirl]

I figured I was getting about 28:1, on sugar maples only. Haven't done the math on the last run that I *just* finished. Gonna be off a bit since I had a boil over.

[Galena]

I figured I was getting about 28:1, on sugar maples only. Haven't done the math on the last run that I *just* finished. Gonna be off a bit since I had a boil over.

Oh sucks to get a boil over. No fun. 28:1 is pretty good, I got that last year late in the run.

But just got home, left nearup on woodstove to evap down...and it's 1 hashmark above Brix so it may crystallize a little on me. Don't care much, cause it's the first batch and just marshmallow/vanilla anyway though light amber in colour. But it's looking to be about 2.5l sap...from 40l sap. It's happily filtering away as I type. Insane.

[Fort Wisers]

Collected a total of about 168 litres of sap now so started a boil yesterday to start sweetening the pan (need just over 300 to start continuous draw).
Boiled basically everything down so we have roughly 25 litres of "half way there" in the pan now.
Today and tomorrow, fingers crossed, should be good runs.....we will see.

Was good to see the rig up and running and the steam floating away into such a beautiful blue sky yesterday!

[Galena]

Well, that 40l sap gave me 2.25l of light amber, marshmallowy stuff...typical first batch for me. There is 22l raw sap sitting in the snow bunker twiddling its thumbs. Hope I get some today so I can boil tomorrow and run off some of this winter flab!