North East Ohio 2020

[woodburner]

Just finished up this run , sap at 2.2deg and we are up to 60gal, still making light. We need the freeze up to rest. Great season so far.

[miboss]

Made another 22 gal of golden tonight. Not sure what I'm going to do with all this golden, my customers prefer dark then amber. I'll use some to make cream and candy, but I'm at almost 60 gallons of it. I hope I get as much amber and dark later this season.

Sap seems to be slowing way down, the freeze up tomorrow night will give us a nice break...

[miboss]

16.5 gal tonight to finish off my sap before the freeze. Of course golden again. I can see selling at this years farmers markets...would you like light golden, medium golden or dark golden, lol.

I thought this was going to be a bad season, but in 1.5 weeks I've made half of what I made in the entire season 2 years ago.

[fred]

Next week will likely go to medium .mike let your sap sit for a day or ro in the morning from the day before and boil at night. Just keep an eye on it that it doesnt turn.

[johnallin]

Have boiled 5 times so far with 16 gallons bottled up and another 6 from Tuesday's boil ready to go, just need to get some more glass over here. Been a busy start with boils on Tues, Saturday and Sunday last week and both Monday and Tuesday nights this week. Our sugar has been 1½ -1¾ % which is a bit better than last year.

[miboss]

drained pans and flooded with permeate and vinegar, hard to believe how much niter so far with such light syrup, usually I dont see niter this bad till I get to making dark.

[johnallin]

Picked up 40 cases of 8 oz glass at Richards Maple and got Tuesday's boil -just under 6 gallons of really good tasting amber - all bottled up today. That puts us at 22 gallons so far.

So I don't have to filter and bottle right after a 4-6 hour boil; I've been experimenting with holding syrup in my old Leader 10 gallon single cone filter tank. It works great as the sides are plenty tall for mixing in DE and it fits nicely on the cast iron burner I've got in the shop. Only issue is that it takes an hour to re-heat the syrup if I let it get too cold, and my bottler only holds 5¾ gallons to brim. But, all in all it's a better plan than staying up til 2 in the morning twisting caps in hot bottles of syrup.

I'm sure starting to like the CDL hobby RO as we've pulled over 1200 gallons of water out of sap so far this year figure that's 35-40 hours boiling time saved on my 2x6. I'd recommend it to anyone who's looking to save some time and wood without breaking the bank to do so.

It sure looks like sap should start back up later tomorrow and for the next few days.

[Sugarmaker]

Mike,
You may not make much dark syrup this year!
Keep boiling!
Regards,
Chris

[Ekrueger]

We are seeing the same as Mike with light amber syrup and a lot of niter in the pans. I am very happy with my homemade RO this year. It has saved a ton of boiling time! I made some of the dumb errors of dumping some sap and concentrate when the valves weren’t in the right positions! I also found it to be a pain ROing in 20 degree weather and having gauges continue to freeze up. I don’t have permanent electric for heat, so I am taking the membrane home each night it freezes. Our sap has been good ranging from 2.4% down to 2.0% today.

[miboss]

Almost 3 gal of sap per tap since yesterday, I'm glad I pumped up to my ro processing tank last night or my collection tank would have lost about 350 gal