North East Ohio 2021

[johnallin]

About 200 gallons came in today. Got that down to 45 gallons at 5%. Still crystal clear and holding at 1.5%.
Boiled it off with what came in yesterday and am bottling now. Should be another 5 gallons. Looks like tomorrow is the end though.

[heus]

Looks like the last good day of sap today. Had a nice freeze again last night. Hoping to have enough sap from yesterday and today to generate enough water for the end of year ro cleaning, as well as to help push some sweet out of the pans.

[Hunt4sap]

Can clear sap make buddy tasting syrup?

[Ed R]

Yes it can

[Hunt4sap]

That's interesting because last year when I used clear sap from trees that had red flowering buds on them I did not get any off smelling near up? I'm tempted to finish it anyways because it's only going to amount to about 3 or 4 12 oz bottles and just see what it makes when it's finished... I remember in years past having the same smell near up and it just made really dark finished syrup.

[johnallin]

Pretty quiet here today. Small amount still coming, in did get about 150 gal over night. 1.3 % RO’d to 4.5% and pumped it up to head tank. Whatever comes in tonight and tomorrow will be used to finish off what’s in the rig, permeate for cleanup.
Darn this was a short season!

[Ed R]

Hunt4syrup, make the syrup, it will be fine. You can make great syrup when the flowers are completely open on reds and silvers. They usually just stop running before syrup goes buddy. It's sugar maple clear sap that can be more of a buddy issue.

[johnallin]

That's interesting because last year when I used clear sap from trees that had red flowering buds on them I did not get any off smelling near up? I'm tempted to finish it anyways because it's only going to amount to about 3 or 4 12 oz bottles and just see what it makes when it's finished... I remember in years past having the same smell near up and it just made really dark finished syrup.

For the sake of 3 or 4 bottles, I don’t think you’ve got anything to lose by boiling it down.
You’ll know pretty quickly if it’s bad, but it’s not been all that warm - over here anyway- to warrant dumping it. Now, come mid-week that may be a different story....

[miboss]

My recap for the year...

Last boil for us yesterday (Sunday) in Wadsworth...

sap stayed cloudy since the first warm up
trees budding or nearly budding
warm temps with no freeze in sight
only getting 1-200 gal day, not enough to run/clean RO or fire evaporator before sap goes bad

Shortest season since we started. Made 150 gal on 500 taps so .3gal/tap. I'm disappointed, but considering we tapped 2/24 and first boil was 2/27, that's not too bad for a 3 week season. Still lots of clean up to do.

The lightest syrup we made was a hanna of 67 and the darkest was 30, we never got to very dark, which surprised me given the temps.

Overall, I had really high hopes for the season. Everything went right at the beginning, I got everything tapped the fastest I ever had. I had the vacuum system dialed in and leaks fixed in 1 day and maintained 27.5" the entire season.

I'm interested in hearing how everyone else in NEOH did as far as per tap production went. This was year two on the zapbac spouts, so I have a small concern that these may have affected some production vs new drops and spouts. Although it's hard to compare when your season was only 3 weeks long...

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[Kh7722]

Had our last run today (could have maybe got another day or two) pushed off with water trying to drain evaporator from all sweet. Made 42 gallons tonight. Figured about 12-15 gallons sitting in pans if i would not have flushed. It was a decent year for us. Not a record breaker on a per tap basis but made more then last year so id consider it a win. Going to clean up over next week and start prepping for next year. Bigger things ahead. Hope everyone else did well!
Kevin