Tapped in Montague - 02/20/2022

[johnpjackson]

Well, the warm spell did in fact seem to completely dry up most of my taps. A few have run a very little bit since but it seems like maybe they're not going to make a comeback. I had a dozen other maples I didn't have enough buckets to tap. I tapped them on Saturday and used buckets from the dried up trees. Not much sap came out of them but we haven't had a freeze thaw cycle for almost a week. Last night and the next couple of nights and days are forecast to finally do that again. So, I will find out if I get a run from the new taps. That would be nice!

[johnpjackson]

I got a nice little run yesterday! Almost 30 gallons of sap from 16 taps or so. I'll give them another day or two and then I think I'll pull them. It seems like this trend of approaching warm weather is only going to persist for the next 6 months or so

[berkshires]

I got a nice little run yesterday! Almost 30 gallons of sap from 16 taps or so. I'll give them another day or two and then I think I'll pull them. It seems like this trend of approaching warm weather is only going to persist for the next 6 months or so

2 GPT is fantastic for a late season run. You must have done a good job with sanitation.

I'm going to get what I can on Saturday and then pull taps. Two days ago was six weeks for most of my taps, so I don't expect a huge amount from these last couple of runs.

GO

[johnpjackson]

Oh!! Full disclosure! I meant to say this in the last post. Those 16 taps are ones I put in just a week ago, in trees that I didn't have enough buckets to tap at the beginning of the season. I took buckets off of trees that had dried up and tapped these new trees with them, just to see if I'd get a run out of them before it all comes to an end for this year.

What do you have to do with sanitation and taps/buckets that maximizes the length of time the tree will run, before it dries up?

[berkshires]

Oh!! Full disclosure! I meant to say this in the last post. Those 16 taps are ones I put in just a week ago, in trees that I didn't have enough buckets to tap at the beginning of the season. I took buckets off of trees that had dried up and tapped these new trees with them, just to see if I'd get a run out of them before it all comes to an end for this year.

Oh, okay. I bet it would be interesting to tap a couple of trees late just to see what the difference would be between your regular trees and your "fresh" ones on late season runs.

What do you have to do with sanitation and taps/buckets that maximizes the length of time the tree will run, before it dries up?

Well that's a subject for a whole other thread (or more like hundreds of threads here!)

GO

[ecolbeck]

Just pulled in 110 gallons from the last freeze. Never sugared in April before but we decided to hang in and see what happens.

[johnpjackson]

This weekend I bottled all my syrup. I ended up with 11.3 gallons of finished syrup! That's without counting the 3 gallons I incinerated at the beginning of the season...

My last batch of syrup was ~1.5 gallons, made from sap I scrapped and scrimped to collect after the warm snap really clobbered my sap flows. A lot of the sap I collected after that was noticeably somewhat yellow, and I could smell a difference in the steam when I was evaporating it. The taste of the syrup it made was different than 'normal' too. It doesn't taste bad. It just seems a little less 'maply' and maybe what was lost that way became more 'starchy'?

I learned a lot this year. One big plus was NOT filtering my syrup as it came out of the evaporator. I put all my finished syrup (except the last batch) into the same storage container until the end of the season. That let virtually all of the niter and whatever else settle to the bottom. I ladeled off almost all of the syrup from there, clean and clear, for finishing and bottling. Then I added distilled water to the bottom of the storage container to thin out what was left and remove. I heated that back up to a boil and then put just that through my pre-filter and orlon filter setup. I got most of that nearup back out through the filters, clean, and added it back to my finishing process. That eliminated most of the drawn out, time consuming torture of filtering after every boil.

Also, I think I've achieved all or nearly all of the evaporation rate my little 21" x 24" pan is capable of delivering, ~6 gallons/hour. I think I might be able to get that a little higher if I separate off the warming pan from over the main pan troughs, and mount it on top of a flu box I have an idea for making, to carry my propane burner's exhaust out of my sugar room (instead of into it).

I also want to build a way to feed my warming tank with sap continuously, rather than pouring it in by hand every 20 minutes from a bucket. I've got a couple of ideas for how I might like to accomplish that.

Three improvements I made this year turned out really great. I made an enclosed arch for my propane burner out of cement blocks. I cut my propane consumption at least in half! And my sugar room was no longer an oven...

I doubled my propane tank count from two to four. That, coupled with the lower rate of fuel consumption, gave me enough propane vaporization rate to get through my boils even when it was down in the low teens out for temperature. I also came up with a combination of fittings, valves and hoses to connect as many propane tanks together as I want. Trying to find off the shelf hardware for doing that was painfully expensive and limited in what it could do.

And finally, after I burned that first batch of syrup, I really appreciated the electric dead man shutoff valve and timer control I put together to shut off the burner fire if for any reason I lose track of monitoring the operation. If I set the timer on that and then don't return to add more sap or whatever else, the fire just goes out. No harm no foul!

And speaking of that, I ALSO began to make use of the advice I found here somewhere, about shutting down on a boil before it's finished, and coming back the next day or so to fire up and keep going. That helped me enormously in getting on top of boiling my sap much more as I got it collected, instead of storing up hundreds of gallons and then having to try and plow through it all in epic sessions.

I feel like all this is going to make for an even more fun and rewarding season next year!

Thank you to all of you who had encouragement and advice for me this year. I discovered that was more valuable and appreciated than I would have guessed, at the start of this season!

[johnpjackson]

Tapping this evening! The 8 taps I put in so far are running at high speed

[johnpjackson]

Ok, I got all 37 buckets that I own deployed. It seems like the weather should give me a run of a day or so and then a pause. That should give me enough time to get my storage barrels and evaporator cleaned and ready to go. This year I'm getting my operation underway at the last minute, or even past the last minute. Last year I lost 3 gallons of syrup because I burned a batch. This year I might have lost a few gallons because I started late? Well, that would still be an improvement. I will not have spent the time and fuel collecting and boiling those lost gallons this time!

[johnpjackson]

So far so good. Collected sap this morning. I got ~68 gallons, in ~36 hours, from 37 taps. I also got my propane tanks filled. 96 gallons of propane, $384, ouch...

Boiling to commence this evening when I get home from work.

The forecast (at the moment) for my area looks good for a perfect couple of days of sap running on Saturday and Sunday. I'm excited!