Last season we used six 55gal drums on a trailer to haul through the woods and dump buckets, it worked great exept for the sloshing, which we solved by draping a piece of fabric over the tops and put bungies around them. The barrels we got were second hand and held apple juice concentrate, they had a baked on finish inside, and were easy to clean up, and we had no residual taste in our syrup. We did scrub them well though.
2024 - 57 Gallons - Short season, many and varied problems remedied in short order! - No buckets!
2023 - 38 Gallons - RO broke, Buckets didn't run, rebuilt vacuum pump mid-season, still made good syrup!
2022 - 52 Gallons - DIY RO, 50% less fuel, no late nights in the shack!
2021 - 48 Gallons - new pans, new arch, lots of new taps and tubing
2020 - 32 Gallons
2019 - 27 Gallons