Made and bottled another 76 fl oz of syrup today. It was borderline between AR and DR, but I'd say tastes more dark, so calling it dark even though it seems _possibly_ a tick lighter than the border but depends how you squint. Put it into 4 pints, a cup, and the rest added to my fridge dark jar. The sap was from my final collection on April 5. It was concentrated via boiling on either the 5th or 6th and been in a cooler with ice since then. This officially crosses us past a quart per tap (30 taps, more than 7.5 gallons). Got more to go if it'll keep. Next I'll do what's left in the cooler (one more batch) and tackle the frozen stuff after that. Then I can finally post something in the "post your results" thread hopefully before we see apple blossoms!

Should have combined the two cooler batches probably, but they were likely to be different grades, and if one went bad, maybe the other wasn't bad, so kept them separate. So far so good.
Quote Originally Posted by Andy VT View Post
Like Proctor, for somewhat opposite and somewhat similar reasons, my little neighborhood operation also has a delay. I stopped collecting and bulk boiling on April 5, but I'm far from being done with having sap concentrate and finished syrup in various stages in refrigerated and frozen storage. A few minutes ago I crossed the 7 gallon mark for hot-packed syrup in its final containers. Could have collected through Monday or Tuesday if life had allowed, but the season had served its purpose for me (goal was to make at least a quart per tap on buckets which I'll greatly exceed, and learn whatever I need to learn to make next year more fun and sustainable!). Big season for us over here!