Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[northwoods_forestry]

Not a bad start to the season. 1/3 of the way to our production goals and here it is just March 1. I've been lax in testing sugar content, but last night we were pulling off a gallon of syrup for every 38 gallons of sap. Opened the draw off 10 min after startup and it remained open till shutdown 5 hours later. Wow!

[DrTimPerkins]

A slow and steady run yesterday. Vacuum at about 26.5" Hg. Our new electric releaser sure struggles to handle that. No big sap gusher, but we made about 100 gal of syrup by 7:30pm -- total about 10% of a crop so far. Sugar content has been about 2.0-2.2%. Looks like everything is shut down here for about a week, so time to catch up on a few other things.

[GeneralStark]

Exciting couple of days here. Sunday the sap was running well and pulled in about 300 gal. before it froze up. I don't think I have ever seen the sap go from running hard to completely stopped so quickly. Temp. dropped very quickly and bottomed out at about 22. Forecast only called for a low of 38 so I figured I had enough space in tanks to get through until after work Monday. That was wrong. I awoke Monday at 6 to find one tank overflowing and sap running hard. We had very strong south winds when the warm from came through and I awoke several times to metal roofing blowing off wood piles, and tarps on building materials flapping. Temp. went from 22 to 51 in less than 1 hour. Crazy.

Anyway I switched tanks and went off to work to return home at 3 and find my third bulk tank overflowing. Quickly turned on the ro and spent 4 hours processing at least 1200 gals. Sugar content has been good and was up to 2.4 yesterday. I have no idea how much sap I lost but could have been a good bit based on how hard it was running. I have been a bit surprised by how well the sap has run when the trees thaw. We have lots of water moving down off the mountain, and very little frost in ground so I guess I had better be more prepared for BIG SAP.

A friend came over and we boiled together with him running the arch and me keeping an eye on ro, pans, canner and press. We ended up boiling about 200 gal. of concentrate (never had a chance to check %) and made 32 gal. of GD. Once again, great flavor. Everything has been working well so far. I still have about 30 taps to put in to be up to a little over 750 for the season and am hoping to finish that today.

I am a little concerned about what the long range weather models are spitting out right now with the possibility of some very warm weather next week. Not much agreement on how warm so I guess we will wait and see, but I can't help but have flashbacks to Summer in March in 2012. It does look like we will be froze up for several days until it runs again, so back to work on the house.

[spud]

A slow and steady run yesterday. Vacuum at about 26.5" Hg. Our new electric releaser sure struggles to handle that. No big sap gusher, but we made about 100 gal of syrup by 7:30pm -- total about 10% of a crop so far. Sugar content has been about 2.0-2.2%. Looks like everything is shut down here for about a week, so time to catch up on a few other things.

Hey Dr.Tim whats the issue with the electric releaser you have? Do they not operate well under high vacuum? I was thinking of buying a few for next season. What are the Pro's and Con's? Thanks

Spud

[WestfordSugarworks]

Vacuum pump at our small bush is an old Deleval 777 and had been sounding funny for a little while. I think we tried to run it too hard. We had it pulling 24.5" and that was all it needed to seize up on us Sunday at 2pm. So dad checked craigslist, found a used 777 at a good price near Watertown, New York, and headed out to get it. He returned at 1Am Monday and we did all we could to get it hooked up but didn't have the right material so we called it quits at 3:30 Am. He worked all day Monday to get it hooked up and finally did get it going at 3pm. Bad part- spent $500 and lots of labor to replace a pump that would have worked fine if we hadn't abused it. Probably missed out on 1,000 gallons of sap. Good part- learned new things about how pumps work and now we have an oil reclaimer attached to our pump. Hopefully we can pull higher vacuum with it.

We found a hole in our back pan and broke our vacuum pump within one week. But hopefully now we are going to smooth out. Made 2 barrels so far and I think 40,000 gallons of sap or so have been trucked from our big bush.

Also a little nervous about the temps for next week. I guess no sense in worrying about it. Won't be able to do anything about it.

Good luck all.

[DrTimPerkins]

Hey Dr.Tim whats the issue with the electric releaser you have? Do they not operate well under high vacuum? I was thinking of buying a few for next season. What are the Pro's and Con's?

I'll start by saying that my opinion is that releasers are the weak link in the system regardless of what brand or style. We used mechanical releasers for years, and they work, but aren't really designed to handle high vacuum. So they essentially slammed around when operating above about 24" Hg, and to be sure they worked we would have them all serviced each year.

Last year we tried a different style of mechanical releaser and were not real happy with it. So this year we went with an electric releaser. Supposedly electric releasers have less pulses of backflow -- so we though that we'd give it a try. In some of our surveys, use of an electric releaser was associated (correlated) with higher yields (~10%), but that is a correlation only (which doesn't mean that is what necessary causes the higher yields...it might just be that people using electric releasers are doing other things right too). In any case, two major styles of electric releaser....those with the pump on the inside and those with the pump on the outside. ANY air leak in the line going to the pump will cause the pump to fail, so given our high vacuum (26"+ Hg), we figured we'd go with a submersible pump on the inside of the tank. What appears to be happening is that as the lines flush out on the first hard runs, or after a hard freeze when ice scours the mainline, the debris from the lines causes the screen protecting the pump to clog. It takes very little to clog it due to the low margin we have with our high vacuum and elevation, which means we're stuck breaking down the releaser and cleaning it each time. Otherwise the pump fails to keep up with the flow and the sap goes up the vacuum line and shuts off the moisture trap, stopping the vacuum and stopping the flow. Definitely a real PITA, and the real problem is what happens if this occurs at night when we're gone? Still working on a solution to that one....not sure there is a real good answer.

Anybody know how much debris a submersible well pump can handle? We're tempted to take off the screen and see what happens....maybe get a spare pump to have just in case Most of the stuff we see is the skin of very fine floaters....maybe dime to quarter size, but very thin. Plugs up the screen pretty fast, but I'm betting the impeller will make short work of it and chop it to tiny bits very fast.

[Tucker08]

All going well here in Shaftsbury. We are at just under 40 Gallons which is about 45% of LY. New filter press is key. Second membrane on they Deer Run RO is saving our tail. Just left the vacuum pump and it was dunking ping every 3 min. Boiling again tomorrow before a couple day break.


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[J. hutchins]

Dr. Tim, is it the sump style or the deep well? I was worried about debris in my deep well style, and spoke to a well driller about it and she said it could take 1/4 inch gravel. So needless to say I took the screens off. The main problem I have with ice is it tripping the sensors when there is no liquid to pump. The pumps do have a hard time in high vacuum some days both pumps run 6-8 hours non stop, I have introduced small air leaks in the releaser just so the pumps could keep up. They do need baby sitting for the morning surge, hand on the knife valve, ready to stop it from leaving the chamber.

[Geroldn]

I made 6 gallons of golden on Monday. Was cleaning up yesterday and realized it was Leap Year Golden. Is this a new marketing strategy?image.jpg

[JoeJ]

Spud and DR. Tim,

I replaced a mechanical double releaser on my 2,100 taps in Jericho last year. My CDL vertical has the exact issue as Dr. Tim describes. The submersible pump screen will clog up with some bio-slime and slow down the pump out, and if the slime is bad enough at the start of the season, shut off the vacuum by tripping the electric moisture trap. I don't like taking the screen off the pump, so I am in the process of making a stainless steel cone pre fitler for the base of the pump. ( a lot of small hole drilling is the SS) 7" in diameter and 12" high. large enough to allow sap to remain around the pump screen if the pre-filter fails, but keep any junk off the pump screen. From what I can see in the releaser, the debris pretty much floats around the base of the pump and not up too far.

Otherwise, the releaser works extremely well. Sunday afternoon, the woods were at 27.75" at the last 1" main line, 2,500' away from the sap shed. The pump out is very smooth and does not disrupt the vacuum at all.

The only draw back of the 18" x 48" vertical that I have is cleaning. It is a little difficult to wash and scrub the releaser. Knowing what I know about the cleaning now, I might have looked at a horizontal,
with cleaning being the only reason.

Joe