Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[Meuphrat]

Good to hear that your season is going well.

Buds don't really affect flavor....until they do....meaning that when it turns buddy, the season is basically done. Almost like a switch, although sometimes there is a little "pre-bud" and sometimes (rarely) a real cold snap can cause the a slight buddy off-flavor to recede temporarily. This is caused by a change in the amino acid composition in the sap due to bud development. Active buds release a suite of amino acids into the sap.....which make the sap taste terrible. They do this only at and after budbreak. Any "pre-bud" flavor is due to some trees in the system having started to bud, but most have not. Usually it's just a short time period before they all pop.

Regular flavor development in syrup is fairly complex, however it is the microbes in the system converting sucrose to invert sugar, and the combination with various amino and organic acids in sap that results in darker color/stronger flavor (one of the most common organic acids is malic acid....the compound which also gives apples their tartness....malic acid is a major constituent of niter -- calcium malate). More microbes when it is warm, thus darker syrup. When you have a cold snap, you kill off some of the microbes, therefore less sucrose inversion so the grade comes back up. In rare circumstances, near the very end, the sap pH can get so low that the color can lighten due to reduced "alkaline degradation" during boiling. That'll make light syrup with a not so great flavor.

Just wanted to say thanks again for that awesome info Dr. Tim
Based on your response we ran around in the woods and took about 230 red maple taps off our system. That's about 10% of our total taps. We got rid of our buddy flavor all together. We made about 200 gal. With a strong flavor (before we took off the Reds). Thought we were definitely done. Many operations around us have stopped. Since the flavor came back for us we've made 60 more gallons of really tasty table syrup.
I guess my follow up question would be has anyone else had this experience (this year or in the past)? Pulling reds and select sugars that are on field edges...? Just curious if we should attribute our bounce back in flavor to pulling buddy trees?
Mike Euphrat
The Bunker Farm
Dummerston, VT

[DrTimPerkins]

Dr. Tim based on your buds in Underhill at 1250 elevation how much time do you think you have this season?

1250' is about the base of our sugarbush. Most of the trees are a good bit higher than that. We do have about 25-30% red maple in one of our bushes though.

Hard (next to impossible) to really say when it might end due to buddy off-flavor. Fairly warm today for my liking (the light breeze is helping keep the trees a tad cooler), but the nights have been cool and we have some nice cold weather coming Monday and Tuesday nights with some rain/snow. All that is good for continued production. Sanitation effects (which signify high microbial growth in the tapholes and lines) haven't really kicked in too much. Sap is still very good quality (as of this morning) and sugar content is still fairly high. We'll see what the warmer weather today does, but I hope we have at least one more good week. We could get a couple more weeks if all goes well. The last two years we had just started sugaring at this time.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

M

Sap ran pretty well here since Wednesday. Probably close to 2000 gal. up to freeze up last night since 4 pm Wednesday. Never really got too warm here yesterday so it just moderately ran all day. Too bad all this sap which is now 16% in the head tank is likely going on the ground today. Started boiling last night and the foam in the rear pan was out of control. Would shut the blower off to keep it from flooding the sugarhouse, then try again. Same thing. Finally it got to a point where we could moderately boil without overflow with some defoamer, but the defoamer didn't seem to do much. Drew off some syrup which seemed good, and besides the weird foam in the back pan everything seemed normal.

Then we started drawing off some really dark, weird tasting syrup (very burnt) and then the front pan started to scorch. Shut down the blower and flooded syrup pans and assessed the situation and level was fine but the foam from the back pan had moved to the syrup pans and we were essentially boiling foam. Tried again with no luck. The syrup that came off was also ropey. Very strange. At this point we called it a night and drank a beer and ate bacon and pancakes in the sugarhouse while the rig cooled. Disappointing and frustrating to say the least. Yesterday I cleaned the front pans as the niter scale build up was impressive. There was nearly one inch of scale piled up in the syrup channel. Looks like I will be draining and cleaning the whole rig today and starting over in order to continue the season. It's tempting to quit but the sap has still been good (though 1.3%) and no indications of budding. The syrup we made last night was ropey and burnt but not buddy.

The question I still have is why the bad foam and then why the ropey syrup. Did the sap in the flue pan ferment? It has been cold and the last boil was Wednesday so doesn't seem likely. Or did the sap in the preheater ferment? The only thing that was unusual was the last boil I had to rush off so instead of the head tank completely draining, there was about 10 gal. left in the head tank. I dumped this before cleaning tank yesterday, but is it possible that this ended up fermenting as the rig was cooling off and some ended up in flue pan?

Anyway, any thoughts from you experienced guys would be appreciated.

Anytime it does that where you can't keep in the flue pan it is ropy. Might as well dump and start over. As you can't use enough Defoamer to keep it in the pans. I would guess the 10 gallon in preheater got really bad and caused most of the problem. Always good idea to drain preaheater to keep it from freezing and busting and to prevent this from happening. I always drained my preheater while evaporator was still boiling so what was inside of it would get pasturized good.

[woodchuck]

Good flow both Saturday and Sunday. Nearly 900 gallons of sap combined. My vacuum has settled in at 23”, which is pretty decent for me. The sugar content is still tough. 1.4 Saturday, 1.3 today. Even my bucket SC is between 1.7 in the woods and 2.0 from the big trees in the open.

[Sugarmaker's dad]

Sap ran crazy hard in Montgomery Center today. Over 18,000 gallons of nice clear sap from 8:00 last night until 10:00 tonight. Still coming in strong. Ran out of concentrate at 8:00, so the evaporator was shut down and the RO is in a wash cycle now. Will start the RO up again to concentrate what is in the tanks during the night. Should be able to start boiling early tomorrow.

[WestfordSugarworks]

The Smartrek system is running great....and very interesting to watch the temperatures throughout the woods. Easy to see when things freeze up out in various sections, but still running in others.....makes me even more convinced that shutting off the pumps (which we don't do) when it freezes is a real crap shoot at times.

I agree that shutting the pump off is a crap shoot. This morning at 1:30 my dad went to check on our Jericho bush and it was 28 at the pumphouse, with sap coming in pretty well. He thought that we had a temperature inversion going, which makes sense. I think the top of the bush is 1400' and the base is 900 or so. Anyway, he went back at 6:30 this morning and the moisture trap had tripped the pump. We think what happened is the sap turned to slush and somehow made it through the screen into the submersible pumps and wouldn't pump, filling the releaser and triggering the trap. Because when he got there this morning the pumps were working again, just the vacuum pump was off. Luckily we have our woods real tight so we still were at 20" when he showed up. Anyone else in that area see an inversion last night? I don't know much about inversions but it was interesting.

Besides that the weekend went well, we passed the 1000 gallon mark for our bush in Westford. I want to know what our production is in Jericho but the guy trucking and boiling the sap needs to total his numbers from his 3 trucks first. We must be over 200,000 gallons of sap over there by now.

Got our vacuum up high again yesterday, so went up to Fletcher and Fairfield yesterday and checked out Jr Sloan's place for a while instead of doing my homework and drove around and looked at all the tubing and sugarhouses. About half of the sugarhouses I saw were boiling. Saw a lot of deer in fields too. It was really cool to talk to Jr and some of his crew, and see that he has highschool girls and guys working his filter press and barrels. It's just nice to see young people working in sugaring, as well as both genders. Where i grew up, most people worked at the grocery store or movie theater and so its nice to see a place where people are working in sugarhouses. Also, anyone have a guess how many taps are boiled off of in Fairfield and Fletcher? It must be more than 700,000 taps between those two towns alone.

Looks like good weather for the next week.

[GiddingsHill]

Westfordsugarworks, My guess would be that the slush backed up your lines (even briefly) and then thawed with a serious amount of sap behind it, which gave your releaser a big slug of sap that your submersible just couldn't pump out fast enough, flooding the releaser and triggering your trap. Those pumps usually can deal with a lot of slush and other junk, I'm amazed what makes it through mine. We have about 600' of vertical from the tank shed to the top taps and yesterday mornings weather was perfect for releaser problems: solid freeze down low, slush farther up and sap up top.
I ran the mainline valves at the releaser while my wife thawed a couple problem spots to get it moving, if I hadn't been there to slow down the sap and slush it would have tripped the trap immediately, it was insane how much came through.
We've gotten over 3gal/tap in the last 24hrs, been an amazing run. Content is down around 1.6 but sap is nice and clear.

[spud]

Got 23,000 gallons over the weekend. Sap quality is great and testing at 1.8%. Going to rain today and maybe snow tonight. I see nothing but great sugaring weather for at least two more weeks. I am at a .34 GPT right now so that is 2/3 crop. Hoping for that .5+ to happen.

Spud

[tcross]

we got a ton of sap here yesterday. not sure how much exactly as I was boiling off and pumping it to the feed tank as it was coming in. from 10 a.m to about 2:30 my hobby releaser was dumping ever minute and a half. started out at around 2.75% around 9:30 a.m and then down to around 2 before I called it quits last night around 9! woke up this a.m and my main tank has about 10" before overflow... guess I'm buggin out of work early Its a record year for me! I'm over my highest total by 5 gallons and I think we have at least a good week perhaps 2 here! I need a bigger evaporator if we have more years like this! red maples are starting to bud... hoping Thursday-Friday weather doesn't really make them pop! if not, the long range forecast looks promising!

[GeneralStark]

M

Anytime it does that where you can't keep in the flue pan it is ropy. Might as well dump and start over. As you can't use enough Defoamer to keep it in the pans. I would guess the 10 gallon in preheater got really bad and caused most of the problem. Always good idea to drain preaheater to keep it from freezing and busting and to prevent this from happening. I always drained my preheater while evaporator was still boiling so what was inside of it would get pasturized good.

Thanks Brandon. The next time I see foam like that I will know what to do. I have had bad foam before with late season sap but was able to keep going which is why I attempted to continue, but the rope foam was different. I could tell something was weird just by the look of it. Man that stuff was tough to clean out of the rig. I have made ropey syrup before but nothing like this episode.

I suspect you may be right about the preheater, though I also suspect the anaerobic slime in the flue pan float box may have had something to do with it. I do generally drain the preheater but the previous boil I had to rush off to my other job and that was neglected.