Eastern Ontario 2018

[Galena]

Hey Wisers, thanks, and hope you're having fun boiling today on that fancy new rig!

Good to see I'm not the only one who has a glasstop stove and syrup that doesn't finish at 219. My syrup does start to BOIL at 219, but nowhere near close to bein finished. Just got home from work, going to make a snack, relax for a bit, do some yoga then have supper and finally get batch #2 finished. Trees thankfully quiet today so enjoying it while I can, and am pointedly ignoring the 21l I got yesterday sitting out by the shack. Can wait til the weekend :-)

[Run Forest Run!]

When I finished my first 2018 batch on my glass top stove two weeks ago (sadly, it's also my last batch so far....still waiting for sap....) the final temp was hovering around 221/222.

[paulflikkema]

Hey Karen, I can not believe you have only collected the 59L so far. I finished off the 280 liters on the weekend and have another 60 liters from the past 3 days collected. Will hopefully have enough by the weekend do another smaller boil down.

[Run Forest Run!]

Paul, it seems that my property takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to thaw out each spring. It's always the same story.

After I boiled that first 59L on Feb. 26 I have only managed to collect another 100L. That's not very much for ten day's worth on 28 taps. A week ago I reduced 80L of it to sweet, and I'm hoping to boil down the other 20L tomorrow and combine the two boils. With any luck the temperatures will unlock the spiles and I'll be able to add more sap if I get any. All I've seen for the past week is a dribble of frozen sap in the bottom of my pails. At least I was able to remove the slushy ice from my holding containers and increase my sugar content. That's a plus.

[Fort Wisers]

Woohoo, found another two trees to tap!
It's amazing how many trees make the cut when the measuring tape comes out instead of just eyeballing, sad we didn't put effort into tapping sooner, oh well, next year!
Boiled through about 30 litres in 2 hours today, that includes time to heat up from cold and time to cool down where it wasn't drawing anymore, so the rig boils off quick.
All out of sap again lol......product in the pan is starting to get that oooooohhhhh so yummy smell

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Karen, hope things pick up for you soon......

[Run Forest Run!]

Thanks Fort Wisers. That's one 'sweet' looking setup that you scored this year. Have fun!!!

[Asthepotthickens]

Man there is a lot of sap this year....b I have to boil ot down to 20% sugar and store it. Fun times but hard work

[Galena]

Enjoying the nice quiet lull in the crazy runs we've been having, trees barely producing. Thank gawd! Have 4l+ of light amber marshmallow-tasting syrup finishing off in the filtering. Love the crazy early season flavours :-)

ETA: cold-thermed it this morning. Right bang on the red line, and I took it off the heat at 223.0. Off to go say good morning to the trees and dig the sapsicles out of spiles.

[DrewCP]

Looks like we are set to boil. Arch is hooked up to new chimney, hinged steam flap is installed and flashing is done. Now we'll just need to see if the inside steam chute will actually work.
Going to be a long couple of days. We have over 600L in stock. Can't wait to try out the new shack. We've made syrup outside since the 70's. It's about time we had a real roof and walls!

I'm a little apprehensive to drop in the sap hydrometer. A lot of reports on here are not great. 1-1.5% sap can get frustrating fast. The temps have been great for natures r/o to be working. Not cold enough to freeze the collected sap solid but cold enough to freeze down the sides of our bins. We strain and chuck that stuff as it's typically below .5%. Hoping that brings us up closer to 2.5-3%.


Drew.

[BrutemanAl]

Well here is hoping everyone has a great weekend, I’m off next week to look after the kidlets for the March break. We will be boiling sap all week if I have it my way and looking for free pallets to cut up to burn. Tomorrow I plan collecting what ever is in the forest and boiling all afternoon and into the night.


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