Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[Msboucha]

We tested 3.7 last night, but that is not unusual for us as we're only tapping a few trees in an isolated bush with lots of sun exposure.

[spud]

My sap today was 1.7.

Spud

[DrTimPerkins]

My sap today was 1.7.

Trees finally coming around. About 10,000 gal off 5,150 taps in the past 24 hrs, running 2.4 Brix. RO is running right now....sap is too...until probably late-morning tomorrow. Vacuum at 25" Hg in one bush, 27" in the other.

[blissville maples]

Finally- certainly a slow start.... the sunshine really kicked it in yesterday for a few hours. All leaks found here, a nice healthy 27-29 vac levels on all releasers so I am happy, started filling third barrel yesterday. Sap has been unreal at 2-2.5 percent, never seen it at 2.5!! Not complaining. And also we bought a used D&g 1000 r o, slapped a couple CDL Max membranes in there and this machine was moving 1,100 gallons of sap at 380 PSI putting out 9%. it drink 2500 gallons of sap in just over two hrs- I can't believe it never would have thought one membrane would move more than 350-450 gallons in an hour!!! The machine was built in the 80s all new pumps, with the pressure pump being a high performance pump is what D&g said.......

[blissville maples]

Things were waking up here, still alot of dry buckets. Got around .2 gal per tap, though I am very happy to see my new 3/16 run at 26in of vacuum !

I think it's almost still early for gravity collection, I put my three buckets out this week and maybe a gallon combined. Lot of people are going to be hurting tapped way too early!!! Everybody needs to ignore the bigger producers that start in December it's not necessary for anybody with less than 10,000 taps

[spud]

I got another .75 gpt in the last 24 hours. Sap has stopped now and should not start back till Wednesday. I was down to about 25.5 vacuum yesterday. I know I have a few leaks in the far section of the woods. I will have to find and fix them next week. I hope to be at 27 again. Snow is still very deep in the woods.

Spud

[sapmaple]

We're getting 2.3-2.5 here as well Keep in mind that you have two brand new membranes and the sap is sweet (they are not having to work as hard)also the temperature was almost ideal for max RO production I Have a CDL six post machine and it was doing 3000 an hr. going to 14% on friday (pretty Awesome!)

[DrTimPerkins]

Keep in mind that you have two brand new membranes and the sap is sweet (they are not having to work as hard)also the temperature was almost ideal for max RO production

It's a little slower going to high brix -- but so worth it We have about 520 gal of 35 Brix concentrate sitting upstairs in the refrigerated bulk tank "chillin" at 23 deg F. Still have room for another 430 gal of concentrate, so probably won't bother boiling until next Thursday or Friday (or even Saturday) depending on how it runs Wed/Thurs/Fri.

Sap has pretty much stopped running here. A little dribbling in, but temperature just dropped below freezing, so looks like that'll be the end of this run soon.

Went out and measured/drained/reset my research chambers early before they froze up. Good til the next run.

Has anyone tried the CDL Vacuum Protection Valve? It's an automatic valve that shuts off the vacuum line if the extractor overfills (during morning breakup) to give the pump a little extra time to evacuate the releaser. Was thinking we might put one in since we upgraded the vacuum line from the pump to the releaser last summer (nice CDL 3" fused line), so our vacuum went up at the releaser. Now the pump is having a little harder time with the higher vacuum level.

[GeneralStark]

Pulled in over 1 gpt in 24 hours from thurs. afternoon to friday afternoon. Processed over 1500 gal of sap from this week and a portion of the 400 gal. ice cube from February. Sweetened the pans and made almost 20 gal. of AR. I didn't have a chance to check sc but I'm thinking it's higher than last year due to how much syrup we made.

Sap ran ok in the afternoon the last two days but still not too impressive despite the 60F temps. Slowed way down overnight despite no freeze. Sure felt nice to work outside in a t-shirt. We lost a lot of our snow here and most of the woods is now open.

Overall a good start to the season. We'll see what the next week brings.

[GiddingsHill]

2.2gal/tap out of this run. deep deep snow here in the woods, but starting to get some tree wells opening up.