Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[n8hutch]

At 12% you wont freeze hard, might get slushy, think of your flu pan in your evaporator. Boiling Raw sap it would be pretty rare to average over 12% in your flu pan after cool down and everything evens out. Usually it has to get really cold to freeze up an evaporator. I think that you would be fine.

[blissville maples]

Sap ran very good today, best since Tuesday. Nice 25-30 degree temperature change really made pressure in the trees. about 1.5gpt in 24 hrs. Sugar on the way back down as anticipated but will rebound with the three freezing nights coming up. Looking like the last week of it here in the southern Champlain valley with 50s and some sun with no freezing nights after Monday- heard the first peepers today, that's a sure sign!!!

1098 gallons as of tonight, just about.75 of last year's crop and .32 gpt Can't complain given the poor sugar content.

[VTnewguy]

last 2 runs here .30 gpt testing 1.5 then .5 gpt at 1.75, still have a bit of wood would really like to keep going, some trees look a bit buddy, pulled reds and silvers off, today wasnt quite as warm as i thought it might be and hardly any sun, ill test some the turkey cooker to see if its buddy before i add it, if so ill boil out, near full crop for me of .25gpt syrup. Rye really greening up and popples look like they pushed alot, good luck to those still at it!

Haven't heard any peepers yet in Pittsford. Going to try to get a couple more runs.

[blissville maples]

They will be back in the mud and quiet after last night and tonight!! Haha

Well now they talking snow Tuesday and mid 40 temps next week, looks a little more promising than other days forecast.....maybe we'll make some April syrup after all. For me once the 50s and 60s start the sap quality goes down the tubes and get the strong toffee end of season flavor.

[DrTimPerkins]

Decent amount of sap this past week. After the last boil, and what we have in concentrate in the bulk tank and sap in storage, we're at 84% of a minimum crop (0.50 gal syrup/tap) and 72% of our average crop (0.59 gal/tap). Would be even better if it weren't for the darn squirrels killing the vacuum in one part of the woods -- although when they see/hear Brendan coming they take off quickly. He's been whittling their numbers down a good bit.

Sugar holding at about 1.8 Brix and still making a Amber/Rich on the high end of the light transmission category. Too cold to run this weekend (hopefully will bump up the sap sugar a little), but the forecast for next Tues-Sat is looking quite good.

Hoping to add 1,000 taps next summer (red maple vs sugar maple study by Dr. Abby), so we're going to need to do something about speeding up the RO and syrup filtering.

[GeneralStark]

Boiled yesterday.. about 1300 gal. from Wed. and Thurs... SSC was a bit better than I expected given no freeze during that period. Was able to make almost 20 gal. of nice DR. I was a bit concerned that the warm day on Friday may have triggered some red maple budding but I can't detect anything in the syrup flavor. This cold should help reset things.

I was quite impressed with how well the sap ran yesterday afternoon for a few hours. About 300 gal. came in. Cloudy from scrubbing Friday's slime out of the lines but I'll take it. Most seasons I can't make enough dark syrup so it's nice to be making it.

[GeneralStark]

I've got a question and not sure where to post it but gonna start with you guys. Got a small amount of sap today - enough to concentrate and do a full RO wash/rinse. But for a boil, once the evaporator gets hot, we'll basically go right into shut down. What I'm wondering about is just concentrating and storing it in the head tank (200 gal cap), but I'm afraid it's going to go to ice, which would be real trouble. I know people store high brix concentrate but guess that's less likely to freeze. If I concentrate to 12%, I'm guessing that's still likely to freeze. Anyone have experience with this?

You've likely already made your decision but if I were you I would boil it. It freezing would be only one of my concerns... Given the forecast for this week and your location, it may be several days before you have enough sap to boil again, but it may be warm enough for the concentrate to spoil. I've heard quite a few stories of people storing concentrate in the cold only to find that the syrup they made from it was not good...

[GeneralStark]

Didn't run nearly as well yesterday but no surprise given the 12F low the night before. Maybe we'll get something today but if we do get some sun tomorrow that should really get things going again.

[blissville maples]

Has been a slow couple of days, cold nights with marginally warm days will do that. The sunshine certainly helped made for a QT per tap run both sat Sunday and today!! Started running today around 11 am when it warmed to 36-38 then back down to 32 by 630 and releasers frozen.

Hopefully we get some use out of these freezing nights but nothing major over the weekend!! This week looking good all of a sudden, weather has been unpredictable

[VTfarmboy]

.40 gpt in the last 48hr, testing 1.5%, fairly cloudy but making really nice tasting very dark, a real sugar snow here keeping it going