Eastern Ontario 2022

[ir3333]

Pulled my pails Saturday., and poured out quite a bit of sap.The large trees crowded in the hardwoods were below 1.5% sugar
and the small ones were at 1% or less.
Those trees will still run but for all intents and purposes it's just water. I kept the buckets on the very biggest trees that have lots
of space, large crowns, and no competition they are still at 2% or 2.5% sugar.
A sap hydrometer will save you a lot of firewood and long hours boiling for small amount of very dark syrup.

[Galena]

...A sap hydrometer will save you a lot of firewood and long hours boiling for small amount of very dark syrup.

True, but even with long hours of boiling - my barrel evap is very well insulated so I'm not motoring through wood (and gives me a chance to get rid of that frickin elm that won't split cleanly) and I get a lot of syrup, and I like dark tbh :-)

Looks like 4l for batch #4 from about 110l sap. And next year I plan to have a small RO so that should help quite a bit.

[ir3333]

Absolutely, and if you prefer dark syrup i would keep on keepin' on. During the early part of the season
larger batches or flat pan boiling will make darker syrup as well. There are a hundred ways to make this stuff!
I think somebody already said that...

[Galena]

Oh I love all the grades of syrup that I get, but for personal preference I love the darker Amber and Dark stuff. I very rarely ever give away any from batch #6 on.

[Bruce L]

Packed it in today.got a whiff of a “ swampy” smell off the sap yesterday,syrup has a bit of a nip to it today,no freezes coming,so called it a year today. 251.5 gallons of light and golden syrup,bubbler system made a big difference this year

[ennismaple]

Yesterday's sap was still coming in quite clear and made beautiful 65LT amber-rich. We've had a freeze-up each of the last 3 nights and it'll freeze again tonight so I expect we'll be making syrup through the weekend. There's still snow in half the woods and the ground is still frozen so that'll help us get through some warm days this week. It's shaping up to be a record year.

We had an awesome weekend and made 0.4L/tap from Friday to Sunday. After 3 long days we finally got caught up and had mostly empty tanks by sunset yesterday. We've only made maybe 1 drum's worth of dark-robust so far at the start of a couple boils - which quickly lightens to mid 60's AR once the new sap pushes through.

I had a big brain fart yesterday and didn't set my timer to add defoamer - so of course I forgot while distracted with other tasks. I just loaded the fire box with my 3rd fire of the day, turned up the blowers and 10 seconds later there was foam shooting 2 feet out from all 4 hatches of the steam hood! Oops...

In my opinion anyone that's lowering their prices this year needs to look at their numbers more closely. Container costs have gone up 60% over the past 5 years and we all know what gas and diesel are worth right now. The Quebec Federation has nearly zero table grade syrup in warehouse and very little processing grade syrup. There was no bulk syrup available in Ontario at the start of 2022 and consumer demand is high.

[PaulRenaud]

I'm still getting sap with a Brix north of 2 and snow still in the woods, so will keep going if weather cooperates. I've started a regime of washing sap collection pails and tanks, and the sap being collected is still clear. Got a tsunami of it over the past couple of days, and am still catching up with the boil.

Syrup is amber (haven't graded it yet), not dark. So looks like I'll keep going this week if weather doesn't warm.

[Galena]

My trees definitely slowing down. Still got 25l off of only 7 trees and 15 active spikes...for some reason the S and Sw taps had very short runs and quit about a week ago. Still a few keener trees doing all the heavy lifting and sap still perfect, so not pulling spikes yet.

Batch 4 will be about 3.5l once hot packed came in at grde A amber. Wouldn't mind some dark so hoping batch 5 will give me some. Doubt I'll get 6 batches this year.

[Bruce L]

Might also mention that I’m glad I’m done. Stick of wood dropped off the woodpile and hit right on the top of my foot where you tie your shoelaces. It’s literally taking me 5 minutes to walk 5 feet,hate to see my wife doing everything on her own tonight,but I just get in the way

[limestone]

Like the others here we have made around 30% of this years syrup since Thursday. Sap tapered off at noon today when it clouded over. Supposed to just barely freeze tonight and tomorrow. If it runs we’ll call that a bonus.