Maple Syrup 2019

[Stephen1]

Still winter, but it is leaving now. We had a small run yesterday and no freezing last night. I see the weather is changing today, high pressure coming with a freeze tonight 8) 8) 8)

[dustintheblood]

Still winter, but it is leaving now. We had a small run yesterday and no freezing last night. I see the weather is changing today, high pressure coming with a freeze tonight 8) 8) 8)

It's so late here Ontario this year eh?

[Chuck White]

Pete; IMHO, yes there is a difference in flavor when sap is run through an RO, most notably when it is concentrated to 12% or higher sugar content!  The heavy MAPLE FLAVOR seems to be missing, but don't get me wrong, it's still very good!

We generally run our RO for a 4-5% concentrate!

With what sap was gathered yesterday and this morning, we ended up with near 1,500 gallons of sap.
We boiled it down and ended up with 32 gallons of syrup for the day, "our biggest day", 8)  8)  8) this brings our total for the season to 121.8 gallons!

[Plankton]

Another ignorant question from a former producer.
Is there any flavor difference in RO produced syrup and other products?
We buy ours from my wife's cousin who boils the old fashioned way.
With the temps predicted here should be a good run today in CNY

I have found that it does above 10 to 12% the longer it cooks the more time it has to develop flavor. I work for a producer who is strictly bulk @26k taps and they have 2 ros and go to 20% admits he doesnt make the best syrup very little "maple" flavor but its fast on the steam pan and it's all a volume/time game.

Syrup from smaller producers who only ro to 10% or so tastes significantly better imo. Raw sap from buckets on a wood fired evap. Now your talking some flavor. Might be a myth but everyone in the syrup industry I know agrees that syrup from bucket sap tastes the best not sure why but it seems to.

On a side note looking like a short season here if the weather man is right were in for a fast and hard warmup that might bud the trees, there already starting too. Only got warm enough to run 2 weeks ago, nobody made syrup basically since the one early run in Feb. Not looking great for producers most I know have made 30 to 50% crop so far.

[Chuck White]

We gathered sap again this morning, but only got 320 gallons, so we boiled it raw, no RO today!

We ended up making 12.9 gallons today and that gave us a season total of 135.5 gallons total production to date!

The lines dripped a little today, but nowhere near what you could call a run!

We'll see what tomorrow brings, might be a good day to sleep in a little!  ;)

[celliott]

Preconceived notions and opinions, is what I have to say ;) seriously though, proctor maple research  did a blind taste test, and even professional tasters could tell no difference in how syrup was made. None. If you know where it came from or how it was made, well, your brain can make things taste like you think they should. 

Now, my opinion, high concentrate and fast evaporation rate don't work. You need time cooking in the pans to develop the carmelization, the maple flavor. You try running 30% through a modern high efficiency evaporator, it won't go well.

Our setup at the big woods. We concentrate to between 30-37% sugar. That's around 2.5 gallons to 1 gallon syrup. Our evaporators are designed to be paired with the high brix reverse osmosis machines. They are 7ft wide and 20ft long. Setup about opposite of a conventional modern high efficiency evaporator, they are designed to boil slower. Our Cabot evaporator is a lapierre turbo 6'x16', 12ft of flue pan with piggyback and steam away,and 4ft of flat, syrup pan. The Eden evaporators are 4ft of flue pan, no steam away, and 16ft of flat pan. 16 feet long by 7ft wide of slow evaporation surface area to develop good flavor. And I tell you what, it works very well. We have made amazing tasting syrup last year and this year. Efficiency and speed between the 6x16 conventional and the 7x20 high brix are nearly the same. High brix uses a little less oil but they can both make around 150 gallons per hour. 

The other big deal with the high brix evaporators is how easy and how well it can be cleaned. Who here has cleaned a flue pan? Not easy right? How often do you do it in a season?
We start each boil with a spotless evaporator. Pans totally cleaned. Everything is set up to be easy to clean. Clean in place wash hoods, wash tank to recirculate permeate water and acid water, we have air bags to raise one side of the evaporators to drain them. 
If it's easy to clean, you will do it more often. And a clean evaporator goes a long way to a consistent, better product.

I invite anyone here to visit the sugarhouse and try our syrup, blind test or not. 

Sorry for the long winded post, I get asked often when it's told we concentrate to 30%, doesn't that affect the flavor? Yeah, makes it better the way we do it

And yeah, haven't updated in awhile. Been busy of course. In short we're still buried in snow and have been shoveling mainlines and wet/dry lines and pulling tubing out of the snow so they don't back up and can actually make it to the tank and we can actually check for leaks. Slow start to our season. Had generator issues at our upper station finally figured out, we've about got everything uncovered and thawed, so next week we'll get the vacuum higher. Long road for a short season. Gotta love it!

[SwampDonkey]

Sounds awesome Chris. We still have lots of the white stuff up here to. Just hardly a bear spot out in the open fields, so you can count on 3 times as much in the shade of the woods. :D It's just too cold at temps 32-40 to do much melting and this weekend it is half snow in with rain. And not much of either, but still nasty looking. ;)

I've yet to see any evaporators fire up here. My cousin and a next door neighour do syrup. Still bone dry. :D

[maple flats]

I heard Proctor Maple Research Center had an evaporator built for high concentration, had not heard that Glen did at Eden. It makes lots of sense.
I only concentrate to 12% max but even on my little (by your scale) 3x8 I changed my pans. My first set of pans had a 3x6 flue pan and a 3x2 syrup (flat) pan, I had new pans made, I now have a foot shorter flue pan and my syrup pan is a foot longer, to give the syrup time to develope a great maple taste.
Celliott is right on, professional taste testers can not tell the difference in the finished maple syrup between syrup made using an RO and that made by boiling just straight sap.
If I were to get a higher concentration RO (reverse osmosis, to remove a lot of the water from the sap before boiling) I would need to get new pans again, less flue pan and more flat pan to give it time to develop the best flavor.
I just came thru my best sap flow period ever. It ran for 9 days harder than any other time in my last 17 seasons. Yesterday it finally went back to reality.  For nine days I was making 35-44 gal of syrup from just 800 taps, 314 on 27" vacuum and the rest on 19" vacuum (vacuum tank that could implode if I go over 20" vacuum). I have gotten that much sap in a day before, but never for 9 days in a row. Yesterday was slower and there will be very little today and tomorrow, but then it will start again on Monday and could go another 7-10 days here, in central NY State. The extended forecast shows no freezes after April 10 for 5 days, then 2 days below freezing overnight then 7 more days no freeze. That will cause the buds to open sometime in there, which ends the maple season. So far it has been a great run here.

[Chuck White]

QUOTE: "Now, my opinion, high concentrate and fast evaporation rate don’t work. You need time cooking in the pans to develop the carmelization, the maple flavor. You try running 30% through a modern high efficiency evaporator, it won’t go well.

Our setup at the big woods. We concentrate to between 30-37% sugar. That’s around 2.5 gallons to 1 gallon syrup. Our evaporators are designed to be paired with the high brix reverse osmosis machines. They are 7ft wide and 20ft long. Setup about opposite of a conventional modern high efficiency evaporator, they are designed to boil slower. Our Cabot evaporator is a lapierre turbo 6’x16’, 12ft of flue pan with piggyback and steam away,and 4ft of flat, syrup pan. The Eden evaporators are 4ft of flue pan, no steam away, and 16ft of flat pan. 16 feet long by 7ft wide of slow evaporation surface area to develop good flavor. And I tell you what, it works very well. We have made amazing tasting syrup last year and this year. Efficiency and speed between the 6x16 conventional and the 7x20 high"! UNQUOTE:


I agree, Chris!

I should have mentioned there will be a difference in flavor when Highly concentrated and run through a conventional evaporator!

Which is why your evaporators were special made, makes sense now!

[celliott]

I should add, we concentrate to 18-20% at Cabot and run that through the lapierre 6x16 and it makes award winning syrup as well. Amazing dark robust and amber rich. Not much golden delicate but that's ok, we make 99% Golden delicate at the Eden sugarhouse!

[SwampDonkey]

I actually think the darker syrup has the best taste. 8)

[Corley5]

We're close to 110 gallons for the season.  No run today with highs in the 20s.  Tomorrow looks good then it doesn't freeze tomorrow night and just barely Tuesday night before we get a some more sap weather.  Looking at the extended forecast I'd say the following week will be the end for us.  If we end up with 250. I'll be happy.  It'll be close.

[SwampDonkey]

Climbing above 50F here today and lots of wind, but I don't see anyone boiling.

[Chuck White]

Hadn't posted in the past couple of days, so here goes!

3-29 we gathered 320 gallons of sap and made 12.9 gallons of syrup.

Yesterday we gathered 400 gallons of sap and made 16.6 gallons of syrup!

Our total production to date is now 152.1 gallons

We're not doing to bad, based on what's been available.

The end is probably not to far off, we're starting to see a little red coloring showing up in the tree tops now!

[Corley5]

I noticed some color in the tree tops yesterday.  I think we'll be done by the middle of next week.

[SwampDonkey]

Rained hard last evening here and now a fresh covering of white and 25F this morning. I've not seen any boils here yet, just 4 days ago it was frigid cold here. So ain't no maple budding here. They better get on with it soon here or it will be all over. :D

[petefrom bearswamp]

Another question this time on grading.
Back in the dark ages when I boiled, NY had 3 official grades.
Light Amber, Medium amber and dark amber.
At that time I seem to remember the highest grade in Vermont was called Fancy.
Can you fellows enlighten me as to current "official" grades for your areas?
Just curious.
Thanks in advance
Pete

[cbla]

Had a good boil on Friday. so far 128 gallons collected and 3.6 gallons of syrup made

[Corley5]

Golden Delicate, Amber Rich, Dark Robust.

[SwampDonkey]

30F this afternoon, so not much sap. I never saw anyone collecting anyway.

[millwright]

Chuck, you must be getting some real high sugar content. That's some great numbers, I just did 350 gals and got a little over 8 gals. 

[Stephen1]

We finnaly had enought to boil friday night. Took all week to get it, only 250 gals of sap , ended with 7 gals of syrup. We are at least 3 weeks behind, Snow is still knee deep and we got 6" saturday. Winter is not letting go. It was only 32F here today and it is trying to run, the vacuum is pulling it thru the ice in the 5/16 line. I don't believe the westher man as the long range changes as much as I look at it. 
I wake up in the morning look out side and am so Glad we had sunshime today 8) 8)

[SwampDonkey]

23F his morning, suppose to be in the 40's and another sunny day unfolding. Well, there are stars out anyway. :D  Hopefully, there is some sap flow around here. ;)

Yesterday, that light dusting of snow blew around all day like a dust storm, so if it was too cold to stick, weren't no sap. ;)

Man the snow is deep in the woods. :D

[petefrom bearswamp]

Thanks Corley,
Much more poetic descriptions than the old NY ones.

[thecfarm]

Did not go to Maple Sunday this year,wife had knee surgery. But I see them collecting. So something is going on.