Maple Syrup!

[celliott]

Ran good yesterday, all night, and today, still going......
Our sap is still crystal clear, made golden delicate (fancy) yesterday. Wondering if the trees are gonna be done before the weather gives out....?

Came in after dinner to haul a load of sap, when I got back both trucks in the yard full, the tractor was full, and all the sap tanks were full. Boss had to start the RO to make room and then hauled sap all night!
Came in this morning and the 3800 gallon concentrate tank was full, ran the RO as he boiled today. Probably was a 900-1000 gallon day.
Tanks are full again tonight, will be another long day!  8)
Looks like a hard freeze this weekend, down below 10 degrees Sunday, cold Monday. We'll keep on going 

[dustintheblood]

Still going to beat heck up here!!!  Haven't had time to post cause of boilin'

Back at er I go    8) 8) 8)

[thecfarm]

I might be done here. I mentioned how I got 20-25 gallons the other day,be lucky if I got 4 gallons today. Looks like the trees are coming to life too. That will end it for sure.

[CJennings]

Well evidently I still had a few sugar maples in a shady area running that haven't budded out yet but stupid me I didn't have any buckets with me to catch the sap. :D I did stick a water bottle on the spout and had some fresh sap to drink. I'm already working out how to run tubing around the place to get more sap when it's running next year.

[Corley5]

  We gathered 60 gallons of sap Wednesday evening and that's it for us.  It may run next week after this cold snap but we're done.  There's quite a bit to get canned and then we'll have our final numbers  8) 
  Looking forward to next season.  I've got a line on an older Leader King Jr. 2X6 evaporator that's in really nice shape and am researching ROs.  The arch is done that we had built but the pans didn't make it.  Depending on what happens with the Leader I'm looking at we'll get a warming pan and continuous flow main pain from Smoky Lake this summer.  If we can work a deal on the Leader I'll get a straight flat pan for the arch.  We want to get tubing strung this fall and want to get at least two hundred taps out maybe more for 2017 depending on our equipment situation    A rough estimate is that we've got 1,200-1,500 potential taps for the future.  I've got a building that will serve well as a sugar shack with the addition of stacks and some new concrete.
  We've got the bug  8) 8)  My sons are all in to it too  8) 8)  There mother is humoring us but supportive  ;) ;D   Zach thought gathering sap from the buckets was cool the first couple times.  Now he's all about tubing  8) 8)  Looks like we're back in the maple business after an almost 30 year absence  8)

[Chuck White]

We gave away the last "gather" today.

Contacted some friends and they said they would really like to get the last of our sap.

Well, they came over and we gathered it and transferred it to the totes in their trucks.

Ended up with right at 580 gallons.

[Corley5]

  It needs a flue collar cut in and installed, the forced draft blower attached, a piece welded in at the front and back for the pan gasket and support for the pan, and a set of pans.  It also needs to be wire wheeled and painted with high temp paint.  The metal that it's sheathed with is 5/16" high carbon steel so it should be pretty heat resistant but I'm planning on ceramic blanket and fire brick.  It is heavy ;D   The door came from a barrel stove kit that Grandpa Whittaker bought many years ago.  It's been upstairs in the shed, brand new in its original box where he put it way back when. 



 



 



 



 



 



 

[celliott]

Well evidently I still had a few sugar maples in a shady area running that haven't budded out yet but stupid me I didn't have any buckets with me to catch the sap. :D I did stick a water bottle on the spout and had some fresh sap to drink. I'm already working out how to run tubing around the place to get more sap when it's running next year.

If you want some help/ideas/advice/whatever on the tubing, let me know, I may be able to help.

[CJennings]

If you want some help/ideas/advice/whatever on the tubing, let me know, I may be able to help.

Thanks. I need to do a complete inventory of the maples to see how many taps I can do then work out a plan. I also have a cabin to build and an apple orchard to plant to keep me busy this spring and summer. I figure 3/16 tubing so I don't need any pumps. I've got some steep terrain to help too.

[Chuck White]

Nice looking arch, especially for being "homemade".   

[Gearbox]

Corley 5 cut the braces to the back legs that stove will grow at least a 1/2 inch . if you leave it braced like now the stove will hump up and you won't get your pan to seal . Keep putting fire brick in under the pan till you can get your stack temp down to 600 degrees . Nice job on the stove .

[cbla]

well finished the year with 5.5 gallons of syrup 8) pulled my buckets today. The sap that ran today was cloudy and yellowish.

[Chuck White]

Congrats to all Forestry Forum syrup makers!

[celliott]

Sap slowing down today. Freeze up the next few days, next Thursday looks like snow and 45, after 3-4 days of freezing weather, ought to be another good reset!

We went through this tubing system yesterday and found a couple leaks. 27" vacuum is pretty darn good, that's a tight system. Over 3 seperate conductors on one vacuum pump, each 2500ish taps, give or take some.
I'll try to get a video of 3/16 tubing flowing sap if I get a chance.

Trickling in today.


 

[Corley5]

  Thanks for the tip on taking out the bottom braces.  I can see how they would cause issue  8)
  I'm interested in 3/16" tubing 

[timberlinetree]

Nice! Like the door on the evaporator and that vac setup! This text made our day "My kids loved your maple syrup. They don't like the stuff we get from the store. Yours has better flavor... More sugary" My favorite was an old man we gave some to said that he hadn't had real maple syrup in 15 years...

[Chuck White]

Nice! Like the door on the evaporator and that vac setup! This text made our day "My kids loved your maple syrup. They don't like the stuff we get from the store. Yours has better flavor... More sugary" My favorite was an old man we gave some to said that he hadn't had real maple syrup in 15 years...

Nothing better!   ;)

[Hackermatack]

so I guess it is looking like a bumper crop for NE VT. this year. 600 gallons is now within reach as we are around 540 now and a good looking week coming. If we hit the 600 mark it will be 1 gallon for every 3 taps best we have ever done. Got a lot of dark amber early last week because the sap got old before it got processed but the light color was coming back Friday afternoon. The wood pile will be gone soon so I am sure the boss (my son) will quit at 600 if he gets there. Time to do other stuff.

[celliott]

It sure is hackermatack!
We've broken the 12,000 gallon mark. If we can get to 16,000 we'll be at 1/2 gallon per tap. Never done that before.
A few more weeks, it could be possible. Seems every hard running day we are making nearly, or over 1000 gallons each boil.

Thursday looks like it could be a hard run again!

[Hackermatack]

Wahoo

[Corley5]

We came up with 28.5 gallons of finished syrup out of 150+- taps 8)  The bottling was just finished this afternoon.  We may be done but our taps and our friends are still up.  There may be a couple runs this week between clipper systems.  Tuesday and Friday may produce.  We're curious as to how the grade might be so may be we'll run a couple more times    Maybe    We've got enough to last us the year and gift some.  Zach gave his classmates and teachers a pint as part of his class project that started this all.  He still doesn't have his grade :-\ and is on break this week and won't know now until next week.  Zander gave his teachers all a pint too.  They both had inquiries about buying more 8) 8)  It's been fun  8)

These are the old arches where my relatives, the Vromans, made syrup.  My mother is a Vroman.  They had two flat pans side by side on these cement block arches.  I've got an unopened bottle of their syrup from the 70s on a shelf.  We borrowed some of the buckets that my uncle still has as well as some spiles.  There are hand carved wooden spiles as well.  We didn't use them   The old wooden sap barrels Uncle Ralph made into benches and other furniture and sold at a high end shop in Harbor Springs    They never had any metal or plastic barrels.


 

These are some of our taps from this year. 



 



 



 



  

[Stephen1]

Hey guys we have been way to busy boiling, but finally everything froze up again and we have a break for a few days. winter is back with a vengeance. We are almost out of firewood and are now heading out to salvage any of the small standing dead trees. We had thought we had enough wood for 2 years, boy were we wrong. We even went thru 4 cords of sawmill slabs that I had sawn up just for the little wood burning heater. When we run out of wood we will be pulling the taps.
It has been the best season we have had in the 45+ years we have been doing this. We had it running all night and into the next day on the nights it stayed above freezing. I don't think I have ever seen that before.
I saw an article in the news Maple Syrup can help Alzheimer, so keep putting that syrup on your pancakes and in your coffee!

[celliott]

Well, sap ran a little yesterday and some today. Got enough to fire up the RO and boil. Weird, getting to the middle of April and it's too cold. Today was borderline all day. Now cold all weekend. Next week looks good though!
Sap is beginning to get cloudy, sugar content is dropping, even after the hard freeze we just had. So the end is near. Maybe another week, hopefully two.
Haven't made any dark C grade yet. Most of the crop has actually been golden delicate, probably 2/3-3/4 of our syrup. Some amber rich and a handful of dark robust.

[Hackermatack]

Sugar content seems to be staying up and the sap still looks good however the color has gotten pretty dark. The boss said he is going to boil in all of the sweet today and wash everything down. Should get at least one more run before it is over. Probably got enough dry wood to make another 100 gallons if we get that much sap. As the woodshed was empty and I have been milling a bunch of pine we filled the shed with green pine slabs for next season. Never have had the shed full for the next year this early before! 8)

[celliott]

Got to check some vacuum today!
Went to the woods closest to home, and we got that tuned up to 27.5", and the VFD box was slowed down to 750 hertz (1795 is full bore with less than perfect vacuum), that makes for a happy boss!

Then, we went to the woods the next town over. Vacuum was 25.5" when we got there. Walked a bunch of lines, didn't find hardly anything, gauge still at 25.5''. The remote sensor says 26.5", so we're thinking the gauge is off a bit.
But there's still some kind of leak somewhere.
In the releaser bottle, you can watch two lines (from one conductor system) and they appear to have some air in them. No ball valves at the releaser here so we can't isolate. But after going through the whole woods (twice we've done this one and couldn't get higher than 25.5") there's still air in this conductor. I personally walked every mainline off that conductor and it was TIGHT. So where's the leak?
This conductor runs through a culvert, probably a 36" diameter one, nearly 100 yards long. If the manifold is good, the pipe we can see is good, we hate to think so but there might be a leak inside the culvert..... A bad connection, maybe a critter chewed it, who knows. All I know is, I'm glad I'm not the smallest guy!  :D There is alot of cold water going through that thing right now!

We'll see I guess. Maybe, we might not bother with it with only a week or two left in the season, and check it when temps are warmer and there is less water flowing.

Made some amber rich syrup today, but it had a dark robust type flavor. Good stuff