Maple Syrup!

[Hackermatack]

We cleaned up all of the sweet in the pans last week and got enough to finish filling the last drum. Total production of 696 gallons from our 1400 taps and purchased sap from another 400. The guy with the 400 taps quit a little early because of family matters(new son) so all & all a great season. An the best news of all is a buyer called yesterday and the price is up $.20/lb.

[Chuck White]

We cleaned up all of the sweet in the pans last week and got enough to finish filling the last drum. Total production of 696 gallons from our 1400 taps and purchased sap from another 400. The guy with the 400 taps quit a little early because of family matters(new son) so all & all a great season. An the best news of all is a buyer called yesterday and the price is up $.20/lb.

But what did they give you for a price?

[celliott]

Hey!
  Do you think it would be possible to do RO on a small scale to save time?
Thanks!

Our open house equipment show is today\tomorrow, and I helped the representative from H20 unload a small RO unit, said it was a hobby unit, meant to service about\up to 100 trees. Said it was real simple to use, there's two valves total on the unit to turn to operate it. Didn't get a price figure on it though.

We buy syrup in bulk and ship it to/for Maple Grove. It's been $2.20\lb all season for the top 3 grades, $1.60 maybe? for very dark.

[Carson-saws]

Love the stuff!!!  Have Family in Cadillac that sell their goodies throughout the State.  Always a treat and another reason to visit.

[Corley5]

  Moving along with the maple venture.  The building blocks are all in place and will just need assembly.  We'll be placing our tubing supplies order next week and the processing equipment order in a few weeks.
  We've been working with the local Leader representative and are doing our whole woods on high vac, about 1,500 taps.  We're sizing the evaporator and R.O. for 5,000 tap capacity for future expansion.  As designed we should be able to boil 135 gallons per hour.  400 gallons of 8% concentrate are well within the four hour boil off window.  A Steamaway will be added at a later date to keep up with added taps.
  There's a barn dismantling company coming in October to take down the old hay barn and we're going to turn the attached cinder block 20'X48' milk house into the sugarhouse.  We'll start stringing tubing as soon as the leaves are off and we can see where we're going.  Lines for vacuum, sap and water need to be trenched in from the milk house to the site where the pump house will be.  The milk house will need an electrical upgrade and the stanchions and ceiling removed as well as fifty years of accumulated junk.   Got lots of work to do this fall and winter to have it all in place for Sugar Season 2017.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Its been interesting reading this thread as I knew nothing about maple syrup making. I met a man at our local flea market who makes syrup here locally in southern WV. I had bought a quart off him a while back and it is good. Now I am working a deal to swap him my slab wood (which I have been burning to get rid of it) for maple syrup. He has picked up a couple of p/u loads and says he needs all I can produce so this has potential.

    I discussed with my local furniture maker customer about possibly putting some in his store on consignment and he likes the idea so this may work out well for all of us.

   My Syrup maker friend is buying a bigger evaporator. I may even get interested enough to try tapping some of my trees and taking to him to make on shares if he has excess capacity.

[celliott]

  Moving along with the maple venture.  The building blocks are all in place and will just need assembly.  We'll be placing our tubing supplies order next week and the processing equipment order in a few weeks.
  We've been working with the local Leader representative and are doing our whole woods on high vac, about 1,500 taps.  We're sizing the evaporator and R.O. for 5,000 tap capacity for future expansion.  As designed we should be able to boil 135 gallons per hour.  400 gallons of 8% concentrate are well within the four hour boil off window.  A Steamaway will be added at a later date to keep up with added taps.
  There's a barn dismantling company coming in October to take down the old hay barn and we're going to turn the attached cinder block 20'X48' milk house into the sugarhouse.  We'll start stringing tubing as soon as the leaves are off and we can see where we're going.  Lines for vacuum, sap and water need to be trenched in from the milk house to the site where the pump house will be.  The milk house will need an electrical upgrade and the stanchions and ceiling removed as well as fifty years of accumulated junk.   Got lots of work to do this fall and winter to have it all in place for Sugar Season 2017.

That's awesome Corley!
Good luck with it. If you have any questions about installation\running tubing, tips and tricks, feel free to ask.
You will really like the steam away when you add it on, I'm betting. Hot water as a by product and you can pipe it all through your sugarhouse for washing tanks, etc.

We are working on an 8000ish tap installation project right now. Have to cross a major river, railroad bed, and under a state road with the main conductor pipes  Gonna be a challenge putting 2" over 1-1\2 pipe over a 200' span with no posts or tiebacks..... 1\4' steel cable...
Good on you for waiting for leaf off. It is absolutely miserable running tubing in this heat and humidity. We have been starting way early in the AM and quitting in the afternoon. No problem seeing, this place was logged, whole tree chipped, and anything left standing is a maple...

[Corley5]

  I really wanted the Steamaway but they talked me out of it for now    It would have given us almost two hundred gallons an hour of boil off.  We would have just gotten things going good and it would have been time to idle down.  It was their suggestion to wait until we add more taps.  It'll be a good way to add capacity at that time.  I thought that we should have a preheater in place of the Steamaway but it would have only added about 25 gallons an hour and in the future when we do upgrade we'd have a preheater to get rid of. 
  Leader has been really great to work with.  The rep is the son of one and the nephew of the other owner of Maple Bluffs Maple Farms in the Eastern U.P.  http://mackinacbluffsmaplefarms.com/mackinac-bluffs-maple-farms/
I went to school with his parents, and aunts & uncles  8)  I remember when he was born.  I'm getting old  :-\   One of Leaders reps from the main office stopped and looked our sugarbush over when he was in the area and has been working with Jordan on the design.
  This is all because of my son Zach's 8th grade school project  ;)
  I may very well call on you celliot  8)  Thank you  8)

[Chuck White]

We just got done adding on an additional 300 taps.

This was a small (old) sugar bush that had been tapped way back when I was in my teens.

[jrose1970]

I bet those trees are getting nice by now. (Not that it's been that long. )
Congratulations!

[Chuck White]

There are quite a few "old growth" trees that were tapped 40-50 years ago, but most of those have gone back to earth or into firewood because they were going bad, the ones that are still there, now will have 5-6 taps on them.

Lots of trees there that are around 20" dbh, those will have 3 and sometimes 4 taps, depending on the condition of the trees.

The condition of these trees is seen in the tops, some of the tops are broken, due to the Ice Storm of 1998.

[jrose1970]

I see what you mean. My best producing tree has a few small branches that are bare. I guess no tree lasts forever. It is about 18", but I only put one tap into it, because is so pretty and kind of special.
  I guess I will just stick with my usual 24 taps this year. I may go to about 30, but I'm not sure yet.
I'm still trying to hone my boiling skills.   I learned that the south slope gives much more than the north, or at least that's what I saw last year.

[Chuck White]

Another thing about a south facing hill side, it will usually produce a lighter colored syrup.

[jrose1970]

That's interesting. I noticed a difference. I was hoping the trees on the north facing slope would produce later in the winter. If they do, I could stagger my tapping. Maybe wait a couple of weeks to tap the trees on the north facing slope. Is that a possibility?

[Chuck White]

The only thing is, you have to tap while the sap is running!

Wait too long and you'll miss it!

[trapper]

bought my supply for the year yesterday.  Fellow gets a booth at our state trappers convention.  Go to the pig roast next year and you may win some.

[Corley5]

Swiped the card tonight  ;)   The tubing and related supplies will be on its way from Vermont to Northern Michigan shortly.  And we put the down on the evaporator equipment to get on the build list.  That stuff should be ready to ship after the 1st of the year.  The old hay barn came down without damaging the milk house and has mostly been salvaged and hauled away.  The salvage company should be wrapped up with that tomorrow.  Next thing is to get my portion of that mess cleaned up and disposed of and muck out 50 years of accumulated junque from the milk house so work can be begin in there.  Lots to do this fall 

[Chuck White]

Always good to get an early start!

[jrose1970]

Right. That's good advice about tapping while they are flowing. In your experience, how many weeks do you have before the tree starts to heal and the sap stops?

[Chuck White]

It all depends on the weather.

If you get good sugaring weather, you could get 8-10 weeks and on the flip side you could get as little as 3-4 weeks!

All depends on the weather.

When your tub of sap starts looking cloudy, sugaring is about done!

[celliott]

Vacuum, and good vacuum management (keep on top of leaks, high vacuum levels) can increase a season quite a bit as well. If you keep a leak free system, and your vacuum shuts off only after it's below freezing, you don't have sap flowing back into the taphole, and they stay cleaner. Less bacteria, longer the taphole stays open. There is also a check valve spout that seals the taphole off after the vacuum shuts off.

We are a large operation and simply cannot start tapping when the sap starts running. We need to be 100% tapped before the sap runs. Some of our trees this season, we tapped mid February. They were still running sap (although it was not fit for syrup at that point) when we were pulling spouts in the end of April.

Smaller producers who have the time ability to wait as long as possible before tapping, certainly, do it. It definitely does not hurt.
Our best producing woods this year was the last to be tapped. Possibly a factor, but there are other factors at work as well.

[Corley5]

Are you using check valve spouts on your tubing system?

[Chuck White]

I think that the check-valve spouts will work good on a vacuum system, but not so good on a gravity system.

We bought some used check-valve spouts and found that a lot of the rubber pellet inside was actually stuck at the end of the spout, so we removed the pellet and will use them as a regular spout!

[celliott]

We do not use them. We were finding the little balls in the releaser....
We use a cheaper disposable spout.

Our vacuum pumps are set up with a temperature sensitive starter. Set them to automatic, they will start up/shut off when the temperature at that pump station hits 32 degrees. The woods is higher elevation than the pump station (a little) so vacuum stops after the trees have stopped running/froze up and starts a little before they thaw out. So no sap (theoretically) should run back to the spout.
We don't need to worry about running around everywhere every day and turning stuff off/on at just the right times.

You could possibly utilize check valve spouts on a 3/16 gravity system set up right with the natural vacuum it can create, although I wonder how effective it would be with variable vacuum levels at each spout.

[Joe Hillmann]

Does anyone here know of a link that clearly explains how to set up pipelines using 3/16 tubing?  I would like to set up about 100 trees this next year using a gravity vacuum system and another 100-150 using a vacuum pump.