Maple Syrup 2019

[beaglebriar]

About 2-3/4 gallons canned so far:
View attachment 173954 View attachment 173955

When do you think you'll call it quits for the year?

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

When do you think you'll call it quits for the year?

I'm hoping for one more good run Monday/Tuesday, then I'm done.

It's been a good year, even with the little disaster Sunday.

 

[beaglebriar]

I'm hoping for one more good run Monday/Tuesday, then I'm done.

It's been a good year, even with the little disaster Sunday.

Going to the nwtf banquet tonight?

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

Going to the nwtf banquet tonight?

You know it. My 85 y.o. grandpa said he needs a night out, so we'll be there with bells on.

 

[beaglebriar]

You know it. My 85 y.o. grandpa said he needs a night out, so we'll be there with bells on.

See you there then!

 

[Ryan Browne]

Been running really good here almost every day. Brought in 350ish gallons of sap yesterday and almost 500 today. Pretty happy about that. Gonna have to fire up the cooker in the morning and make some room or it'll start running on the ground. Looks like it might keep up until Thursday or Friday and then that might be all she wrote. If that's the case it will have been a very quick season, and also about the only season I can recall without any rain for the whole season.

 

[Johnmn]

Fishing some this evening again. This is right before I took it off. Hydrometer said it was syrup, about 3 1/2 gallons worth right here. I won't know for sure until my wifes done canning it. She's doing that right now. I'm not much help with that part, I just get in the way.

 

[Ryan Browne]

Fired up bright and early. Alright, more like 8:30... Sap is running hard again, so we're probably gonna cook all day. Made about 10 gallons so far today and burned almost half a cord of wood.

 

[Ryan Browne]

The view from the head tank.

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

Steamy

 

[Ryan Browne]

Finished up at about 6:00. Final tally was about 44 gallons for the day. That's a record for us.

 

[Johnmn]

New record for me collected 112 gallons today. Just started a fire, gonna boil tonight, tomorrow and Monday. That should be the end of our season.

 

[Ryan Browne]

That's great John!

We've had a good couple days here too. Collected 750 gallons of sap from our 280 taps in the last 48 hours. Looks like one more freezing night for us tomorrow, so we should still be getting sap for 2-3 more days. Gonna fire up the cooker tomorrow afternoon and hopefully once or twice more after that. Should put us pretty darned close to .6 gallons of syrup per tap, which is fantastic! Then again, I went and ran saws for an hour with a friend of mine this afternoon who's got 9 taps in the yard and they've already made 7 gallons of syrup and they still have another 40 gallons of sap to cook! On red and silver maples no less.

 

[Johnmn]

That's great John!

We've had a good couple days here too. Collected 750 gallons of sap from our 280 taps in the last 48 hours. Looks like one more freezing night for us tomorrow, so we should still be getting sap for 2-3 more days. Gonna fire up the cooker tomorrow afternoon and hopefully once or twice more after that. Should put us pretty darned close to .6 gallons of syrup per tap, which is fantastic! Then again, I went and ran saws for an hour with a friend of mine this afternoon who's got 9 taps in the yard and they've already made 7 gallons of syrup and they still have another 40 gallons of sap to cook! On red and silver maples no less.

Wow that's damn good for only 9 taps! A lot less work too, have you figured out your ratio this year? We have been in the 28 - 30:1 range which is pretty good!

 

[Ryan Browne]

We've been mostly between 2.5-3%, so 35-29:1. I'm all on vacuum, so I don't expect to see over 3%. I have seen some sweet sap this year though. A friend brought over 160 gallons of 3.6%, which is like 24:1. Gotta like that!

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

All cleaned up for the year. In the process of turning last year's leftover syrup to sugar:

 

[Ryan Browne]

I'm scraping the bottom of my stash of good wood. Burned some ash yesterday that would've been better next year. That and a little lower sugar content slowed production down a little bit. Still made 20 gallons, which puts us at 200 for the year. Still gonna cook once more at least, so we're gonna be knocking right on the door of last year's record number of 235.

 

[Ronaldo]

I'm scraping the bottom of my stash of good wood. Burned some ash yesterday that would've been better next year. That and a little lower sugar content slowed production down a little bit. Still made 20 gallons, which puts us at 200 for the year. Still gonna cook once more at least, so we're gonna be knocking right on the door of last year's record number of 235.

That's 250 gal of actual syrup? WOW. How much sap was it that you figured you cooked down?

Sent from my SM-S320VL using Tapatalk

 

[Ryan Browne]

That's 250 gal of actual syrup? WOW. How much sap was it that you figured you cooked down?

Sent from my SM-S320VL using Tapatalk

I don't keep great records of sap collected, but I'd estimate that we've cooked about 6000-6500 gallons of sap so far this year to make that 200 gallons of syrup. We'll probably cook another 600-1000 gallons before we finish for good later this week. Most of that was from our 280 taps, but I've probably cooked about 1200 gallons of sap that was delivered by friends of mine. In that scenario each party keeps half the syrup.

It's been a great year and it definitely feels like a big accomplishment to make that much syrup. It's also pretty incredible to stop by and visit the guys who are making 30-50 gallons of syrup PER HOUR. Obviously it's a whole different level of production, and not something I particularly aspire to, but it's amazing to see them process on an afternoon what we do in a whole season.

 

[Johnmn]

Still boiling.............