Maple syrup 2021

[cuinrearview]

If you're getting sap at 3% sugar consistently, that's very good. We had a couple trees that did that or better when we had buckets out and could test trees individually. Now I'm seeing about 2.2-2.6 as an average in the tank. Neighbor brought one load at 3.0, and another load at 1.8. I hear guys in Vermont talking about 1.0 sometimes. I don't think I'd even be worth cooking that without an RO. It'd take like 85 gallons or more of sap to make a gallon of syrup!

Edited to add:

Divide 87.1 by the sugar content of your sap to determine how many gallons of sap are required for one gallon of syrup.

This is rural southern MI Ryan, we stick to whole numbers.

 

[Duce]

Best learning topic on ope. Hope everyone keeps posting!

 

[Lightning Performance]

Maple syrup makes good rock candy given a grain of sugar.

 

[Ryan Browne]

This is rural southern MI Ryan, we stick to whole numbers.

LOL.

My wife would like it there. If she hears me say 3/16 one more time, she might come unglued.

 

[cuinrearview]

LOL.

My wife would like it there. If she hears me say 3/16 one more time, she might come unglued.

The onus of knowing better is on you, not her...

 

[cuinrearview]

I won't be up to see the end but we're going to get a darker syrup tonight.

 

[Johnmn]

 

[stihl livin]

I’m enjoying some of @Ryan Browne syrup over a bowl of ice cream right now.

 

[Ryan Browne]

Welp, the beer fridge didn't quite scratch the upgrade itch good enough... Or, well maybe the beer consumption was slowing our boil rate too much. In either case, I decided to switch over to the dark side today and bought a little reverse osmosis machine. It's a Leader MicRO 2. Should be able to save some firewood and labor and hopefully get home in time for dinner after cooking a pile of syrup. Damned good timing too, since it ran hard today and I'll probably have 1200 gallons of sap to process tomorrow.

The sap ran better today than yesterday, and for more hours. Caught both of my tanks running over once today, and within a centimeter of the top two more times (not pumped empty between, just as much as I could fit in the shack if that makes sense). Meanwhile everyone else is running over too. So the 1200 gallons of sap ended up being just under 2200 gallons!! Didn't get it all cooked by a long shot. Spent the morning setting up the RO, but I had it squeezing sap by noon and ran it until 5:00. I figure it turned about 700 gallons of sap into about 250 gallons of concentrate in that time.

We got a fire going at 2:30 and cooked for just under 4 hours. Cooked all the concentrate and some raw sap to make room for what was in my tanks in the woods. Made 27 gallons of syrup in that time, which is probably about 7 gallons better than we would have done cooking all raw sap. Used less wood also. Not life changing exactly, but tomorrow I'll have the RO fired up right after breakfast so we'll be able to cook less raw sap and more concentrate. That should give us a little more noticeable change.

Honestly that RO is pretty incredible in that it goes through raw sap about as fast as my cooker, but it does it without supervision. Once we light a fire, there has to be a qualified individual within ten feet at all times. With that big-a$$ fire, things can happen fast, and you can't hardly even turn your back. The RO though, turn it on and walk away! Pretty slick. I see why guys like these things...

 

[Lightning Performance]

The sap ran better today than yesterday, and for more hours. Caught both of my tanks running over once today, and within a centimeter of the top two more times (not pumped empty between, just as much as I could fit in the shack if that makes sense). Meanwhile everyone else is running over too. So the 1200 gallons of sap ended up being just under 2200 gallons!! Didn't get it all cooked by a long shot. Spent the morning setting up the RO, but I had it squeezing sap by noon and ran it until 5:00. I figure it turned about 700 gallons of sap into about 250 gallons of concentrate in that time.

We got a fire going at 2:30 and cooked for just under 4 hours. Cooked all the concentrate and some raw sap to make room for what was in my tanks in the woods. Made 27 gallons of syrup in that time, which is probably about 7 gallons better than we would have done cooking all raw sap. Used less wood also. Not life changing exactly, but tomorrow I'll have the RO fired up right after breakfast so we'll be able to cook less raw sap and more concentrate. That should give us a little more noticeable change.

Honestly that RO is pretty incredible in that it goes through raw sap about as fast as my cooker, but it does it without supervision. Once we light a fire, there has to be a qualified individual within ten feet at all times. With that big-a$$ fire, things can happen fast, and you can't hardly even turn your back. The RO though, turn it on and walk away! Pretty slick. I see why guys like these things...

The smart sapper.
Well done... nice run

 

[huskihl]

and within a centimeter of the top two more times

Little more than 3/16

 

[Need2Saw]

Up to 8 gallons, I’m thinking one more batch for me.
I love using ro, it’s a game changer for sure.

 

[Ryan Browne]

BEAUTIFUL day out in the woods today. Ran really good for the third day in a row, but we're making headway, in large part thanks to the RO.

@nbb_ came out with a couple bottles of exceptional mead and helped load firewood for a couple hours while I pumped sap around. It was great to put a face to the name and everyone enjoyed the beverages. He took home a pail of syrup for brewing, so with any luck we'll get to sample some more tasty libations next season.

Gonna freeze tonight and maybe tomorrow night, so hopefully we'll have good runs for another couple days. After that it's gonna be warm and rainy for a week almost. Gonna keep my fingers crossed that our taps don't dry up and we get more sapping weather afterwards.

Hope everyone else is drowning in sap too.

 

[nbbt]

BEAUTIFUL day out in the woods today. Ran really good for the third day in a row, but we're making headway, in large part thanks to the RO.

@nbb_ came out with a couple bottles of exceptional mead and helped load firewood for a couple hours while I pumped sap around. It was great to put a face to the name and everyone enjoyed the beverages. He took home a pail of syrup for brewing, so with any luck we'll get to sample some more tasty libations next season.

hopefully we'll have good runs for another couple days. Gonna keep my fingers crossed that our taps don't dry up and we get more sapping weather afterwards.

Hope everyone else is drowning in sap too.

Thanks for the invite, and it was great to be out in the sunshine today. I agree excellent to put faces to the postings..
Half of that bucket is expected to be used for pancakes, waffles and ice cream. Now the remainder might have a different effect on our bodies.....

 

[Kiwioilboiler]

No syrup boiling in the North Island, but i boil crude oil for a living and this r.o. technology is very similar to what we use to purify hydrogen as best as i can tell.
High pressure forces feed (sap) through a filtering medium and pipes two streams away. In hydrogen land we want the permeate, it holds the 'better' purer hydrogen (sugar). On our site we call non-permeate 'retentate'. It would be the water side in your process. Fascinating how technology can be useful or transferred from one purpose to another.

 

[FederalQ]

What’s it looking like now? It appears to be over here. Unless retapping is done.

 

[Ryan Browne]

Sap is still running here for those of us on vacuum. Not fast, but still coming in every day. Taps should stay good if we get some more freezing nights soon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we do. I'm at about 80% of my goal right now, so if we get more sap, I'll be happy as a clam.

I set up my new bottling "line" today. Should finally get some syrup in jars in the next couple of days.

 

[John235]

I pulled my taps Saturday. Did my last run made 3/4 gallon of syrup, which was my best week so far. All in all I ran for 4 weeks and made just shy of 2 gallons of syrup. Which is plenty for my family and friends. It was my first time doing this. I learned a lot. Great way to make the month of March more interesting

 

[Ryan Browne]

Finally got some syrup in bottles today. I've owned the filter press for a couple years now, but the propane cooker (on the left) and the water-jacketed canner are new for this season. The washing machine is just for decoration. Been looking for a canner like this one for a couple years, but this is literally the only used one I've ever seen listed. It has two big hot water heater elements in the water jacket, 4500W each I believe. Took some work from an electrician friend to get it rolling, but it works great now. Syrup has to be 185F or hotter when it goes into the bottles to make sure it sterilizes the glass and the lid and makes a good seal. This rig will hold the syrup right at that temp so you can bottle as fast or as slow as you'd like. A guy can even take a break and go eat lunch if he's so inclined!!

Anyway, it took a little time getting the kinks ironed out, where to put everything, what each person should be doing, etc, but we got a lot of syrup bottled, and with less stress and fewer people than a normal bottling day the way we used to do it. Also, it was really nice to be under a roof, instead of out in the woods. It didn't make any difference when it started raining this afternoon. We used to do about 40 gallons at a time when we bottled, and we needed nice weather. I think with this setup we could pretty easily do 100 gallons in a day.

 

[big_eddy]

Haven’t been posting, cause I’ve been boiling too. We are expecting the season to be short this year, so we added another 50 to our original 100 taps. Of course, the next day sap ran with a vengeance, so I was swamped. First night since Friday have not had to boil into the wee hours. Still have a good day of boiling ahead of me tomorrow.

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