Maple Syrupin

[malk315]

Check out the video and story on our kickstarter page:


Ken and I cut several of the trees that were due for removal in our town forest and had them milled on a local mill in Sterling mass that is 100 year old powered by an old mack truck engine -- I have some footage of that. You can see all of the boards piled and ready for shack construction in the video on the kickstarter page.

 

[malk315]

Our boiler in operation! Forgot I had this video:

Couple more milling videos:

 

[malk315]

Moving logs out of the town forest to get them to the mill!

 

[Ryan Browne]

Here's a few videos from the spring of '16

 

[malk315]

Here's a few videos from the spring of '16

Nice! Need smell o vision

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[CR500]

didn't get a chance to tap this year.... boy do I miss it lol

my dad and myself have been doing it since I was born.

 

[Ryan Browne]

Well, I was so fortunate to have the help of some great people today. About a dozen folks showed up at various times throughout the day and we got a ton of stuff accomplished.

My friends Ky and Dane who tap trees down the road were able to put in about 250 taps on the tubing system.

We had the boom lift out and got the stove pipe (aka the stack) installed. My buddy Jerome was in the basket for about three hours mostly drilling holes so we could screw it together. Stainless is a PITA to drill! The stack is 20" in diameter and 28' long to provide draft for the fire.

Then while we had everyone on deck we put the pans on top of the arch (the firebox part). This part was nerve wracking for me. The flue pan is heavy, awkward, fragile, and would cost a lot to replace, so moving it around is scary. But everything went perfectly.


Then we got the syrup pan on.


And after all that everyone sat down and had soup and some Summit beers around a fire. There's still some plumbing to do before the sap is running into a tank tomorrow, and quite a bit of plumbing before I'm ready to pump and supply the cooker from the head tank, but I'm getting close. Having the pans on, the stack up, and the taps in is a ton of progress. Being laid up really sucks, but thanks to help from my good friends and neighbors, I'm still hoping for the best this year.

I hope you guys enjoy the pictures, I'll try to keep them coming as the season progresses.

 

[Cigmaker]

That's a sweet stack

 

[malk315]

Well, I was so fortunate to have the help of some great people today. About a dozen folks showed up at various times throughout the day and we got a ton of stuff accomplished.

My friends Ky and Dane who tap trees down the road were able to put in about 250 taps on the tubing system.

We had the boom lift out and got the stove pipe (aka the stack) installed. My buddy Jerome was in the basket for about three hours mostly drilling holes so we could screw it together. Stainless is a PITA to drill! The stack is 20" in diameter and 28' long to provide draft for the fire. View attachment 57923

Then while we had everyone on deck we put the pans on top of the arch (the firebox part). This part was nerve wracking for me. The flue pan is heavy, awkward, fragile, and would cost a lot to replace, so moving it around is scary. But everything went perfectly. View attachment 57924


Then we got the syrup pan on. View attachment 57925


And after all that everyone sat down and had soup and some Summit beers around a fire. There's still some plumbing to do before the sap is running into a tank tomorrow, and quite a bit of plumbing before I'm ready to pump and supply the cooker from the head tank, but I'm getting close. Having the pans on, the stack up, and the taps in is a ton of progress. Being laid up really sucks, but thanks to help from my good friends and neighbors, I'm still hoping for the best this year.

I hope you guys enjoy the pictures, I'll try to keep them coming as the season progresses.

Looks awesome! Setting up to be a fantastic season.

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[Ryan Browne]

That's a sweet stack

Yeah, I can't wait to see it in action. As you can see it's quite a bit bigger than my last cooker. It does the same job, but it'll process the same amount of sap and firewood in 1/3 the time it would have taken the old one.

 

[Johnmn]

Well I just got done putting taps in the maple's should run good this weekend. In a couple weeks I'll be tapping the Birch trees. This is a great time of year!

 

[Ryan Browne]

Holy Hannah, what a weekend! The sap started running here on Saturday afternoon. By 10 last night I'd collected 1500 gallons from about 300 taps on vacuum tubing. I also collected 500 from Monday and Tuesday of last week. It really ran hard Sunday night into Monday.

My new cooker is so much faster than my last one. What used to take me a whole day I can now do in an afternoon. 2000 gallons of sap would have been about 40-50% of a normal season for me for the last many years, but with vacuum this year, plus the early start, I'm hoping that we're somewhere around 20% of our total for the year. So far we're off to an absolutely GREAT start!

I didn't get very many good pictures, but here's a couple random ones.



Here is the cooker doing its thing.


This is a misleading picture. The doors are both open because I'm letting the fire die at the end of the night. Should have stopped adding wood about 10 minutes before I did, so I had to waste some heat. Normally the fire box is full to the brim. Seems like it'll eat a wheelbarrow stacked full of wood in about 12 minutes.


At full boil with a raging fire, the top of the stack looks like this. It burns very clean.



It's tough to get a picture of the pans boiling because it steams up the lens. I think you can get an idea, though.





Okay, that's all for now. The weather looks very cold for a week, so we will get a little break from sap, which is much needed. Having the season come this early and having a broken ankle means that my work space is very cluttered and in serious need of some tidying up.

Hope the rest of you guys in the area got great sap this weekend too!

 

[malk315]

Holy Hannah, what a weekend! The sap started running here on Saturday afternoon. By 10 last night I'd collected 1500 gallons from about 300 taps on vacuum tubing. I also collected 500 from Monday and Tuesday of last week. It really ran hard Sunday night into Monday.

My new cooker is so much faster than my last one. What used to take me a whole day I can now do in an afternoon. 2000 gallons of sap would have been about 40-50% of a normal season for me for the last many years, but with vacuum this year, plus the early start, I'm hoping that we're somewhere around 20% of our total for the year. So far we're off to an absolutely GREAT start!

I didn't get very many good pictures, but here's a couple random ones.



Here is the cooker doing its thing.

View attachment 59524
This is a misleading picture. The doors are both open because I'm letting the fire die at the end of the night. Should have stopped adding wood about 10 minutes before I did, so I had to waste some heat. Normally the fire box is full to the brim. Seems like it'll eat a wheelbarrow stacked full of wood in about 12 minutes.
View attachment 59527

At full boil with a raging fire, the top of the stack looks like this. It burns very clean.
View attachment 59530


It's tough to get a picture of the pans boiling because it steams up the lens. I think you can get an idea, though.
View attachment 59531




Okay, that's all for now. The weather looks very cold for a week, so we will get a little break from sap, which is much needed. Having the season come this early and having a broken ankle means that my work space is very cluttered and in serious need of some tidying up.

Hope the rest of you guys in the area got great sap this weekend too!

Awesome! Hopefully this weekend I can get some stats on how we are doing. There was 300 gallons of sap in our hold tank yesterday and a full boiler that was shut down for the night so some was close to ready in the finish pans. Hard freeze last weekend stopped us for a bit.


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[kingOFgEEEks]

I'm not worthy of those professional setups , but here's my little operation:

I started last year with a potbelly stove and steam trays with 10 taps:

That made me like a gallon, but it took forever, and wasn't very efficient. I just got this 30" x 6' setup off of a guy through Facebook, and set it up. I've fired it once to see how it goes, but I need more taps:

Here's this year's production so far:

My helpers like it:


I ordered more taps, and a bunch of 3/16 line for next year, and hope to make 5+ gallons. I'm not looking to get rich, but I like making syrup, and need enough sap to make it worth firing this evaporator.

 

[Johnmn]

I put taps out last weekend had 2 good days then got cold. -8 f here this morning saps not gonna run good with these temps

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

I've been running 3 weeks. It looks like the coming week will be cold, then possibly towards the end of the week warm up again. I might leave my 10 taps out, but probably won't throw any more out there for the little bit of season left here.

The neighbors started a few days before me, made about 50 gallons, and are done and cleaned up already. Sugarin' season interfered with the one guy remodeling his kitchen, so it was either stop sugarin', or get a divorce lawyer. That ended the season pretty quickly...

 

[Johnmn]

Kinda funny all depends on where you live it's just getting started here in northern MN usually goes to mid April or so

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

Definitely warmer here in PA. We get the southern side of the jet stream often this time of year. Of course, right now it's 28 degrees and snowing, so you just never know.

 

[malk315]

I'm not worthy of those professional setups , but here's my little operation:

I started last year with a potbelly stove and steam trays with 10 taps:
View attachment 59850
That made me like a gallon, but it took forever, and wasn't very efficient. I just got this 30" x 6' setup off of a guy through Facebook, and set it up. I've fired it once to see how it goes, but I need more taps:
View attachment 59851
Here's this year's production so far:
View attachment 59854
My helpers like it:
View attachment 59855

I ordered more taps, and a bunch of 3/16 line for next year, and hope to make 5+ gallons. I'm not looking to get rich, but I like making syrup, and need enough sap to make it worth firing this evaporator.

Love it! Homemade setups are the best innovation. We had a 4x8 pan with a maze of vertical walls laying on fire brick and we'd burn underneath. The smoke would get into the syrup a little bit and I always liked the slight smoke flavor.

Once I get out to our sugarshack I'll get some pictures. I heard it's gonna be running like made today so we'll be in full steam! Chances are I'll be able to stop over there Sunday and get a taste off the boiler and help feed the fire for a few hours ... maybe take off a 5 gallon bucket or two of syrup! We're rockin and rollin here in Mass!

 

[Ryan Browne]

This isn't my setup, but I thought you guys might enjoy seeing this guy's operation. Quite the cooker in this video, and one heck of a firewood delivery method.

It would depend on the size of the evaporator and how much the guy is concentrating sap with an RO, but I'd imagine that a rig like this would fill a 55 gallon drum of syrup in an hour. Maybe much more.