Today in the sugarbush

This rollercoaster weather is tough to deal with. We froze up Tuesday night and didn't thaw until thunder storms and 50F temps last night. The buckets in the woods were half to running over. Got a good start inspite of light rain, while gathering this morning and fired the evaporators. Really tough day to boil down sap with low barometric pressure readings. We had the 2000gal storage tanks filled by noon break. Came back hopeing we would have enough storage space again to empty all the buckets in the woods, but no such luck. We gathered until the storage tanks and gatering tanks and all the hand carried pails were full again. To empty down the storage tanks we decided to flood the flue pans on the evaporators so perhaps we could send out one more gathering trailer. That worked, but we still have around 250 bkts half full left in the woods and the high tomarrow is supposed to be about 25F and sounds like it may be Monday before we will gather again. In the pics., the buckets you see on the roof are leakers that need repair from the last freezup.
We still had not brought off a batch of syrup, when I left the saphouse at 6:00.
There are a couple of pics of the screen of my rear cam that I installed in my cab to make sure that I don't accidently run over someone who is dumping sap into the trailer. My neck don't turn as good as it usta. HeHe.
Loren

Adirndack,

If I may ask, where is your syrup sold? Do you take orders? Do you ship to Mn? I got to have real syrup, and perhaps you could add me to you list of customers...

Thanks,

D.

I boiled for a few years before my welding business got busy and I look at mapletrader often. What sort of a preheater do you have? Always looking for ideas.

Great pictures! How many gallons of sap do you have to boil before you get your first draw-off of syrup? I know you got big evaporators so it takes a bit to get things going. Just curious, John

The sap flows by gravity directly to the flue pans on the arches. No preheaters, or RO set up.
Totally old school with a Grimm 5 x 20 raised flue and a Grimm 5 x 24 drop flue. We have heating oil nozzles plumbed in the front of the arches to supplement the wood.
Loren

Lots of work, but some good sweet nectar comes from this

Can you explain how you boil off. Do you fill the exaporator and boil that batch the entire way down to syrup? Or as the water boils off you keep adding more sap?

great pictures!! thanks!!!!

We will probably drop the storage tanks by at least a thousand gal. before syrup starts flowing from the front of the evaporators. We haven't been able to maintain a continuous fireing to bring off a batch of syrup yet until today. I suspect that the batches are coming off the evaporators as I type here. The cousins were prepared boil to what ever time it took to empty all the storage tonight, before the next two day freeze. The baromiter is riseing now currently @29.38 so the boil time is looking better.
Loren

(quoted from post at 19:01:47 02/25/16) Adirndack,

If I may ask, where is your syrup sold? Do you take orders? Do you ship to Mn? I got to have real syrup, and perhaps you could add me to you list of customers...

Thanks,

D.

Click to expand...

ACG I would also be intrested in getting some of your syrup.
Do you ship it to Oregon or do you only sell it in NY?
I grew up in Webster just across the bay from Rochester and dad always bought local syurp.

Thanks for all the post and pics you put up I relly enjoy them
-Noel

There are float boxes on the back of the evaporators that maintain a continuous level in the evaporator pans, and are gravity fed from the storage tanks.
As the sap flows forward in the evaporators, more and more H20 is removed from the sap until at the front of the evaporators where the syrup comes off it has lost most of the water and it's a thicker sugary liquid. Syrup needs to be brought to 221F to be syrup. As you know water boils at 212F but syrup is like oil and has a much higher density and boiling point. We use two methods to make sure that we are pulling batches of syrup off. Temp. is one and a hydromiter to measure density is the other. As the batch is drawn off we keep close track of both and discontinue drawing when temp drops and hydrometer drops below syrup density in the drawoff pails. Size of batches vary a great deal. Big batches yield around 15 gal. of syrup. Small ones can be 3-4. If the depth of sap/syrup gets too low we run the risk of scorching the syrup. The floats are set to maintain a minimum of 2.5" depth in front pans. There are times when the air is clear, the fires burning hot, that we have to ladel some cooler sap from the rear to close to the front to keep the syrup from getting too hot during a drawoff. There is a lot to know and understand. The amount of wood in the fire box and barometric pressure have a lot to do with the size of batches. the time laps between batches once the first one comes off range from an hr. to a couple on a slow day. These figures are per evaporator. We have two evaporators running and they both vary.
Loren

My e-mail is open. We ship via USPS
Loren

My e-mail is open in lower RH corner
Loren

Dan, how are you doing?? I see your ocasional posts down on the Case board.
Loren

Loren thank you for your pictures and explanations. It is very interesting. This Northwest Iowan here knows nothing about the process. [/list]

I'm just guessing there's a prodigious amount of sticky clean-up necessary when the cooking's all done.

I bet your really complaining not having to drive threw 30+" of snow....

Loren, I see the flow of the sap coming out of the tank. Is the Sap more watery than thick?? When i think of sap i think of the thick sticky stuff. So im guessing Sap from a Maple Tree that makes syrup must be at lot thinner maybe just a little thicker than water. Would this be correct.

You are correct. usually 98.5% water 1.5%sugar. It has the consistancy of water and tastes like slightly sweet water. We had to laugh the other day. Saw an add for bottled pasturized organic sap. People will buy anything I guess.
Loren

Loren, these are my favorite set of pictures so far that you've taken. I really appreciate you doing this. I have watched your posts for a few years now, always curious about the logistics and mechanical means by which you accomplish the tasks. Thank you very much for these photos. Now I "get it"!
I wish I could show my appreciation by coming out there to participate.
-Dan

Loren, When I tapped with my freind ,I tapped some trees of my own and some really big ones in a local private park. He tested the sap for sugar content and figured out how much syrup I should get. My sap always ran between 2% and 4% sugar. He figured it was bacause the trees were scattered out in the open.The trees were so big we could put two 5 gallon buckets per tree with two taps per bucket. When it ran good both buckets would run over if you didn't dump twice a day. Wish I was still farming and making syrup.

So, ACG, that is one fam-dancy Case with the cab and camera and brush bars. Awesome and practical!!

We evaporate at work, to separate water from acid, not sugar. We actually save both, then recombine them (yes, it is as impractical as it sounds). With 50 psi steam as a heat source, much less work than stoking a fire.

When you speak of barometric pressure, you use a higher pressure to delay the boiling until higher temps that you need for syrup, right? Because lower P would result in earlier boiling.

When we were having pressure control issues in our evaporator, some of the guys just could not understand how I was making water at 190F. It doesn't take much of a vacuum to lower boiling point dramatically.

Wow i never would have thought it was that thin. Now i understand why you go thru so much firewood during a sugar season. Thats a lot of water to evaporate off. Thank you for all the pictures of the production.