Well as some of you know my love of firewood goes beyond the house! Maple season has begun! Collected 560L of sap in the last day and boiling away! I love feeding the beast!
Nice work Farmboy707 . Me and Scotty Overkill like to make maple syrup as well although last year it was such a narrow window here in central PA. And it looks like we may miss it this year partly because of the weather and tree jobs. Although we may give it a try if the weather holds out. We are getting pretty close to the wire where we live!
So I rent and because of that I can't build a perm sugar shack so I have one built on a 6x10 trailer so if we move it's coming with. I have a Dominion and Grimm 18*48" evaporator it's small all I could afford at the time with my blower I can do around 10gph and I tap around 70 trees. I can store 1/3 of a cord in the shack. And just have the rest stacked and covered outside. If and when we buy our own place I'm building a good size shack enough room for lots of wood, bottling station and my new evaporator hoping to get a Patrick phenuf I can't spell the last name, guy from Quebec builds the best evaps you can get and delivers!
I started my rookie operation this year and boy am I learning the hard way. Finally got a batch of finished product last night
Ya I learned alot my first couple seasons and am still learning and improving, always trying to find ways of doing things better or faster. How many taps do you have out?
Like firewood hoarding its an addiction I went from 3 taps to 70 and when I can get a larger evaporator I'll move up to 200 and beyond!
If the addiction progresses there is a great forum for maple syrup mapletrader.com awesome site knowledgeable ppl and threads dedicated to your state with ppl in your area producing.
We ususally put the taps out presidents day weekend, but this unseasonably warm weather may cheat us. I have doubts that the trees will hold the buds back much longer. I'm praying for a cold snap this weekend, if that doesn't happen, it's going to be a wash.....thankfully, I still have 14 gallons of syrup stored in the basement from two years ago!! I usually do around 100-150 taps.... Here's some pics of my setup from two years back......hoping to be able to dust all this stuff off and put it to use this season!
How many gph does your evaporator do that thing is intense with the double Stack! And what's your pan size?
When the fire is kept full tilt and stoked hard, it can boil around 35-40 GPH. The stove is an old 275gal oil tank turned on its side, the pan is 3' by 4.5', 8" deep stainless steel. It's all homemade.....
Ya that's awesome do you put a blower on it? I'd like to upgrade to a 2x6 raised flue in the next few years and go to a few hundred taps. The demand for syrup is good so I could sell steady.
No blower yet, but I'm considering it. It fires so hard with the side drafts open that it thunders..... I considered getting an old oil furnace pump and a few spray jets and injecting a vegetable oil mist into the firebox over the bed of coals to help save on firewood consumption (this thing DEVOURS wood) but it actually works really well as it sits
Scotty Overkill what gage stainless steel did you use for your pan and what kind of welding material did you use to put it together? Thanks.
Ya with the blower going, it's from an old Woodstove. It just roars like a beast. I'd like to go with a better one for next year and maybe even look into a aof and the Auf blowers. With the blower I don't have hardly any coals sticking around.
