Took a quick video for you sap's Turn the volume down, then you won't know I slightly burned my fingers, lol
When it comes to how much you burn to get your syrup, my cousin used to do syrup on a medium/small scale. He might have put out 100 gallons a year of finished product but his wood pile was over 100 feet long and at least 3 feet wide and 6 feet high for that much production. His wood pile was mostly sugar maple that he had cut to thin his woods to the right tree density so figure that he was burning about a 1 foot long by 6 foot high by 3 foot deep pile of sugar maple for every gallon he produced. Heat is the main expense in sugaring.
That comes to about 1/7 cord: same as well seasoned. Seems like trying the Fireview might be a good idea.
Sounds good! Making a sugar shack outside and put together a good setup with the fire view may very well do fine. I know one thing, your shack will smell something real good!
And the final cook down. It was getting very close outside, boy it can creep up on you. Shouldn't be long on the stove. Total time-about 7 hours. Thinking there will be 1.5 gal....we'll see!
Once we got to the stove WS, we always left it on too long and it turned to sugar. I loved it! You're lookin good.
Well no arch yet, but I doubled my cooking capacity today after a $40 trip to wally world. With the hot plate, I was only managing to boil a little less than gal./hr. The little gas cooker can bring that 16qt stock pot to a boil, so hopefully I'll be closer to 2 now. Went with plan C for the barrel stand. Had a couple short metal legged sawhorses that belonged to my grandfather. The barrel is half full, and I have another 10 gallons on the porch, roughly 35 gallons of uncooked sap. Then I have another 20 gallons worth ready for 2nd stage cookdown in a stock pot in the fridge. If I can process it all, I might end up with 1.5 gallons of syrup myself this weekend.
Very nice! That looks great! My cost between cinder blocks and dryer duct (yes, dryer duct) $40 bucks. Wood, dont matter, I'm a hoarder.
Got 3.5 gallons of syrup pulled today, after close to 100 gallons was run through the evaporator..... Much to my dismay, the sap didn't run for squat today. 54 taps yielded me only 30 gallons of sap, it didn't get cold enough Friday night. Hoping it did tonight because if not, I won't have enough to justify cooking tomorrow. Fingers crossed that I get at least 40 more gallons by tomorrow!! We've already decided to pull our taps on Wednesday. I'll do my final cook on Thursday night.
Most of you guys have had a rough time this year for sure. Today is Maine's 32nd Maple Sunday (last Sunday of March)... it's howling outside with wind chills around zero! Day temps aren't making it to 30 most days... Unreal. My honey was reading about different ops here in Maine and found one in Wilton that claims they have 17,000 taps! Holy chit! 2 miles of runs... s'lotta lines to run sap thru. Can't imagine it. 54 taps sounds like more than enough to deal with. Your evaporator is awesome Scott...
My set up is very small scale. I have evaporated almost 40 gallon with less than one tank of propane for about $13. The steam table pans work great.
Think I decided where I'm gonna put the arch: It's a nice flat spot there - part of the reason I chose it for the HH. I could run the stack up next to it; from the road, it would like like the HH had a chimney! Trying some wider, shallower pots today.
hey guys just a heads up Vermont and I assume whole area will have a short sugar season and syrup may be real expensive this year. it's too cold to run and it's almost April family in Hardwick still got 40 inches snow in woods. northern vt high of 18 today and the cold north wind from sherwood ain't helpin! last year had almost 500 galloon this year 7...
I know most of you guys are pretty much done, but I could sure help you increase the BTU's you get from the wood to the sap if anyone is interested in going down that road. $100 in firebrick and you could be evaporating at 80% eff. or so. I know, most of you guys have plenty of wood and it's not an issue, but I thought I'd throw it out there since it's an application my skills are perfect for and we don't get to do it here so it's a fun challenge to think about. I gotta say, I'm jealous you guys get to partake in this hobby, it's right up my alley.
I didn't tap this year due to my schedule, and you guys are making me wish I had. Here's a couple of pics of my "sugarhouse" from last year. Initially it was just a windbreak. The cage tank, on the left, was used for collection, and then set up on the bale to allow us to bucket sap to the pan as needed. The arch has an old, old cast iron front, with a 2x3 pan on it. It needs to be rebuilt, and will probably get stretched out to be a 2x5 or 6. I've sugared on 3 different 2x6 evaporators over the years, as well as some much smaller ones, too (I soldered my first pan in high school shop many moons ago). As the season went on we got fancy and added a roof, a drop light, and had to add some flooring to stay up out of the mud. It even got a plastic end-wall when the weather turned nasty. I had help from my Dad (I'm back in the corner shadows), and we attracted quite a few visitors. The longer-term plan is to build a real sugarhouse and then bring his 2x6 Leader arch over from Maine.
I plan on building a completely different stove/pan for next year. I want to build what is called a "flue pan", gives double the surface area for heat. And a double insulated firebox, I'm going to go "indoors" next season for evaporating. Stay tuned for that project after this year!! As for syrup, NW Walker do you have any big leaf maple in your area? I've heard of other a using that to make syrup in small batches. Worth a try I'd you have the right temps in spring!!
