The Official 2023 Maple Syrup Thread

Like honey fuzz we are going to get some sort of RO. That will be huge. Like you had mentioned I will have home heating wood and evaporator wood. Honeyfuzz said he uses wrist size and that about what I’m going to try for. I had a lot of 4 year old honey locust that was chunky that I burnt in evaporator, it made a lot of heat but took to long to make the heat, then it coaled so long it actually hurt my boil. I started comparing small splits to big ones and small splits were the key! Didn’t really matter what kind of wood. I had some small cherry splits that did well as long as I loaded every 4:30. Small honey worked well if I loaded every 6 minutes. We made 53.5 gallons of syrup and burnt 2.5 cord of wood.

 

Wow! Amazing how frequently you added wood ! I definitely have some things to improve on with my fire. Congrats on a great season and 53.5 gallons of sweet yumminess!

 

Thats alot of syrup. Congrats !!!! Really not too bad on the wood either. You have to be pretty happy !

 

Bottled the two gallons from yesterday...then...

Saved about 200 gallons of RO
permeate water from the other day..to aid in our cleanup.
Filled the pan all the way up with permeate..and a couple gallons of vinegar..got it to a boil..shut her down. The scum and crud was just breaking off with the boil !

Then....we went out and collected sap sacks and pulled taps. Disassembled everything back at the shack. Threw bags away. It's alot of work at the end too lol !

 

We’re pleased for sure on our syrup. Already missing all that work.

 

Snowing here most of the day so sap didn’t run.

snowbank around trees keep them from budding too soon

 

I had about 10 gallons that ran today. I left it in the woods, and will finish off two small batches in the house tonight. Good weather ahead, although a tad on the cool side. The past few years it has gone from cold to too warm overnight, so no complaints this year.

 

Boiled about 15 gallons of sap for a finished 36 oz of syrup today. Sap is definitely slowing down. Expecting some weather Friday, so we will probably go pull everything on Saturday for one final boil.

 

Congratulations on all your hard work. I dont plan on making any. But how do you feed the wood to keep boiling?

 

Not as I should Used splits too large for the task that cowled too much. Improvements for next year. My understanding of best practice is frequent stoking with smaller sized wood. Blower May be a good addition for me next year too. I would intermittently use my leaf blower on idle to really get it going but something more consistent is what I want to try for.

 

Quickly!

My arch (an arch is the heating part of an evaporator) was built over 100 years ago, but the design endured into the early 80’s as the predominant style. Two hinged cast iron doors. You typically open one side and add wood, close it and then open the other side. The idea is to not slow down the boil by allowing a lot of cold air in.

At some point they started to insulate the inside of the doors (mine aren’t). Then they went to a single door with airtight gasket (my newer arch has that style).

Air comes in under the fire and up through grates. Blowers have been added, and are referred to as air-under-fire (AUF). Years later, they began applying forced air that comes in over the fire through a series of nozzles (AOF). This is like a secondary burn on steroids, and can increase the efficiency up to 35%.

 

Flamestead is that a solid pan? Most is old ones I’ve seen have separate areas think dividers so the one in front you draw syrup off while still adding sap to back gravity fed as syrup is denser than sap

 

Yes, the pan is a modern-day SS welded flat pan with no dividers on the old arch I’m using now.

I’ll try to get some decent pictures of my newer evaporator (in storage until I build a proper sugarhouse). My rear pan is a raised flue style. There are flues that are raised up into the pan, running from front to back, to increase the surface area exposed to the fire.

The company that made the arch I’m using this year first got their start making a rippled/accordion bottom style pan for cooking sorghum to syrup. Those pans initially went on a brickwork arch. The company moved to Bellows Falls, changed their name to reflect being in Vermont, and soon began making maple pans. They closed the doors in 1922ish, so my arch is at least that old.

 

I absolutely LOVE that old arch ! I'm jealous !

 

Don't ever get rod of that . That is just freaking cool !

 

Thanks

 

So..its finally acting like Maple syrup season up here...after our season is already done lol !


Great weather to clean up everything after a long productive season. Cleaned the taps already..now on to the sap sack holders. I scrub and rinse with the warmest water my hands can stand. Mapke sap is acidic....so I treat it like when I soak stuff in vinegar or citric acid. Rinse..rinse..rinse ! Rinse away the gunk...and dilute ..deactivate and rinse away anything corrosion. Hopefully these will last for the next generation...if they care about this at all !


And don't mind the mess. We have about 10 other things going on always..including dehydrating bananas slices !

 

Are banana chips good to dip in maple syrup?

 

Oh yeah !!
I like the way you think !

 

Im a guy...we think with our stomachs!