The snow brings Syrup season
- Thread starter CJadamec
- Start date
- May 23, 2015
- 24,411
- Pool Size
- 16000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
How many tap lines are you running? How much syrup do you typically make? It’s quite a process and I applaud your efforts 
I’d occasionally take trips up to Vermont (Burlington area) and there was always requests to go over the border to stock up and get lots of official Canadian syrup and Maple Sugar candies. I suppose your USA Made stuff is good too
I’d occasionally take trips up to Vermont (Burlington area) and there was always requests to go over the border to stock up and get lots of official Canadian syrup and Maple Sugar candies. I suppose your USA Made stuff is good too
Only my second season trying to make syrup. Last year was really basic with taps and buckets on the trees. My evaporator wasnt much more than pans over an open fire. In the end made just over a gallon.
Got a little carried away this year and spent too much time reading on the internet. Going to have two tubing runs and about 60 trees tapped this year. Going to fabricate a proper evaporator out of an old 275gal heating oil tank.
The mass produced pure maple syrup you get at the local supermarket losses some of the flavor you get from smaller batch wood fired evaporators. Maple syrup also changes flavor depending on what part of the season it was made, early season is lite colored and mild flavored and late season is darker and richer in flavor. If you really get picky it changes flavor fom one stand of trees to the next. Not to knock those Canadians, I mean is syrup really big up there or something, but my syrup was super tasty.
Got a little carried away this year and spent too much time reading on the internet. Going to have two tubing runs and about 60 trees tapped this year. Going to fabricate a proper evaporator out of an old 275gal heating oil tank.
The mass produced pure maple syrup you get at the local supermarket losses some of the flavor you get from smaller batch wood fired evaporators. Maple syrup also changes flavor depending on what part of the season it was made, early season is lite colored and mild flavored and late season is darker and richer in flavor. If you really get picky it changes flavor fom one stand of trees to the next. Not to knock those Canadians, I mean is syrup really big up there or something, but my syrup was super tasty.
- May 23, 2015
- 24,411
- Pool Size
- 16000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
So you’re not going to setup the negative pressure vacuum extractor to help gather sap... 
No mechanical vacuum but the latest craze in the maple syrup world is to generate vacuum on the trees simply with the sap running down hill in small diameter tubing. In theory I should be able to get around 27inches of vacuum on my trees with no moving parts. The picture above is about half way thru connecting 25 trees together with about 1000ft of tubing . That run has about 50ft of elevation drop from the top tree to the bottom of the run.
- Jul 16, 2012
- 7,206
- Pool Size
- 27000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Hayward Aqua Rite (T-15)
Haha maple syrup is pretty far from trouble free. Well that and there is a really good forum over at mapletrader.com. It's not as active as TFP but there is lots of solid info and friendly people.
- Jul 16, 2012
- 7,206
- Pool Size
- 27000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Hayward Aqua Rite (T-15)
Yes, there is a resource for everything, and some very good ones. Though we do get spoiled by the TFP resource.
- May 23, 2015
- 24,411
- Pool Size
- 16000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
I'm up to about 600 gallons of sap at this point. I tapped my trees early on Jan 16th. The season has just started to really hit full stride in my next of the woods. I will probably end up collecting around 1800 gallons of sap by the end of the season which is mid to late March. That should get me 18- 24 gallons of syrup depending on how much sugar the trees give me.
If only I could rig the evaporator to heat my pool. It can take 25 gallons of sap from dead cold to full boil in about 30min. Talk about some btu output.
If only I could rig the evaporator to heat my pool. It can take 25 gallons of sap from dead cold to full boil in about 30min. Talk about some btu output.
My rough calcs from your rough estimations put your evaporator at a heat output of 75,000 Btu/hr
Not too bad for a scrap metal and burning unseasoned soft pine. Tons of heat wasted out the stack too. I'd be surprised if i was getting 30% efficiency going into the sap.
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