First Batch of 2015

We decided to make syrup on Friday, later learning we should confirm clear skies before starting. Either way, rain and shine, we were able to get about half a gallon of sap by Saturday afternoon. We boiled on the evaporator about 4 hours (not counting a rain delay where our fire died down while we were building our cover), then continued on the stove (the one we used last year) another couple hours the next day. We started with about 40 gallons, so either we had a lot of rain in the mix or our trees have an extremely low sugar content (usually it's 40:1, gallons of sap to gallons of syrup). Since we got about half a gallon of syrup our ratio was more 80:1.

What we're realizing is that our evaporator may be a little larger than we anticipated since we don't have the sap quantity to really get the most out of it. This is the case because the sap evaporates in the large pan as low as it can get without burning, and then it still needs boiled another couple hours in pots. In my opinion it would be best to start with at least 100 gallons of sap to be using it to it's full potential. Funny considering last year our set up wasn't large enough, and now we've swung all the way to the other side where it's too large! Figures.

Overall though it went really well. David calculated that we were able to boil 7-8 gallons an hour, and we completely used up our stored sap which we were never able to do last year. It feels good to be starting the collection from scratch and not worrying about the older stuff going bad the longer it sits.

Total Sap Collected - 41 gallons

Little bit of cleaning before production starts

The vent I was talking about in an earlier post. Come to realize it still wasn't enough so the door was left propped open majority of the time.

That valve is to add sap from the preheat to the large pan, as well as a valve to drain the entire pan. The preheat pan allows you to add warmer sap to the large 'get-er-done' pan without lowering the boiling point too drastically.

This view you can see the channels for the sap/syrup to flow. Again, we didn't really have enough sap for it to flow as it's intended. Still worked though!

Handy dandy tractor :o)

The rain brought out the hillbilly side in us... that is if you didn't already think this evaporator was hillbilly enough

Finishing the syrup on last year's stove. Easily monitored through our mudroom window (yes my lazy ass planned it that way!)

Gotta watch out for the froth! Comes about 215 degrees and then again at the very end (that's how I burned our cooktop last year :o/)

Filling the bottles is a more of a two man job, hence no pictures for that process. Essentially used a funnel to fill the bottles (need hot bottles when you're filling it with hot syrup so they don't crack), put the caps on and stored them upside down until they cooled. I'll try and get more pictures next time of these final stages.

You let it cool upside down to seal the tops

Thanks for the vintage bottles Kelly, they're too cute