4d023 - 2y
Boiling sap into maple syrup. The reverse osmosis system concentrated the sap to ~6% sugar leaving around 15gal of sap to be boiled. Once the sap reaches 66% sugar it becomes syrup. Boiling in a building is ideal as wind will slow progress and waste fuel. Today I'm boiling outside for convenience but next time I will boil in the garage. Shooting for 1gal of syrup from this batch to be finished on the stovetop and loaded hot into jars. https://i.imgur.com/PbYVg4n.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/OAHxPbl.jpeg https://imgur.com/a/ehHN0DG
Maple sugaring thread: boiling sap #[0]
Mapletrade @Mapletrade - 2y
Still outside and making steam. 1 back flue pan, 2 front pans, about 3 1/2 by 8 feet of surface area and 15 cord of wood. 650 tapped trees this year. Up to about 50 gal syrup, but only 15 filtered and bottled.
I can't imagine managing that size of an operation. It's 10x more than what I'm doing here. Is sugaring all you do until the season is done or do you still have time to do other things? What's your process for filtering?
Still have full time job teaching, and I drive bus route for our small school. I get pretty tired for 5 weeks. I built the evaporator and can shut it pretty tight and it will smoulder all day at work, run hard when I'm home, shoulder through night. It will go through about 70 gal when I'm at work. For filtering I put it in buckets for 2 days to couple weeks and let it settle. Pour syrup off top and reheat. Barely filters anything because settling takes most out. Settling changed my life. I have a pretty good system and once lit the fire may go for a week. As you saw from the scorched pan my system is not flawless as I get too busy and tired.
Amazing! Thanks for all the helpful information. I hope you sell it all for sats this year!
I have to save some. My cousins next door run an organic vegetable farm. They go to farmers markets and have repeat customers. (But the cash I get gets converted to sats when I get it.)
Ended up with just over 3qts of maple syrup from the 50gal of sap. Not the most impressive yield but I was able to use only a small amount of diesel fuel on the tractor (45min), less than 1kwh of power for the filter pump, and about 2gal of propane. I'll be looking to decrease the inputs even more on future collections this season. https://i.imgur.com/Ckflzyx.jpeg
Maple Sugaring Thread: Finishing Syrup #[5]
Maple Sugaring Thread: Second Collection of the Season #[6]
Filtering the water out of 100gal of maple sap from the second collection of the maple sugaring season. The homemade reverse osmosis system was easy to build and removes about 3gal of water from the sap per hour. It's capable of filtering ~70% of the water before starting the boil. We save as much as the water as we can to drink and any extra goes to the animals.
Finished up tapping the maple trees today, 60 taps total this season. I started with just handful in 2016 and have pretty much doubled each year since. Not sure if I have enough trees to double to 120 taps next year. Many still have a ways to grow before they're big enough.
Just finished up the 4th collection with 75gal of sap. Filtering water out of the maple sap directly into my water bottle with a homemade reverse osmosis system. Just over 3gal/hr of water can be filtered out of the sap, concentrating it to about 6% before boiling with propane to finish the syrup. It might be in my head but the water from the maple sap is very good, better than water filtered from our well. The 3rd collection of sap was small and only ended up with a couple quarts of syrup, but with this latest collection we should have all the syrup we need for the year. Everything else will be for sale at Bitcoin meetups and direct homestead sales. #P2P #maplesyrup #homesteading #permaculture #maplesugaring #structuredwater #bitcoin #forestfarming
https://i.imgur.com/wDxzN41.jpeg Maple sugaring supplies are all packed up till next season. Lots of downsides to using buckets, one being where to store them. But they are accessible and useful if sugar making doesn't work out. Will probably expand with bags moving forward. https://i.imgur.com/DbAdlqe.jpeg Ended up with about 4 gallons surplus syrup to sell and am nearly sold out already. Thanks to the plebs at the Michigan Bitcoin meetups for the support! Looks like I have to double the number of taps yet again next season. https://i.imgur.com/RXVcO2G.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/b9ud6ob.jpeg Got a little discouraged when I let my reverse osmosis system freeze and it was destroyed. It was a good excuse to upgrade to a larger system though. This new filter has 4x more capacity than the previous system and will handle all the possible potential sap flow capacity here on the homestead as more trees get large enough to tap. All in all another successful sugaring season but not without it's failures and setbacks. #permaculture #permies #homesteading #grownostr #regenag #regenerativeagriculture #maplesyrup #bitcoinmeetup #circulareconony #sugarfromtrees #forestfarming #woodlandagriculture #theproblemisthesolution
