Running and evaporator efficiently is no small task, it may seem like nothing is happening but you have to keep things “dialed in” or you loose your fire, flood the pan or burn the syrup. There are also strange things that can happen when you least expect them. Check out this vid of Jesse dealing with something called a steam lock. This happens when the sap in the pre-heater boils causing the pressure to block the flow of sap.

We started up the evaporator on Friday night. The pan that we are using is a deep flat pan, not a flue pan. Because I had the most experience with the evaporating I was the first to fire it up.  I decided to run the pan with a 1/4” of liquid in it to start, needless to say I burnt the pan pretty bad and pretty quick.

That was not the only problem we had with the evaporator. We also are trying to fuel it with Bass wood. It was pretty damp and really did not burn all that well, because of this we have renamed it Ass wood.

Steam is also one of the big problems that we had to overcome. Our custom hood worked pretty good at channeling the steam but the real problem came from not having it at the right angle. It was blowing steam right into the faces of the operator rather than to the back of the pan an out of the shack. The hood also did not really come down far enough so we draped towels over it to keep the stream contained. We have it dialed in pretty good now.

More to come on how the bush is running and what happened over the weekend.

That being said there was still a ton of stuff to complete in the sugar shack. You would not believe the hours we put in! Because I did not post anything all weekend I thought that I would put together a video that shows the whole processes we went through when building the sugar shack, enjoy.

I would also like to say thanks to Al for posting the information about the different maple syrup festivals that are taking place. If I hear of any more I will let you know. You check out the full list he has here.

I talked to all the maple syrup producers at the show, everyone had great insight and was very helpful. Two booths let really talk their ear off and even let me shoot some video. The first was from White Meadows farms. Richard was really nice and gave me some great tips on maple candy making. It turns out that they won best maple candy at the show last year so I am sure he knows what he’s talking about.

Next I had a chance to talk to Tracy Moore at Everything Maple. I have talked about her in an earlier post. She really went through everything with me and was happy to do so. She even gave me a few books to about packaging maple syrup. The great thing was the she knew all of the maple syrup producers from the island. You can really tell in the video that she is passionate about what she does. It was great to get to know other members of the Ontario maple syrup community outside of the island.

Now I know that the winter fair was a months ago but I have not had a chance to get everything off the camera until last week. I also want to apologize for the shakiness of the camera and the strange viewing angles. It was pretty loud and I wanted to make sure I got the sound I needed. Anyway, now that I have built it up, please enjoy.

Anyway I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who purchased maple syrup over the holidays It is really going to help this year. It really pumped me up for next Christmas. I guess I have a few different times of year to look forward to. Next year it would be great to have store front of some sort, I bet I could really make a go of it.

I also made a few batches of maple candy, I am 1 for 3 right now and I think I know what happened last time. I let the candy get way to cold before I put it in the mold. I have not yet recorded how to make maple candy on video yet as I don’t want to look completely inept at the process. We will wait until I can look really professional.

I have found the time to put together another little video from that last time I was up North. It is a quick little show of what our evaporator looks like and how it will work. It might look a bit weird because we have one pan stacked on top of another to keep it out of the way. I assure you It will do the job this season when the sap starts flowing. I hope that you enjoy it and have a safe and pleasant new year.

Recently I found an online video on how to make maple syrup eggnog. I seemed like a nice enough recipe but what really got me was the fact the presenter was using fake maple syrup.

I decided to dub over the real ingredients that she was using, enjoy.

Remember there is no substitute for real maple syrup!

As I said I would here they are

Enjoy.

Marking Trees

Marking Main lines

we put about that much wood in the archway every 15-20 minutes, that means that we are firing the boiler every 7-10 minutes. This is of course depending on the different types of what and how dry it is. This year was a bit of a disaster as we ran out of wood and had to spend some of the time burning some not so dry popular.

Mike stumbled across a great website called http://www.woodheat.org This website is full of information in regards to firewood.  My favorite part of the website is the energy per air dried cord or in thousands of BTUs. This gives a list of the most efficient types of firewood to use.

I thought that the best wood to use was iron wood, I might have the wrong name for it though. As I can’t find it anywhere in Ontariotrees.com.  it’s very dense wood that doesn’t grow very large, it has kind of a flaky bark as he gets older.  Maybe somebody can help me.  The bark looks a bit like Black Ash when it’s older, but I don’t think that’s right.

Alan had great question about spiles and pointed me into the direction of the University of Vermont website. Apparently there has been a new innovation called to check valve spout. It works like this if the vacuum system is turned on than a little ball that’s inside of the spiles is pulled away from the tree allowing the sap to come out. When the vacuum system is turned off the little ball rolls in front of the opening and blocks bacteria from getting back to the hole.   Alan’s concerns seem to be that you’d put excess pressure on the tree by not letting the natural bacteria seal the hole thus taking more sap than the tree is able to lose. Read the full story here.

We will see if this spile will even work this year.  I suspect if you are going to try new product that says it’s going to take more sap from the tree then a producer would tend to under tap.. Most of the syrup produces that I’ve talked to basically baby their bush, if there is something that has the potential to take more sap out of the tree I’m sure it would be tried in moderation. I’m sure it was the same when they came out with a vacuum system. If it works for these innovators than I am sure it is going to catch on.

There’s also been a number of innovations that tried to solve this bacteria problem. Leader Evaporators, which is the company that is selling these new spiles, already has something on their website to try to combat the problem of bacteria.

“designed to be an inexpensive bacteria free throw-away fitting to put in the tree for maple sugar makers looking for maximum production every year.  This rugged extension features a female cup which will accept almost every 19/64 and 5/16 diameter spout on the market”

So will this new little device work, who’s to say?  There is also another type of this spile that we are looking into for our bush, it is a stainless steel spile. Here’s a video of Bill Smith and Keith Brown discussing it.