Sap to Syrup

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Hockey! Voting!

Hey out there. Going though a lot of sap over the last 24h. We are Still running Chuck and Burns at the same time. Trying to catch up to everything.

At the same time John and Spencer came up with the idea that we had to be able to watch hockey while we are boiling. Well it took some rigging but now we have a COLOUR TV in the sugarshack. It only gets two channels CBC and CTV, channel 2 and 5.

Playoffs in the sugar shack, can you get anymore Canadian?

Since I have been here a lot of things have happened in the world. Not the least of which is the election we find ourselves in. I am now going though the process of voting by mail as I can’t really go all the way back to Davenport to vote. Seems kind of pointless as I think I am going to formally abstain anyway but I’ll jump though the hoops none the less.

Here are some pics installing a new element to our media arsenal and some other shots around the place.

Cheers double bubble boil

John making Hockey happen out of thin air

Hockey on CBC!

Weird thing in a maple block

early morning boil, sugar shack ghost is back

April 15, 2011 Categories: 2011 production | Leave A Comment »

To much sap

We have too much sap right now. This sounds like a good thing but we can’t possibly evaporate all of it. Sap doesn’t last forever it goes cloudy and sour after a few days of sitting in above freezing tempratures.

Since it is about 14˚C outside the sap will go bad even faster so it is a race against the clock.

So we have fired up Burns to preheat the sap and feed it to Chuck. This means that batch 9 is going to be a double wood fired batch.

Chuck and Burns making double fired

There is no snow left in the bush at all but people have been saying the ground is still frozen so who knows how much longer we have to collect sap.

April 14, 2011 Categories: 2011 production, Equipment | Leave A Comment »

Batch 6 and 7

Well it has been a long time in the making but we have just finished batch 6 and 7 today. For those of you who love that super rich maple flavor batch 6 is for you on the other hand batch 7 is a very thick medium batch.

Batch 6 was made completely with Burnsie, our old flat pan, Batch 7 was made completely with Chuck our flue pan. Equipment has a lot to do with the type of product you produce. Batch 8 will be a mixture of both Burns and Chuck.

Double wood fired maple syrup!

Batch 6 boiling away

waiting until the temperature is a 190 to run though the filter

Batch 6 on the left 7 on the right

April 12, 2011 Categories: 2011 production, Production Techniques | Leave A Comment »

Sugarbush update

Hey All

We are currently in the Sugar Shack boiling away drawing off some syrup. These are some picture from earlier today. We are still very backed up with the amount of sap we have to go though so we are burning all of Mike’s good wood while he is at work.

Sap pans boiling

near syrup bubbling away

Today Spence and I are turing these big blocks of wood

Into smaller pieces of wood for Chuck to munch on

April 11, 2011 Categories: 2011 production | 1 Comment »

Rainy Sunday

It is Sunday, we are boiling and we are happy.

Here are some pics we took over the past couple of days.

Batch 6 is going to be a little different, Burnsie is really inefficient. We have noticed a huge difference using the flat pan compared with the new style flu. 14h of boiling and we went though 50 gallons of sap. That is not sustainable!

Chuck is 4h for the same. So by that line of logic batch 6 should be around $89.25 a bottle. LOL

Cheers

: Out of the Darkness come the the sugar shack Zombie! Uhh uhhhh Draw off at 7, urrrrr urrr, top tank level, maaaaaaaaa pllllllllllllllllll

: Teak (Sierra) taking a nap, What?

: View through the Damper Door of Burnsie

: The Boiling point of water changes

: The mighty Tregurtha

April 10, 2011 Categories: 2011 production | Leave A Comment »

Fireing up Burnsie

We have decided to fire up the old evaporator for a special batch tonight.

Look into the mouth of Burnsie, if you dare....

Batch 6 is going to be amazing and very Amber, GUARANTEED!

April 8, 2011 Categories: 2011 production, Production Techniques | Leave A Comment »

Guys from Toronto

Hey out there.

I invited a couple of friends up from Toronto to see what Maple Syrup was like, they worked like crazy and had a good time.

luckiest shot ever

LOL

Heading down the NEW P-Line Hill

Spence hanging out with his Friend.

Happy Adrian

Happy Dan

April 7, 2011 Categories: 2011 production, Funny, Sugar Shack | Leave A Comment »

Maple Syrup better than once thought

John found this article on Sootoday

Turns out that the sweet nectar of the Gods has more antioxidants than previously thought. I think this is great news.

So now our maple syrup is a super tonic.

April 3, 2011 Categories: 2011 production, Industry | Leave A Comment »

First Post from the Sugar Shack

Hello everyone. Busy times in the sugarbush over the last couple of days. We have pulled off another batch making this the 4th batch of the year. I am here working on number 5.

We were having some troubles this year with cloudy syrup. It seems there is a lot more sugar sand in the syrup than last year which we have to filter out. Syrup is not naturally clear it is full of little mineral deposits. Mike and I subscribe to the monthly Agriphone Maple syrup updates which mentioned that bottling at temperatures above 190˚F can cause this sugar sand to form. When we asked Todd Leuty, the Author of Agriphone Maple Syrup updates to explain this further he had this to say.

With hotter packing temperatures you would think that new particles would not precipitate out of the dissolved state, however with maple syrup temperatures hotter than 190 F can cause sediments to form, which shows up as the syrup is cooled down. Where this occurs producers will re-heat and re-filter the syrup.

Thanks for the tip Todd.

Another thing that I wanted to mention was the how much we love our labels. Not only do they look amazing but when we recived them we found a card which gives the some information about their printing process.

It’s nice to receive a great product and to find out that it was printed like this, Thanks Clubcard we hung this up in the sugarshack.

We also had a question from Shawn who checks out the site from time to time. To answer your question we have about 800 taps right now, that is double from last years 400. We are hoping to expand the bush to 40,001 someday.

Though we have been really busy we have had some time to snap a few photographs, enjoy.