2019 Maple Sugaring - Scaling Up
The 2019 maple sugaring season has been in full swing for approximately three weeks and we have already produced more than 3 times the syrup we did in 2018. This year we scaled up significantly, tapping 6 times as many trees. We built a custom natural gas evaporator and reverse osmosis (RO) system to deal with the increase in sap. So far the setup has been working great, with evaporation rates reaching 4 gallons per hour after cutting 50% of the water out of the sap with the RO. The weather seems to be cooperating and after a cold spell early this week we should be boiling Wednesday through Saturday!