The reverse osmosis machine is finally fixed. We ran our sap through and removed about 70% of the water. Then we boiled and boiled the sap, but the it never quite thickened enough and got to the correct temperature (219.1-degrees) to be maple syrup.
Worrying that we were doing something wrong, we called all of our maple producing friends and were told, "it just takes time."
I guess the first time you boil - before you're pushing condensed sap - it just takes a long time to get going. As our sap supplies got lower and the maple got thicker, but not quite thick enough, we decided we had to stop loading the evaporator with firewood and let it all cool down, because one of the worst things that can happen is you run out of sap, burn what's in your evaporator pans, and destroy the pans (a very expensive fix) in the process.
Today, we have sap that's very close to being maple syrup and hopefully we'll collect more sap today and tomorrow and finally be able to finish it off.
The learning curve is very high here!
Seems like most things that are worth doing, take effort, require a good deal of sweat, and never work the first time.
ReplyDeleteI am certain all will work fine soon for you!
Jennifer
I'm watching to see how everything goes now! What a huge undertaking.
ReplyDeletegeez louise don't burn the sap :-)....Rick does it at least once per season, but we don't have the big set-up to ruin! Hope you get to finish it off tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you guys will have maple syrup to show off tomorrow!! What a job, whew!
ReplyDeleteThe sap didn't run very well today, but it's supposed to be up to 50-degrees tomorrow. I can't wait to see what happens!
ReplyDelete