First Boil 2016!

We had our first boil last Tuesday to reduce 200 gallons of sap from an early season mini-run! The trees started to unthaw but did not run to their full potential. It was a good opportunity for us to get the kinks out in running the new pan setup and also get some concentrate in order to get going faster once the season really kicks in (looking like this coming week!) As you can see in the photo, this new pan really cranks!! Both back sections of our flue pan were a rapid boil with the front section of the flue pan boiling so hard, it was jumping out of the pan! I havn't figured out the average evaporation rate yet, since we were trying different things with the setup, but now we have it dialed in. We boiled off about 200 gallons between 7:00 and 12:00, so we were hovering around 35-40 gallons per hour. Pretty good for a first boil!