As Christmas gets closer, I would like to remind everyone that you should order early. Orders placed on or before Dec 10 should be safe, orders placed on or after Dec 15 may arrive late.
My local sales are up by about 60% over the last 2 years. I do have 1 more barrel of amber (40 gal) and 3 more barrels of dark (27 gal each) but I won’t pack them into jugs until I know which sizes I need. Once I run low in any grade and size it takes me 3 days generally to pack more of that grade and size, day 1, warm the barrel to at least 100F so it is able to be pumped from the barrel to my finisher, while the syrup heats I wash all equipment to be used, then day 2, heat the syrup in the finisher from room temperature up to 180-190F. Once at 180-190F it gets filtered and pumped into the bottler tank. Once in the bottler tank it is heated to 85+/-1 degree F, tested for density and final graded (retested to verify the % of light transmission thru a test vial.
Finally, it is corrected for density if necessary and bottling can be done. My bottler only holds 15-16 gal, once that is bottled I bring the contents of the finisher beck up to 180-190F and repeat, thus a 27.5 gal barrel of dark requires 2 days to bottle, a 40 gal barrel of amber needs 3 days. When I pack more, I process the entire barrel.
As a side note, my recovery from surgery has gone well, however I do require more time to rest.