I will start tapping tomorrow finished running 1400’ of 1” mainline today. Can’t wait to get the whole new vacuum system up and running this week. Goal is 1000 taps!

My buddy tapped 100 trees on Thur and collected 45 gallons of sap on Sat. No sun today so there probably wasn't a run today.

We will finish tapping tomorrow. The wind sucked the energy out of us. Saturday and Sunday we put out about 750-800 taps and we have a tad less then 200 to go. We had some sap in the buckets but have decided that we will let that freeze instead of running over 350-400 trees to collect a few hundred gallons. My SIL is trying to design a vacuum system with a hose where we don't have to carry the sap so far in the buckets. We will see how that works.

Bryce

Question? Can you boil the sap down till almost done then save it till you boil again to finish a larger batch? It's my third year doing this and just as a hobby.

I've decided not to do syrup again this spring..I do see that my yard tree has been running the last few days. It drips off cracked branches on my drive way. I also see squirrels up there licking sap off them branches.. So I if I was going to tap I would have been doing it probably last Friday - Saturday.

Good luck guys I will be following your progress.

Mac

62 taps and 35 gallon Fri., 70 gal Sat. and 20 gal yesterday should be a couple good days this week. Mike

Scrapper, I don't see why not(within reasonable time). I've done it at different stages of process but I think refrig or freezing it works best. I too am just hobby and if run is start/stop it is nice to get enough to make boiling worth it or fit my schedule. I luckily have large banks of snow from off the roof on the north side of cabin where I can store gerry jugs of raw/partly processed sap till I get enough. Each night those jugs freeze you can drain off concentrated sap(leaving ice in jug to melt out in the sun or inside) and get free reduction of water content. I actually processed my syrup by freezing the sap in 1/2 gl jugs around the inner wall of my trapping freezer in 12 hr cycles, drain out the sap(4 times and it is as concencentrated 75%. and boil from there). It would be nice to have a sugar refractomator to really quantify it but I ran the ice melt from the second and third cycle of one run and it yielded syrup as good as other so I factor this method loses about 10% of possible syrup but saves 75% of boiling fuel(whatever you use) time invested is about the same I have tested and it only loses about 1-2% of sugar in ice each cycle till 4 than really jumps to about 25% and higher after that each cycle as sap is concentrated. Take about 1.5 hrs to boil to finish stage outside on turkey boiler than 45 min inside on the stove to finish(better heat control). Must have good sap as we get about 50 to 1 so 100 g of sap gets us apron 2 g of finished syrup. We are planning a little bigger collection this year as we have ample maple and are going to a small RO system to process a little quicker doing about 500g of sap.

A small liberal arts college near me requires students to perform work to offset tuition. The school raises show quality livestock and does crop and tree research. One student made walnut syrup a few year ago. Another condensed the steam and sold bottled water labeled as “water made from organic sources.”

FDA prohibits labeling water as organic, but water from organic sources was ok.

I want to try their walnut syrup.

My oldest boiled down 15 gallons yesterday (we've got multiple kinds of maples tapped) and we ended up with this. We've been collecting and boiling for about 2 weeks. Small-time operation.

You can bring your sap to a boil to kill the bacteria that causes it to spoil and let it sit for days in a cool location with no problems. Or keep it stored out of the sun as cold as possible or the sugar level will slowly drop. Started off with a few dozen taps a year back in the late 80’s now nearly a 1000 on vacuum that gives me around 10-15,000 gallons of sap each season. One of my favorite hobbies.

How many of you big time sappers finish off your own syrup for use/sale or sell/trade to processors?