Maple Tree Tapping Time

Tapped my Maple Trees today, looks like the weather over the next 2-weeks will result in a good run in Western Pennsylvania.

How about others around the Country, have you tapped your trees yet?

We got about 25 trees tapped (50 taps) the other day. No much running right now. We are going to tap another 20 trees (40 taps) tomorrow afternoon. Then it is time to get the ro system ready. Probably should pressure wash the sap barrels too.

I tapped a dozen trees last week. A couple are running well others almost nothing at all

You got grass,I still got four feet of snow in my yard.

Been tapping in Eastern Iowa for almost a week. Looks like you have honey bee hobby too.

Taps are all in as of today. tanks are mounted on or in vehicles, pumps are ready. We will go out Thursday. We have sap in buckets that is froze so we have not collected as of yet. We got lucky with enough warm and sun to shrink the snow in the woods so we can walk and travel. Now it is just a waiting game for the weather. Here is wishing a good collection year to all.

Bryce

120 taps in Saturday morning and Sunday mid day collected 120 gallons of sap. Love the outdoors, goes from trapping to tapping to turkeys to fishing to hunting to trapping and do it all over again.

Aren't those trees kind of skinny?
just

Boiling the last of 42 gal now. About 4 more hours if I guess.

seen a few trees tap here

It's going to be a good week here.

WS

We tapped last weekend. I’d like to see some of your guys setups for evaporating!

I tapped my 60 sugar maples last week and boiled for the first time this season yesterday. Didn’t collect as much as I expected. The day prior to boiling, I ran my 160 gallons of 2% sap through my RO bucket system and ended up with 80 gallons of 4%. My RO bucket advertises 10 gph but I did much better. With my flat pan and warming vessel setup, I can evaporate 10 gph. I used1/3 cord of wood (ash) and when I complete my finish boil today, I should have a tad over 3 gallons of syrup. I typically like to boil twice the volume to make it worth while cleaning all my equipment but I was anxious. Below are a few Picts of my setup. I gave up trying to orientate photos...sorry.

15 degrees today with the next warmup (sap flow) beginning on Monday.

Tapped 5 trees last thursday afternoon . Tapped 6 more friday . Saturday collected around 15 gallons of sap . Sunday got another 10 gallons of sap . Monday got 5 gallons . Made appx 1/2 gallon of syrup so far .

I just have a pan like the one above. It sets on a grate on concrete blocks. I'm having trouble determining gal per hr because that depends on outside temps an temp of fire.
It works much better than my old water bath canners I used to use but it used to much wood and i would still like it to be faster.

I thought about buying a commercial evaporator but for the price of the cheapest one I could buy a very nice welder and build my own.

I have two thoughts on this. Build a steel box from scratch bug enough for my evaporator pan and a Lee warmer pan. I would line it with fire brick. The door, air control and hole for the pipe would be the worst part. So for that to make it easy and fast I could just buy a barrel stove kit and use the pieces for that on the one i built.

In the same thought pattern i could make a barrel stove cut the top off and weld a piece of steel to make it flat on the top for the pan. But honestly i think that will be more work and not as nice as building one and using the parts from a kit for the door and exhaust.

Then I can control the air flow and reduce wood consumption and I won't have to tend it as often adding wood every hour to hour and a half to keep it hot.

dino, could you explain your method of concentrating sap. are you letting the sap partly freeze , then discarding the ice and keeping the concentrated sap to boil. My friend does something similar. . puts buckets of sap in an old freezer , lets it partly freeze then discards the ice. . Nice set up you have, good spring project. Lots of visiting can go on around a sap boiler. old243

Here in Canada we still have to wait a while longer. Thanks for the pics everyone!! Getting my fired up!

Providance

Here is how I have mine set up on the cheap..one barrel has two steam tray pans cut in it. The other has big restaurant pan I got at an auction. I use old grill racks scavenged from dump in the bottom barrels. I also use fan off cook stove hood with piece rain gutter pipe as a blower in the bottom..
Not fancy by any means but works ok for the couple 2-3 days I cook.. I use the 3 stainless buckets I have to preheat sap before dump into the pans. I start boiling down in double steam pan stove. Then move that sap to the bigger pan to concentrate there. Once I get everything I'm cooking in the big pan. I run it until gets close to syrup then move it to my LP cooker so can watch it closer..
This is crude by lot people standards. but i really got very little cost in it. It actually helps me clean up wood on my property that I'd just burn in brush pile.





Mac

Did you weld steel in for your pants to sit on or just sit them over the hole?

I dump ice accumulating in buckets...sugar will increase in the remaining sap. I use the ice to keep sap buckets or storage area cold. This is my first year using a reverse osmosis system...it cuts my boiling in half! A refractometer is very helpful to determining the sugar content...$18 on Amazon.

And yes, lots of visitors during the boil...unfortunately not as many visitors during sap collection!!

In regards to the ro systems. My set up will yield 12-14% with a starting percentage of 1.8. If I am getting behind I can run it faster at a lower finished percentage. It takes about 7 hours for me to reduce 50 gallons of sap to 7 gallons of finished ro.

Here is a link to the site that I used to build my ro system.

https://sites.google.com/view/mattatuckmadnessmaplesyrup/parts-list-for-ro

I still got some of those old cow milker buckets from the farm.

I cut the barrel so the pans just fit in on long side edges. Then bent the metal down on barrel short side of pan. So the pan is setting on the lip I bent back into the barrel..So yes really just sitting over hole I cut..Does that description make sense? The doors on the barrels are just the pieces I cut out. Sheet metal screws holding small hings where cut out came from.. I really don't close doors much. I run the blower in the bung hole on bottom below the door or even right in the door..
I did screw some metal I cut out back along the edge of the big pan. That was more about the amount of smoke coming up along side the pan, thean holding it. Had some fine white ash coming up there falling into the pan. My set up is not air tight around the pans so smoke and small bit soot does come up around them. But most draws up the stacks and I try to set up so wind is not back over pans.
The only thing I welded was the stands to hold the barrels. Made it from pipe and stuff had in my scrap pile. Like said only use them barrels stoves 3-4 days a year to cook sap. The rest the year they sit along side the small shed in left of the photo. I saw this set up several years ago when I did syrup for the first time using LP. Wanted to play around like I do with a lot of things. Use my wood burn up some of my brush and older wood piles. Just use LP to finish cooking. The only thing I bought was the pans at restaurant auction. Barrels I got were new but given to me along with 3 nice stainless bucket. Rest the iron and stuff I scrounge out my stuff.
Just Remembered I did buy the stack boot I cut in back the barrel..Originally had the old blue type pipe I scrounged from some where. That rusted away sitting around second year so I did buy the pipe in pcture.



Mac