Posted: 2/12/2013 7:15:57 AM EDT
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Anybody tapped any Maples/Birch/Sweet gum trees yet?
We have tapped 8 Sugar maples, with 12 taps. We usually run for about 3-4 weeks and get 3-4 gallons of syrup and turn another 1-2 gallons into maple sugar. Temps were wrong for the trees to run today. Should pick back up after tonight? I have 32 gallons/sap waiting to boil right now. Yesterday we had 2 trees that gave 5 gallons each , while 6 others gave a total of 3 gallons. Some trees run, while other tinkle. 3/6 We have a little over 3 gallons of syrup and 25 + pds of sugar, with another 60 gallons of sap to boil . It has been a good year, but lots of starts and stops. We will pull our taps after the snow starts melting Thursday. |
| its to early for us as well but I have a few trees that have been tapped for a long time (100 plus years probably) I dont know how to do it but the nieghbors up the street asked if they could tap our trees and I agreed as long as they teach me how. We will see how it goes since last year was a bad year for maple syrup. |
Don't want to highjack the thread, but have a quick question..... This is our third year doing this on on a small scale (less than 10 trees). I cooked down ten gallons last night and I've just gone by visual in the past. It's hard to tell if it's ready while it's hot.... I poured a quart of it into a jar thinking it would be WAY too thin... only to come home and find much of it crystalized. Can I heat it and dump it back into some fresh sap and "fix" it? Second, how do you guys decide when it's "done"? Doing as little as we do it don't make much sense to buy a bunch of equipment.
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Usually it will foam heavily right as it is finishing off. You could also buy a hydrometer to test when is actually syrup.
I am just learning about most of this stuff this year but have been working with a friend that has been doing it for a while. We have been running two homemade barrel stove evaporators for the last two weekends and have made over three gallons of syrup. I have caught the bug and am probably going to purchase a better evaporator for next season. |
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Quoted:
Can I heat it and dump it back into some fresh sap and "fix" it? Second, how do you guys decide when it's "done"? Doing as little as we do it don't make much sense to buy a bunch of equipment. Yes, heat it up and the crystals should melt, then thin it out a bit.... Syrup Hydrometers are not that expensive |
| My neighbors at the new place tapped our trees this year, I guess they already have over 100 gallons of sap, we have some big old Maple trees that have been tapped for at least the last 100 years or so... When I get a chance the neighbor is going to show us how to do it and how to boil it down in exchange for letting him tap the trees. |
this crap they sale at the stores in the mid-atlantic sucks.