Am I pushing my luck?

[girmann]

Tapped two trees 3/7 and I have two gallons of sap. I'd like to get to four gallons by the time the season ends, but since this is my first tap I don't really know what "buddy" sap is or what the "off smell" smells like.

The sap has been running clear and seems to be sweet, but I'm nervous about reading about all of these people pulling their taps. Should I keep collecting? What happens if I add bad sap to the batch? FWIW, I picked trees that were in partial shade, thinking that I could get more of a season out of them.

(I hesitated to ask this in the beginner forum only because I thought this might be location specific. I'll repost it there if this isn't appropriate)

[grinch5010]

When I started a few years ago I had the same questions. Believe me, you will know the first time you start to get bad sap. Turns cloudy first, then starts to turn yellow. The first year I dumped anything that was cloudy or yellow. Last year I boiled some of the cloudy sap and made a final batch of cooking syrup. I wouldnt mix the two unless you do not care if the syrup is dark and strong in flavor. Hope that helps, good luck.

[mathprofdk]

I'm a beginner, too, and I struggle with the "bad sap" question. In my case, it was whether it had gone bad from sitting too long - the temperatures were above 50 here for 5 days, and I had to be gone for the weekend and couldn't boil down.

I essentially followed grinch's suggestions, and used a strategy that another poster had written - he/she said that if they could see the bottom of the pail, they used it. I had sap from a series of days, and I could definitely tell just by looking in the pails that they were getting cloudier. I ended up cooking must, but dumping the last 3 (out of 8). You might consider collecting in individual smaller containers and labeling or sorting by date.

Also, the 5 buckets that I ended up cooking were all cloudy. The syrup ended up really dark, but who cares? I'm not selling it, I'm just eating it! (And giving it away.) It still tastes great, so I'm not worried. Any bacteria in it is long dead and probably filtered out, so no worries there, either.

The risks for cooking bad sap are the flavor and the color. If you're just cooking down a few gallons, the latter shouldn't be a concern, so just worry about the flavor. And start tasting your sap now, since this stuff is likely fine. As the season progresses, you'll probably notice a difference.

Good luck!

~DK

P.S. If anyone with more experience comes on here and contradicts me, please ignore all of the above advice and listen to them!

[girmann]

Thanks for the suggestions!

I've been tasting the sap all this time, and it's surprising how sweet it tastes. I boiled down yesterday's sap for an hour (ran out of propane...). I would say it reduced by probably 1/4 and the sap started taking on that classic maple flavor.

I'm guessing that it wouldn't taste like that if it was bad?

[mathprofdk]

I'm guessing that it wouldn't taste like that if it was bad?

Right. At least, that's what I understand from reading through other threads. As far as I know, if it tastes OK, you're good!

~DK

[TF Maple]

Other people have said that buddy sap smells like old wet socks when you cook it. I have never experienced it since it seems like my trees stop running before the sap gets a bad flavor. I even collected sap when the flower buds on the maple trees were completely open and it was fine. The taps did dry up shortly after that though.