Sap storage question?

[psparr]

Just started sugaring this winter. (I'm An addict now)

Question: I tap at the cabin and only get there on the weekends. There is a natural spring that i would like to use to keep the sap cool. I could run a fair number of taps to plastic drums, and surround the drums with the water from the spring. Would that be cool enough to keep the sap?
Thanks for your responses.

[slammer3364]

might work Iam in Pa also and store my sap in a shed on the norht side of garage,sometime it will freeze up and I throw the ice out,as the people on the site have done sugar content on ice and it is almost nill. You would need food grade barells and lids. We collect everyday,I just think it is kind of iffy to run it in all week. Good Luck maybe somebody els can give you abetter idea.

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Using cold spring water or any other method to keep the sap cooler will slow bacterial growth and increase "shelf life" of your sap. Temperatures below 40 degrees are best and if sap is coming into your barrels warmer than that, the faster it cools the better.

[maple flats]

That will definately help. What is the spring's temp in maple season?
You might keep an eye open for an original SS milk cooler. I have one I use as a normal tank, but it has an inner and outer tank, with water flow between the layers. The in-feed is at the bottom and the outlet is towards the top. This was originally meant to cool milk where they had no refrigeration. One like this would be great. You could also design something to do the same thing, like take a stock tank or something taller even better, run your inlet from the spring in the bottom at one end and let it overflow on the opposite end. Then place your sap tank in it. Remember to use sturdy hold downs because the empty inner tank will want to float out until it has enough sap in it.

[maple flats]

I know a local producer who saves ro'd concentrate (normally a no-no because of concentrated micro organisims too) for 2 days by storing it in a functioning milk tank and cooling it to 30 degrees. I saw this 2 yrs ago, near season's end. I was finished for the season and my wife and I went to see his operation on the weekend. He was boiling sap on Saturday that had been collected mon-Thursday, RO'd on Thursday, stored in operating milk tank at 30 degrees and boiled on Saturday. He was still making Medium Amber. He said he does this for open house weekends so he can boil longer when visitors are there. This guy has a huge following and gets literally thousands of visitors each day of his open houses. I don't think he refrigerates his sap but he does have his tanks in open, extremely well ventilated rooms where no sun can get to them, he just refrigerated the concentrate.
This guy is a master of agrotourisim, in maple as well as his summer and fall crops and Christmas tree sales. He is set up for and receives multiple bus loads of visitors at the same time in season.

[psparr]

Thanks for the input. I would assume the water would be somewhere around 40-50 degrees coming out of the ground. Not as cold as nighttime temps but probably better than daytime temps. I had 50 taps last season on buckets, but only made 2 gallons of syrup because the sap collected during the week went bad. I would have to dump what I had, collect for two days and boil my *** off. I also didn't tap till late in the season and it was warming up too much.