Season Totals

[Ridge777]

I know not everyone is done yet, but I think most of us small guys are as my tree's quit and budded this past weekend. I was just wondering how everyone made out. I collected 502 gallons of sap from 220 taps and made 15 gallons of syrup. If I did my math right that's .44 sap per tap and 33.47 sap to syrup ratio. Not a great year for sap, but the sugar was okay. Overall my totals ended up okay as I only ended up with 3 decent runs for the season. One thing I have learned is you certainly cannot control it when your taps are on gravity. Had fun for sure and will look to improve and grow for next year.

[Webbs Mills]

60 or so taps on gravity.
1 gal L
2 gal M
1 gal XD
Pulled out on 4/10

[Revi]

As a person said on another forum, we had half of a poor season. We ended up with around 16 gallons, which is less than half of what we made last year, but we had a lot of fun and sold enough syrup to keep the shack going next year, so we're happy.

[Maple Ridge]

Pulled everything lase week also. Made 15 gal. Also half of last years total.

[BRL]

We pulled are taps Sunday 4/12 and finished everything up last night for a total of 23 gallons. Time to start getting ready for next year!

[donka]

40 taps or so this season, ended up with a hair over 6 gallons. I keep eying those temps in the 20s later this week and might try to make some cooking grade with sap from my sugar maples if they will still run.

[optionguru]

48 taps this year and only made 3 1/2 gallons. I tapped about 25 too early and then only had 3 or 4 days of decent runs. Already trying to figure out how to improve next year. Have another 30 possible taps for next year and I think I'm going to build one of those small ro's.

[Shawn]

400 taps out two hundred something on gravity feed pipeline and rest on buckets. Tapped out the 19th of Feb. Pulled the plug last Friday afternoon. 25 gallons for this year fifteen short from last. It is what it is. Had a good time, family had a good time along with friends that came by. Mother Nature and weather is a guessing game and that is what keeps us going. Looking ahead for next year now.:cool:

[Loch Muller]

205 Taps and 21 gallons of syrup in the bottles so far. The temp is dropping and it is snowing here right now. I might get some sap out of my sugar maples the next couple days, we'll see if its any good though. The buds still look tight so here's hoping.... Either way I enjoyed myself and learned a lot about how I can improve the efficiency and overall production of my operation.

[tendermason]

185 taps 1000 gallons sap give or take a little.Made 20 gal and pulled all taps sunday.

[Chicopee Sap Shack]

150 ish taps made 16 gal. Don't know what I'm going to do next year with a sap sucker and hopes of a big year. Hoping for 50 gal and long night boiling.


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[Poor Farmer]

Just over eight gallons on about 80 taps. Upgraded from a couple buffet pans to a 2x4, so it made for short weekends compared to the marathons of last year. Given the season, I am glad I put off finishing the RO until next season.

[maple man-iac]

I'm not done yet. Eight hundred taps, down from thirteen hundred last year. Five hundred fifty on vacuum two fifty on gravity tubing. Yield so far is four hundred thirty. It appears that freezing temperatures will be no longer after the up coming morning. I'm hoping the vacuum will produce sap through the weekend and give another hundred gallons of syrup or better.

[garlicguymaine]

12 gallons 1 pint syrup Sap didn't run very good this year. Best run on a hundred taps was 60 gallons sap. Last year I couldn't keep up. Pulled taps early. This year I was ready for it. But just didn't happen. Oh well there next year. Glad to see someone else thought the sugar content was up. Boiled down the frist 60 gallons and got about 2 gallons of syrup.thought I miss counted, maybe not.

[FordHeritageFarm]

320 taps all gravity. made 40 gallons of syrup. Only ended up with 2.5 gallons of light this year. mostly made Med., then dark. Made 5.5 gallons of X-tra dark and made 6 gallons of special E-xtra dark that went right into the pantry!

[Michael Greer]

250 buckets gave me 1625 gallons of sap. I made 56 gallons of syrup, all medium until the last day. Temperatures in the seventies gave me dark syrup, and an excuse to pull the plug in Potsdam, New York.

[arm08260]

100 taps. 60 on gravity and the rest buckets gave me 12.5 gallons. Pretty bad considering I made 11 gallons last year off of 50 taps (all buckets). Had about five good days that was really about it. Did find out though that 100 taps is too many for 18x48. Looking for a 2x8 or 2.5x8 for next year and shooting for 200 taps. Plenty of work to do to the sugar house to get it ready for a bigger rig and running new line to get ready for the 2015 season. Hopefully all that makes the time fly by!


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[RollinsOrchards]

On 1100 taps have so far made 114 gallons of Syrup which works out to a tenth of a gallon per tap. Mostly Dark, very little Medium/Amber. Only a couple of draw offs running Very Dark.

We got below freezing overnight, and the rain turned to snow here. Still have not gotten above freezing at 11am. Supposed to be 20 degrees tonight and touch freezing tomorrow night again. I am predicting a good charge of very dark syrup the next two days. With any luck we will get a little better than a pint per tap before we are done.

[stephen wheeler]

220 taps using about 130 5-gallon buckets. We collected 555 gallons of sap and finished 11.5 gallons of syrup. We found our sugar content to be pretty low last year -and it seemed to be a little worse even this year. When finishing our syrup, we do tend to stay on the high side of the brix scale, our personal preference. :lol:
We have a pretty heavily wooded sugar bush. Some of our maples rarely see the sun. We have a lot of maples that produce well, and some trees that seem to disappoint. They appear to be healthy and good diameter but give small amounts of sap. Perhaps too much shade - time will tell I guess. One area of our woods we have nick-named "shady hollow". We did have some selective cutting done this year - unfortunately the cutting was being done pretty much during the last half of sap season. We were playing musical chairs with our buckets to stay out of the way of the skidder. :( Looking forward to next year however. Many of our maples should get sun and air exposure that they have never had. have a great summer everyone

[maineboiler]

Third season in. 200 taps, drop lines and buckets. Collected 720 gallons of sap ( 1200 last year on 130 taps) and we produced 14 gallons of syrup, 7 gall. medium amber, 5 1/2 dark, 1 1/2 gall. commercial Need to learn the new grading system. Disappointing season but not terrible. The initial runs gave very tasty syrup. I could have hung in there and be collecting this weekend, but having started in mid Feb., I had enough.
Looking forward to making some main lines next year and consolidating some taps. Still lots to learn....

[thirteen]

80 taps 5 gallons syrup. Generally get between 4-5 gallons so at a small scale we got what we have for the past 7 years.
I am using a flat pan so if anyone is upgrading I may be interested in what you have. I have been doing it with propane because I have a 1,000 gallon tank but wood will be cheaper (but more work).
I have more trees I can tap but a 24" x 30" pan is long since maxed out.

[tendermason]

I have a 2x4 mason reverse flow for sale. New this season.

[davrhods]

600 taps on low vacuum half dead red maples 35 gallons half of which is c grade. Will be using c grade to brine roaster pigs this summer and maple bacon.

[Revi]

I left some buckets in to see what we would have gotten yesterday. The sap was yellowish, but still tested at 2 1/2%, so we would have gotten some really dark nasty stuff, which we really don't need. I feel better about pulling out our taps last weekend now.

[chrisnjake9]

300 taps 107 gallons of syrup

[bees1st]

.28 gallons of syrup/ tap . 2/3 on vacuum.

[Loch Muller]

So I'm finally wrapping things up here. 205 taps yielded about 950 gallons of sap, which I converted into approx 25 gallons of syrup (still have to bottle the last 4-5 gallons). 45 tap were on my neighbors land, which doesn't run as good. He got 3.3 gals sap per tap. The 160 I put out got 5 gals sap per tap. One pint per tap is only 1/2 of last years production per tap, but it could be worse. If you average out the last two years I've had 2 decent seasons on average here. Lots of improvements to make for next year.

[Flat Lander Sugaring]

400 taps on sap sucker for half the season than milk pump for the other half, then another 125 on a second sap sucker.
110 gal of good syrup
Approx 15 gal of toilet water.
Poor season to say the least, we should have made 130 on gravity not even considering we had some type of vacuum on everything.
Actually first 10 gal approx came from sap we bought from Randy. Never really got any good runs.

[I Luv Stainless]

With 500 not very sweet (adv. 1.5%) taps on high vacuum, I made 63 gallon this year!
About 1/4 was extra dark.
Not bad compared to some neighbors here in Western Maine.
I'm delighted.

2014 63 gal.
2013 77 gal.
2012 60 gal.
2011 80 gal.

[maple flats]

1250 +/- taps on 17-19" vacuum, only made 176.5 gal, compared to 334.8 gal last year on the same number of taps. I need to make enough to get a better vacuum pump in my bigger bush, so I can get 25"+. That's the bush that is at 17", the best that pump and motor can give, the 19" is on a vacuum tank and I don't dare go higher. That bush is only 409 taps and I'll likely stay with that set-up until after I've gone high vacuum on the bigger bush a year.

[sg5054]

I ended up with 16 gallons off of 125 taps. Same finished product as last year. My new pan worked like a charm as did my gravity feed to the pan. Didn't set the world on fire but I'm satisfied. I was alone this year so I did run myself a bit ragged. Didn't get any light syrup. All of it is A Amber Rich or Robust.
Filtering with cones went perfect. No niter period, clear as can be. Filtered as I drew off the pan and then again right before bottling.

[marktripp]

Today I tasted the sap I had stored and it has gone bad, guess I'm gonna pull the plug on the season. At the end of last year we set a goal of 26 gallons, twice of 2013. We ended just shy at 23.4375 gallons. We had around 125 taps all in the woods on buckets and did buy 450 gallons if sap. Overall a good year, hopefully next year we can upgrade to make things a little faster.
Dark
37 qts
12 pints
6 1/2 pints

Medium
21 qts
18 pints
11 1/2 pints

Fancy
10 qts
9 pints
8 1/2 pints

Have a great summer everyone!!

[abbott]

291 gallons. No Light, lots of Medium, plenty of Dark, a bit of Ex. Dk., and plenty of C. Approx. 760 taps on vacuum and 85 on gravity. It's been a hard season, but we came out ok in the end.

[RollinsOrchards]

We finally got all the way up to a poor year at the end. 157 gallons from 1100 taps. That is 0.143 gal per tap.

[briansickler]

We had low sugar all season 1.5% had 1.7% one day. Total of 192 gal on 800 taps. 30 gal med. 157 gal dark. 5 gal B. Last year we made all light and our sugar content was never below 2% usually higher. Ended up better than I thought we were going to. Glad we added those 500 taps on the north slope. I saved 40 gal of light from last season....good thing.

[Revi]

We didn't make much syrup, but this season was a lot of fun.

[eagle lake sugar]

We had our last boil last night, April 30th. We ended up with 455 gallons, all dark and extra dark. I'm thankful we even got that much in a 3 1/2 week season.

[sg5054]

I ended up with 21 gallons against 110 taps. Half was on 7 5/16 pipelines. Something I have never done before. Didn't have a choice as the snow was to deep for the ATV at the beginning. I was getting averaging 75 gallons a day from the buckets. That would jump by roughly 50 gallons every other day when I collected the barrels hooked up to the lines. All my syrup is dark right from the beginning.
Learned several things this year. The pipeline is definitely the hot ticket. Unfortunately I had to take them down as the house where they were set up has gone into foreclosure. It will be very painful if I lose that location.
I have to find a way to preserve the sap far better than I do now. I have a 300 gallon SS tank on the north side of the shack but still struggle to keep it cold. I also have had it freeze solid. It is under an open shed roof with a cover on it. Gravity feeds to the pan. I'm thinking that enclosing it may help as it would lessen it's exposure to the outdoor temperature swings. Any thoughts out there? The idea of a cold plate in the tank hooked up to a refrigeration unit keeps running through my head.

Second one is what we all wrestle with. Time. Even taking off Wednesday afternoons once the sap started and boiling evenings and weekends too, I struggled to keep up with it.
I'm happy with the yield although I wish it was a touch lighter. Most of all this was a very educational year.

[Ridge777]

Bringing this thread back to life as I was too busy last season to post. Not a great year for me as I missed the first 3 runs of the season. Best run of the season was around 200 gallons in 24 hrs off 225 taps. 75 on 3/16 and balance of buckets. My Red Maples ran at about 2% all season and the few Silvers I have ran at 4% for a week and were done. I had sap envy all season long, as my Red's were very finicky with this seasons temp swings. Only had one batch of medium and the rest was dark. Should end up with 16 gallons or so as I left my 75 on 3/16 hopping for enough to chase the sweet out this weekend. Best thing this season was being able to see my woods with no snow for 2 months and make a real plan for 3/16 next year. Hoping to be at 300 taps 3/16 and maybe 50 on buckets. Way to much labor for one guy with 150 buckets in the woods!!! The fun is over and now it is time to clean up...