Newbe question a bout sap in bags

[Bombadil]

How long do you let it sit in the bags? Do you wait till they fill up? I have , aybe a gallon of sap which is really not enough to boil down.

[Run Forest Run!]

Hi Bombadil. Welcome! The sap needs to stay cool. If you'd like to leave it in the bag, that's OK as long as your evening temperatures are cold. Otherwise, collect the sap and put it in your fridge or freezer until you've got enough collected to boil.

[BigPine]

Bombadil
One gallon of sap will not produce much syrup.
At a DNR sappin class 20 years ago we learned a method to keep the sap cool.
On the north side of a building (or anywhere with mostly shade) we dug in our sap storage container(s) and packed snow around it. If you can dig all the way to the ground this will help. We would pile snow up throughout the winter in the spot we wanted and in the shade it lasted most of the 'season'.
With our recent temps, if your container is on the ground and in the shade you will not have spoilage problems (even with no snow).


we used for years.

[Bombadil]

How many gallons do you hold before starting to boil?Take note I mostly have silvers.

[SilverLeaf]

Another trick to keeping sap cool is to take icecream pails and freeze sap to create sap-ice blocks to put in your sap storage container. The very first sap I get each year gets frozen for this purpose. I actually freeze 5-gal pails of it, as I use 55-gallon drums for sap storage. You still dont want to let sap sit around too long, but it definitely helps lengthen the time you can store it.

[Run Forest Run!]

That depends. How do you plan to boil the sap?

[Bombadil]

I have 2 full 6 inch deep chafing on a wood fired barrel stove.

[Run Forest Run!]

I have 2 full 6 inch deep chafing on a wood fired barrel stove.

I have the shorter 4" chafing pans and, for reference, each will hold about 12 quarts (4 gallons). Yours are 2" taller than mine so they'll hold more than that - maybe closer to 5 or 6 gallons each. Since you are going to go to all the work of starting a fire and dirtying your pans, if it were me I'd wait until I had at least enough to fill both of the pans and even more in reserve to add to the pans as the sap boils down. So, perhaps a minimum starting point of 20 gallons (ish)...... Hope that helps a bit.