Slightly cloudy sap

[bowtie]

I have been boiling for 6 years now and I usually know when sap is bad but how "cloudy" is too cloudy. If I see a sheen on the top I dump it but i can see the bottom of my collection buckets(5gallon food grade) but it is murky. What would you do? I am wondering if my buckets are starting to get bacterial build up in them and I am going to clean them up with paper towels and anti-bacterial wipes tomorrow or Wednesday because my trees are not budding yet and the forecast looks good at the end of the week. My trees are poor runners for the most part I have made about 11 gallons from 200 taps so far, so I hope to continue to collect as long as the sap is good. Would love to have 200 trees that could produce 75 gallons of syrup. Last year I had 315 taps and only made about 20 gallons. I have a lot of reds that produce 5-7 gallons of sap a year vs the 15 that is seems a lot of guys are getting from sugars or on line. Boy it would make it a lot easier to collect more sap from less trees. Hoping to go to lines next year and increase tap count up to 500, unless I can find another sugar bush with mainly all sugars.

[Cedar Eater]

I would boil a cup of it down and see how the steam smells and how the syrup tastes. It doesn't sound too bad. Syrup will probably be dark.

[jasminesugardaddy]

this is my third year and last year we tossed a bunch of sap that was slightly cloudy. this year we have been boiling it unless it gets too warm for too long. honestly have not had to toss any this year mostly because i'm being much less picky(and collection obsessive). also storin in a 300 gal tank has made me not be able to worry as much. needed to say, all my syrup has been great this year. i just keep a rotation of sap frozen into blocks in the tank to keep it all cold.

[Russell Lampron]

Go ahead and boil it. I make a lot of good syrup with cloudy sap. It has been cloudy here for a week and the syrup I'm making still tastes great. I can't seem to get the color to darken but the flavor has gone back to the Amber/Rich taste.

[berkshires]

I had a batch of sap during a warm spell that got cloudy. It had a very very slight off smell/taste that I thought might go away as syrup, so I boiled down a cup of it to syrup. The taste just intensified - still mild, but definitely unpleasant, so I dumped the whole batch of sap. Also the consistency of the syrup was funny - too much solids in it it seemed like.

GO