Funny smelling sap

[Newbie]

First batch turned out great. Now my second go around has a funny odor while boiling. Usually while boiling it has that sweet vapor smell and this stuff smells bitter. I tasted it and it tastes bitter also. Also seems that a little bit of the foam that forms around the edges seems burnt looking. Can sap go bad in storage in about a week?

[woodey24]

I lost a batch this week. I collected last wed and started to boil mon night. We don't have in the ground storage or anything this year but it felt good and cold.

[madmapler]

First batch turned out great. Now my second go around has a funny odor while boiling. Usually while boiling it has that sweet vapor smell and this stuff smells bitter. I tasted it and it tastes bitter also. Also seems that a little bit of the foam that forms around the edges seems burnt looking. Can sap go bad in storage in about a week?

Sap will go bad in less than a day if it's too Warm.

[chad]

a good way to look at it is treat sap like milk cold it will keep for a little bit warm it will spoil pretty quick

[TooManyIrons...]

I am very careful to sanitize all tap lines, collecting buckets, storage barrels, and miscellaneous equipment at the end of the season and again at the beginning of the next season. All collecting buckets are re-sanitized at least once during the current season. I insulate the storage barrels and have them placed in a cold, dark, insulated room of an outbuilding. The room warms up some from the heat of the day and from the door being opened, so I open a vent on cold nights to chill the room back down. The light is turned on and the door to the room is opened only when accessing.

Sap is filtered when it is poured into the storage barrels to keep out any spoilage-inducing foreign material. I use closed collecting buckets so that no insects end up in the buckets or floating in the sap (I personally detest seeing flies floating in my sap). I taste, smell, and visually inspect each bucket of sap before it is dumped into the storage barrels. Any suspect sap (usually only later in the season), is dumped and the collecting bucket is re-sanitized before using again.

I do not continue to top off storage barrels during sap harvest. Barrels are filled in series, then are emptied completely in correct rotation and re-sanitized before they are refilled again (this is why I intentionally use 55 gallon barrels for storage versus a single large collecting tank). Even with all that effort my goal is to never store sap in the storage barrels for more than 24 hours before it gets processed. That goal is not always met, but it is always a priority in the back of my mind and I do my best. In any case, all the attention to detail allows me some margin so I do not get too concerned about longer storage times if it does happen.

The spoilage clock starts ticking as soon as the sap leaves the tree. During the season I check and empty collecting buckets twice a day religiously so sap stays fresh and does not "cook" in the buckets. During warm, sunny days those collecting buckets can become petri dishes full of colonizing bacteria, which then get dumped into the bulk storage container. For those happy creatures it is like winning the lottery.

Lastly, I do not push the limits. Late in the season I carefully check each bucket before collecting (sight, smell, taste). If there is any hint it is "off" I dump it and pull the tap. I get enough syrup for my needs, I see no need to push the envelope and run batches of mediocre quality stuff.

Even with all that care and effort the sap will spoil eventually. My point of all this is the more attention to detail a person puts into the entire process the better the end product and the less chance for failure, at any step of the syruping process including sap storage. Perhaps my methods are a bit excessive, but I would much rather invest the labor on the front end than waste it on the back end. Cut corners, pay the price.

IMO the worst thing that can happen when syruping is a boil over of near-finished concentrate during the evaporation process. A very close second, though, is having to dump a bunch of spoiled sap you were counting on using and spent a lot of time and effort collecting. Both have happened to me once, I will make every effort to see that neither ever happen to me again.

Wishing success to all in their efforts. :)

[Newbie]

First off thanks for all the advice and replies. It a big help. As for me I prided myself in being the guy who pays close attention to those small details as well. I would smell and make sure each bucket of sap was nice and clear before I would add it to my storage container. I would then filter each bucket out of that container for boiling. Because I have limited storage (soon to add much more) I would only boil each batch down about half way and then filter that again and store that in 5 gallon pails in cold storage. This was done in an effort to boil the raw sap as fast as possible so it wouldn't sit in storage too long. Unfortunate thing is that it did warm up quite quickly here for about a week and I think my raw sap in my main storage barrel sat too long in the warmer temps (few days in the upper 40's to low 50's where my barrel is stored). Didn't have time to boil that week with work. I did finish my initial half boiled stuff and it turned out great. Got just over a gallon of syrup. I collected a total of 105ish gallons of sap on 25 taps. I only have silver maples where I live also. I am sad to say that I boiled down about another 40 gallons which turned out to be my bad batch. Sad day around here having to dump that much. I finished off the remaining sap and it was another good batch of very little syrup. The last stuff was stored in a cooler location. Second year at this and still learning. Kind of becoming an obsession for me. Already acquired more trees for another 40-50 taps next year! Nothing but huge old silvers here but I will take them.

[Newbie]

I should also add that my evaporator is something that leaves much to be desired. I only have a 16 gallon stainless steel pot on a turkey fryer burner. I am planning on an evaporator build soon.