Number of Taps vs Finished Quarts

[nhmaple_enthusiast]

I remember years ago the Old Timer's saying in a really good year you should end up with 1 quart of finished syrup per tap. I'm a backyarder and only set 35 taps and have never been close to that ratio.......until this year. Maybe a longer season, maybe near perfect conditions, but batch boiling on a 2' X 4' divided pan I was able to finish up with 34 quarts. Quite happy with the result and I probably shut down a day or two early. Anybody have a similar good year?
Tim

[The Heldeberg Sapper]

Upstate NY here in the hills outside of Albany. This season was kind of a roller coaster with things starting off well and then we had a big warm up in March (like 5 days in a row in the 60s and not freezing overnight) but the trees survived and came back strong. I tapped on 2/20/22 and pulled the taps on 4/5/22. From 4/1 to 4/5 i made a third of the years syrup, things were flowing very well. But overall it ended up being a great year for me, i had 51 taps and made 16.5 gallons, which works out to be about a third of a gallon per tap. All of my syrup ended up grading as Amber, and i hit the upper and lower limits of the amber range. Last year i was on 30 taps and made 7 gallons.

[ennismaple]

I remember years ago the Old Timer's saying in a really good year you should end up with 1 quart of finished syrup per tap. I'm a backyarder and only set 35 taps and have never been close to that ratio.......until this year. Maybe a longer season, maybe near perfect conditions, but batch boiling on a 2' X 4' divided pan I was able to finish up with 34 quarts. Quite happy with the result and I probably shut down a day or two early. Anybody have a similar good year?
Tim That was before modern production systems, high vacuum, natural vacuum, disposable spouts etc... My father made 1 L per tap (just more than a quart) once in his life. We now average well over that.

[wiam]

We have made 510 gallons on 995 taps. Will boil out rig today and get a few more.

[motowbrowne]

I've always heard that a quart per tap was the average for buckets or tubing without vacuum. I'm sure it varies by region though.

My neighbor last year put out 100 taps on 3/16 with a big slope. He hauled me a bit over 4000 gallons of sap, making over a gallon of syrup per tap! I had been doing real well averaging about half a gallon per tap with my 3/16 and shurflo setup, but that was enough to convince me to ditch my shurflo pumps and swing for the fences with a rotary vane pump and electric releaser for my 300 taps.

I'm at a bit over 9000 gallons of sap for the season so far and right about .8 gpt. We've got another week to go it looks like, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed to hit a gallon per tap. I have brand new tubing this year, so I know it may not happen again, but it sure would be something to hit that number once in my life!

[berkshires]

I'm all on buckets, and I get a little over 11G sap per tap in an average year. But my sugar content is lower than those further north it seems, so that nets me a hair under a quart per tap.

There's a lot of variability (duh) from season to season. My best year I average 0.3 GPT, and my worst season 0.18 GPT.

GO

[ebliese]

I know the North American Maple Syrup Producer's Manual mentions the quart of finished syrup per tap in a bucket operation. We have been pretty close to that. Last year we had 50 taps and got 13.5 gallons of syrup. This year we had 100 taps and got 23.5 gallons of syrup.

[berkshires]

Then there are the trees that are major outliers.

I have one tree that is pure maple gold. I had measured the sugar percent from it before, and it puts out sap with more than three times the sugar of my low-sugar sugar maples. But this year, for the first time, I measured how much sap I got from it. It came in at a whopping 80 gallons of sap. That's with buckets - no vacuum. And on the day I shut down, it was still pushing out high-quality sap (four gallons in under 24 hrs) when every other tree was shutting down. It is very big, so it gets three taps. Still, that's an average of 27 gallons per tap, or an average of 10 gallons per run. So every run it puts out a quart of syrup. Sure would be nice if all my trees were like that!

GO

[Geroldn]

I started with all 5/16 line and a single 1/2” mainline (no vacuum) and averaged about 0.2-0.25 gallons per tap with ~120 taps. I since converted to all 3/16” and have around 260 taps. Each line has 19-25 taps on it and runs downhill to the collection tank with about 100’ elevation drop. I have vacuum gauges at the top of each line that routinely have 22-30” of vacuum. (Cheap Amazon gauges, I know 30” isn’t possible). I now get 0.3 to 0.33 gpt. The sap rarely is over 1.7% sugar. I made 86 gallons of syrup so I’m happy.

[SeanD]

My neighbor last year put out 100 taps on 3/16 with a big slope. He hauled me a bit over 4000 gallons of sap, making over a gallon of syrup per tap!

Wow! That's incredible.

[motowbrowne]

Wow! That's incredible.

I probably wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen every load myself. His poor half ton pickup was begging for mercy. Crazy thing was that it wasn't even that great of a season for most people in our area. I told him to expect half of that this year. I'm sure glad he did it though. It was a real eye opener for me, and I have zero regrets about the money I spent on upgrades as a result.

[M&M Maple Grove]

This is directly correlated to the fact that they are brand new lines. Please update us next year with his final results. It would be a great field test to add to the forum.

Another thing I recently noticed looking at my syrup samples was the improved color/grade with new lines. I was able to make golden Amber the whole season on my first year of 3/16 tubing. Five seasons later, I can see from the samples I went straight to dark syrup the next year, and I have gradually hit darker stages, earlier throughout the years.

[dogpatch]

Production for my 183 taps was 3910 gallons of sap yielding 78 gallons of syrup for 1.7 quarts of syrup per tap. We had 2 stretches of too cold weather cut my output.

[motowbrowne]

This is directly correlated to the fact that they are brand new lines. Please update us next year with his final results. It would be a great field test to add to the forum.

Another thing I recently noticed looking at my syrup samples was the improved color/grade with new lines. I was able to make golden Amber the whole season on my first year of 3/16 tubing. Five seasons later, I can see from the samples I went straight to dark syrup the next year, and I have gradually hit darker stages, earlier throughout the years.

Alright, my neighbor is coming by to bottle up his share today, so I did the math on his sap. He hauled me 2254 gallons of sap from the same 100 taps that have him 4000+ last year. I did decline his last load of 75 gallons this year because I was plum tuckered out. So you could call it 2330. Interestingly, his production dropped off at the end versus mine and our other neighbor. Kinda strange because he used new CV spouts whereas the other guy is using plastic seasonal spouts that are 2-3 years old. In any case, Tim had good sugar content, and his 2254 gallons of sap made 69.9 gallons of syrup. Not a gallon per tap like last season, but nothing to complain about either!