Tapped in the Twin Cities

[RileySugarbush]

We finally are seeing a little sap flow. About half the 45 taps we put in today were running slowly right after drilling. The first 25 we put in are mostly dry with a few running very slowly. It's been a strange season, but I guess they all are in one way or another. Looks like a good week ahead.

[Jim Powell]

I tapped a dozen of my smaller trees about 5 days ago, using the 5/16ths taps. NOT a drop yet, but I'm getting lots of "puttering" done.

[Jim Powell]

Thanks to Rileys sage advice, I tapped the rest of my trees today. There is some flow in the previous buckets, and there was considerable flow this afternoon when drilling etc. Riley, looks like we are off to the races in western Hennepin County.

[RileySugarbush]

Boil number two is under our belt. It was nice to meet Trader Jim Powell tonight. Went through 120 gallons at about 35gph, ending up with 3.5 gallons of flavorful medium. I'm heading to Mexico for a week, so the rig is in the capable hands of the rest of the cooperative. I hope there is still some sap and wood left when I return.

[Jim Powell]

Well ALL of my trees are finally "awake". A new record collection for my 40 something taps at 50 gallons today. I went up this morning expecting not to find much after collecting about 15 gallons yesterday, but some of the sacks were almost full, and only one of the trees had not given up a nice flow.

I went back a little while ago and pulled out another 10 gallons. Looks like tomorrow will be a busy day too. I'm tasting the sap very often, and almost every tree, but no sign of any buddy trace.

I also bottled all of my production for the season so far yesterday, about 6 gallons. I'll put some photos on flicker soon on the filter equip. I had one issue with 6 cloudy bottles, which got dumped into the next batch, but other than that, I'm fairly pleased.

[lpakiz]

Last year the season was basically 2 parts. The second part started after some extremely warm days and nights. I was really on the alert for buddy sap--I smelled, tasted every pail, even boiled some on the stove and smelled the steam. Not a trace of off-smell. Well, I boiled a batch and it smelled normal for almost the whole boil. (I do "batches" about 55 gallons per batch)
Near the end of a boil, the steam smelled a little off. As I got the pan lower and lower, the smell got worse and worse. Long story short--the syrup was not fit to use. Very "metallic" or "aluminum" taste to it. I was gonna dump it but a neighbor said he would take it to a commercial buyer and sell it. I did get a few $$ for it, but don't think I will make any of that stuff again. Unless this idea of Jim's works to remove the funny taste from it. We'll see...

Larry