Buying sap

[wilson maple]

I have been thinking about buying sap this year and I was wondering if any body had any ideas on what I should pay per gallon. I have had a couple of people contact me about bringing me sap for some syrup then once they get a couple of gallons of syrup they want me to buy there sap. How many gallons of sap should I charge per gallon of syrup? I was thinking about 120 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup and they supply there own jugs. Hope you can help me.

[mapletbdf]

wilson look through an old maple news for a sap price .
price depends on sugar and condition see if they will sell on halfs 60/40 70/30 ect so you do not have to spend any money

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

The "Maple Digest" publishes sap prices each year in Feb. I also am looking at purchasing sap and have told potential clients I would go by that chart. I have also told them that I will return syrup to them in their container at bulk price as of June 1.

[markcasper]

I pay half of what the bulk price is to the sap producer. I offer to pay at the end of the season. I also offer to hold the syrup until later in the year and then give them the increase based on what the price has done. I have never seen syrup go down later in the year, so they opt just to collect payment later.

[Toby]

I tap about 800 trees and sell the sap. The first year i sold it for 10 cents/point and that didnt pay too well! The last 2 years I sold it for 45% of the value of the bulk syrup. That worked much better!

[KevintheHobbit]

I was at the Addison County Maple School in VT this past weekend and I heard folks talking about buying/selling sap for around $0.40/gal. I don't know what that would translate into for sap to syrup (100 gal of sap for 1 gal of syrup if syrup is selling for $40 a gal?).

I didn't pay too much attention to the conversations, so I don't know how hard and fast that number is.

Kevin

[maplwrks]

Kevin, The price of sap depends on the bulk price of syrup. The higher the price of syrup the more that sap is worth. It also depends on the sugar content of the sap. Once again the higher the sugar content, the more it is worth. 2.5% sap at $2.60 a pound means that sap is worth $.35 a gallon. 3% sap at the same $2.60 a pound is worth $.52. it does take long to see that a couple of % points makes a huge difference in you sap check!