Store 'til boil?

[A_Sugarin'_Fool]

I'm in Ohio and this will be my first year attempting to make my own liquid gold. I'll start slow this year and will only have 3-4 taps. It would be great if I could end the season with a half gallon.

Does everyone really boil their sap daily? I probably won't really have the time to boil until the weekends. Is there a way to store the sap throughout the week until I can boil on Saturday?

In advance, thanks for the feed back.

[Groves]

I don't boil daily, for sure. I wait until "I have enough". Sometimes this is going on two weeks.

The main concern is the bacteria that grow, which doesn't ruin the syrup, but can make it ropey. Of course, if the sap does go too long, then it does ruin the syrup. It's a natural product and will mold like anything else.

Keep it cool as you can, let us know how long you go and how the syrup turns out.

[red maples]

yes there are folks that boil daily...the sooner the better and the sooner the better quality os syrup you'll make. because bacteria builds up pretty quick and can spoil or at least eat up your sugar in the sap. one rule that many producers have is the day you collect is the day you boil(as long as you enough sap to boil)

but with 3-4 taps storage shouldn't be that much of a problem you can store it in the coolest place you can find outside mainly on the north side of the house what ever as long as its out of direct sunlight and cover it with snow. what I did last year was too put into the 5 gallon water bottles only fill 3/4 full to allow for expansion and put them in my chest freezer. and that worked and rotate them out side I could fit 2 at a time in there. and I had 25 taps. and boiled as soon as I had about 35-40 gallons if I knew that the temps were right and there was a good run I would plan to boil that night. just set up a light stuck some beers in the snow and listen to coyotes down in fields and have fun. 5 gallons per hour thats an all day job on a roasting pan!!!

there are many threads on this subject too. Do a search and you should find lots..also search "batch boiling" their might be some stuff there too.

good luck.

[Toblerone]

We routinely wait until we have enough sap to boil. I have about 50 taps at an educational farm so we have to schedule our boiling for every Saturday to allow for staff and the programming calendar. If it turns out that our sap is about to go bad or we just have too much, we will try to boil some in the middle of the week as well. I like to think of sap as the same as milk in terms of spoiling. If you think milk will go bad under the current storage conditions, then the sap probably will too.

Good Luck,
Dave

[emo]

When to boil can also depend on what you are using to boil with. I use 3 steam table trays and it takes about 5 gallons of sap just to fill the trays, so I wait till I have at least 12-15 gallons of sap before I boil to make it worth while. Whatever you boil in, don't let the level get too low or it can burn quick.

[backyardsugarer]

You can also get what you have up to a boil to kill the bacteria and shut it down. That buys you some time.

Chris

[Goggleeye]

Does anybody have any thoughts on what temps should start creating concern? I, too, think of it as milk. I go under the assumption that if the temp of the sap remains below 40-42 F that it will hold for 1 to 1 1/2 weeks. Correct assumption or not?

My method of keeping it cold is to place in a 55 gallon barrel with a large removable lid. I freeze ice cream buckets of sap and drop in the top as a big ice cube to keep things cool, not to mention I wrap the barrel with scrap insulation.

[Toblerone]

40-42 seems a tad high for 1 to 1.5 weeks. Most refrigerators are below 40 I think. If you are looking to stretch it to 1.5 weeks, I'd definitely shoot for as close to 32 as possible.

[red maples]

most refrigerator are between 38 and 42 so average 40. I don't think I would like it to sit 1.5 weeks.

[Buckeye mapler]

with a five gallon block of sap ice, I would say the rest of the sap is staying pretty dang cold though. That's not a bad idea, although bringing it to a boil to kill bacteria before storing is nice too. Maybe we should hold on to our hobby evaps we all started with and we can use them to boil on when the sap is short!!!!!:lol:

[Dennis H.]

The 1st year I was like you only a few trees, so what I did was take a few 1 liter soda bottles and fill them with water and freeze them.
I stored my sap in a new clean 35gal rubbermaid trash can. If we had snow I would pile snow all around the trashcan and I would make a pile nearby with more snow so I would have a surplus.
Then I would throw in a few frozen soda bottles. Everyday I would pull them out and put in freshly frozen ones then.
You may even see some ice in the sap this is good. leave the ice till you are ready to boil then toss it out it you want when you are going to boil it is just water.

I was able to keep sap for several days without any problems, the colder the better.

Even if I didn't have enough sap to boil down to syrup I would boil what sap I had to the least amount I could then store it in the freezer or just like I said above. When you get more sap do it again. Boiling will kill all the nasty stuff in the sap and what starts to grow while you are waiting till the next boil.

Clear as mud right?:D

[KenWP]

I wonder if anybody ever thought of a sap pasturizing system for sap. Seems if you could pour it through it first then store it would cut down the bacteria a bit.

[smitty76]

The first thing that come to my mind is that instead of 10 taps, put in 30 and dump what you dont use. It is just like milk to store and the colder the better. Also try to keep it out of the light as that is enough to grow the bad stuff even if it is cold. I do not like to keep it a day or two unless I get alittle and then we get a freeze for a few days that stops the flow and freezes ever thing up tite.

[A_Sugarin'_Fool]

I appreciate everyone's feedback!

My thought is that I'm going to use tubing to 3 gal buckets. I'll empty those daily into a larger container i.e. a new trashcan that will be wrapped with insulation and toss in some ice bottles. That way the sap will stay cold and out of light. Then I'll boil down on the weekends.

I have a 27" and 33" diameter maples that I plan to tap - 2 taps each. How much sap should I expect to gross from each tree on a daily basis? If I have 2 tubes running to a 3 gal bucket for each respective tree, I'm assuming that will be a large enough container as long as I empty it every day. Safe assumption?

[A_Sugarin'_Fool]

We routinely wait until we have enough sap to boil. I have about 50 taps at an educational farm so we have to schedule our boiling for every Saturday to allow for staff and the programming calendar. If it turns out that our sap is about to go bad or we just have too much, we will try to boil some in the middle of the week as well. I like to think of sap as the same as milk in terms of spoiling. If you think milk will go bad under the current storage conditions, then the sap probably will too.

Where abouts in Columbus are you? You should come out an visit us in Blacklick. Contact Sr. Diane at http://www.shepherdscorner.org/ to see when we are boiling.

Good Luck,
Dave

Dave, I'm based in Hilliard. I checked out the website and what a cool place. I'll be sure to contact Sr. Diane to find out your schedule for boiling. My kids would probably love to check out the farm.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

The 9 quart aluminum sap buckets work great. Freeze a couple every day full of sap and throw them in the sap and the ice comes out of them quickly due to the taper going from bigger at top to smaller at the bottom. I have a 625 gallon milk tank sitting in the sugarhouse which is almost always colder inside than outside with a full concrete floor and is on the north side of the hill. I try to throw 3 to 4 a day in it when I am storing sap for a few days. Usually within a couple of minutes they ice is thawed enough to dump and refill with sap and back in the deep freezer.

[Bemis]

I hope I can offer some perspective on this. I have boiled weekly or every other week for the past two years. I usually fire up the cinder block arch with about 30 - 50 gal. of sap. I only have the weekends, so there is really no other option. Unless things really heat up (March 70 degree day), I've never had any problems keeping sap that long. I store what I have in 32 gal. Rubbermaid (Food Grade!) cans. Last year I boiled during a warm spell where the sap was starting to "work". Made wonderful grade B that was the best of the year. Don't worry much, store things in food grade materials, and panic if temperatures get above 50F for a significant amount of time.

Cheers

[Bucket Head]

I have more questions than answers on this topic, and I'll tell you what we do, so here it goes.

For years, we've held sap during the week and boiled Fri. evening through Sun. evening (not continuous). As long as its "refrigerator-like" cold outside, we had no problems. Yes, we made more dark syrup, but it was still Gr. A. The sap from Mon. and Tues. started to look a little cloudy by Fri., but not bad. We would always boil the oldest first. With more taps, we now will boil on Weds. eve. if were swimming in sap. Once the weather started to warm up, we would boil more often if we had a lot of sap. Maybe take a day off from work if needed. We still did fine that way. So storing sap works alright, but boiling it sooner is always better.

Just recently at the N.Y maple conference I listened to a large producer tell of of an experiment he conducted. He recirculated a tank of sap( I assume a refrigerated stainless bulk tank's worth) through an Oesco brand U.V. light( the big $3000 unit that Cornell Univ. claims is the only one out there that does a "complete kill" on bacteria) for I think five days and then boiled it. He said he made the same grade syrup as what he made each day during the recirculating time. He tested sugar and had no sugar loss. It certainly got me thinking on the sap storage dilema some of us have.

Now for the questions. First, why don't more people treat sap like this and boil on weekends when time is'nt at such a premium? If you could keep a tank of sap at say, 38 degrees, and kill bacteria close to 100%, you could keep it indefinately, right? What about R.O. use? Could'nt you collect and RO the sap each night, keep it at just above freezing, and then come the weekend you would be all set and ready to go? Or at least keep the untreated sap till the weekend and then RO it as you need it. I realize this plan would'nt work for someone with 10,000 taps, but it would for a guy with a few hundred taps and a regular day job.

Like I said, this has got me thinking. Whats everyone else think of this guys experiment? Anyone thinking of trying this themselves?

Steve

[smitty76]

Buckethead, I am really interested about the uv lights. We are fortunate enough that we can boil every day and only store if it is bitter cold and can't get the frozen sap out of the tanks and frozen sap stores real well(ofcourse).
does any one else have experience with these lights? If so, please enlighten us.

[paul]

last season we used a uv light for the first time. We made a lot of Fancy, we had to pull the plug because we needed to make darker syrup. We had the light set up after the RO, the unit we were useing was 13gal so it worked out well because we weren`t puting out that much consentrate per min. the one thing I worry about with storing sap after it has been though the RO is we`ve consentrated the bacteria too. We always reculate the sap for high sugar content so the sap is going though the uv light more than once, so I think you would be able store for a few days at least, but the only reason I would have to store sap would be if I had a real problem in the sugar house.
Just my two cents