Fall Tapping 2010

[Goggleeye]

OK, I absolutely cannot wait another month and a half. Weather forecast calls for a couple weeks of perfect sap flow weather, and while dragging a deer out of the woods Saturday, I broke a small maple branch and it flowed like mad. One of my students tapped this weekend & collected a fair amount of sap.

Never tried fall tapping, but we're going to see what happens! I think I'm going to start with some soft maples and boxelders.

Mark

[spud]

Please keep us posted on how you do with the fall tapping. I just read some research on fall tapping in Vermont put out by the Proctor Maple Research folks. It was very interesting and some made .25 gallons per tap of syrup. Dr. Tim say's they are still doing research on fall tapping and it should be complete in a year or two. Years ago i wanted to fall tap but everyone was saying it would not be a good idea. I think(and hope) new research will show that there may be some benefits to fall tapping. I think the new CV spouts are a God sent for all sugar maker's with tubing and high Vac. In time i plan to move back to Vermont and set my woods up this way. You can be sure i will fall tap and then re-tap in January with CVs. I wish you the best. Please be sure to share your results with everyone on Trader.:)

Mike

[Goggleeye]

Mike -

Will do. I hope to keep good records, but you know how that goes. I plan on hitting these silvers for sure, because they bud out so early in the spring, and box elders just to try their syrup. I'll probably also hit a line or two of hard maples this fall. And in SE MO, we usually get good freeze-thaw cycles all winter, usually beginning in December. Right now, I use gravity tubing with SS 5/16 BME spouts. I wasn't planning on tapping the same trees in the spring as I am now. If you have any suggestions, pass them along. You sound much more knowledgeable than I. This is just a new hobby that I'm trying to learn more about all the time.

- Mark

[red maples]

beware though if you tap a tree in the fall (as far as I have read) that you shouldn't tap that same tree in the spring.

[Thiems sugarshack]

My thoughts on the fall tapping is i would be worried because you are drilling holes in the fall which wont be healed by the time you tap in the spring to me you are not letting the tree recoop from the holes you drilled in the fall plus i like to be at least 6 inches away from any old hole so you would be running out of realestate come the spring time. any other thoughts on this?

[Goggleeye]

My intentions are to tap different trees in the spring than in the fall. I've got to spread the season out a bit - my evaporator can't handle all the taps I want to put out. This year is going to be a lot of experimentation. My guess is that with Missouri weather, I could have a 3 month sugaring season, I'll just have to move the taps around and make sure not to hit the same trees twice in the same year. Didn't get the trees tapped tonight, was working on the barn that I have to get done before the sugar shack. I know, those priorities are a bit out of order, but my wife has been kind enough to milk goats on the front porch for the last 2 years without complaint.

[shane hickey]

I wanted to do the same thing but other producer say that the tree needs to be in a doormate stage to have good tasting syrup, but please let me know what you find out. It will be interesting!
Shane

[3rdgen.maple]

I fall tapped last year and it was a big waste of time. Unlike the spring the weather does not cooperate very much not much daylight to warm things up. It seemed that as soon as the trees thawed and started giving sap the sun went down and trees froze back up. If I remember right there was only 2 days of sap flow and it wasnt worth the effort or the extra burnt wood. It also takes more sap per gallon. I also have way more trees than my setup can handle at this time so I thought it would be a great idea as well. But with all that said maybe Missouri maples will do better than the NY ones. One thing I did notice that I left a few taps in from the fall and they pretty much gave sap all spring. They were the first ones to give up though. Good luck.

[spud]

Mark,

In the research done by 3 sugarmakers on fall tapping all three used small spouts in the fall and then reamed out the same hole in the spring. In the spring they used a CV spout. The studies did show less sweetness to the sap (about 1%) and only two to three good runs. Over all though another quart of syrup per tap is more money made from your land. My thought is that if someone has a 1000 tap sugarwoods they might make another 250 gallons by fall tapping with no ill affects to the trees. And that would be another $7500 made from your woods. The three sugarmakers that did this study all had ROs so it did not cost them anymore in wood burned or oil used to fire their rigs. Two of the sugarmakers in the study said they would not do it again but the other sugarmaker plans to keep on fall tapping. Yea it's not for everyone but i find it interesting and i am planning on trying it when i move back to Vermont. With seven kids to feed i will need to suck the life out of my trees just to feed the family.:lol:

Mike

[Goggleeye]

Well, fall collection didn't happen for me. Got real busy and the weather didn't cooperate very well. However, one of my students did some science fair research on the feasibility of fall tapping in Missouri. He told me the other day that the sap was only about 1% sugar, or about 120 gallons sap/gallon of syrup ratio. If that was my only option, I'd go for it, but that's a little much boiling for me.

[Thad Blaisdell]

86/Brix = gallons of sap required to produce 1 gallon of syrup

[maple flats]

If it was 120 gal to make one, the sugar was about .72% in the sap, or less than 3/4 of 1 %