Cloudy Sap experience this year

Hello friends,

I thought I’d post my experience with cloudy sap this year. I have been making syrup for about 15 years - 70 taps on gravity (into stainless buckets - no tubing),homemade RO using RO bucket components, new vacuum filter this year, and a Leader Half Pint. I also built a sap storage unit in my garage - insulated Cool Bot that keeps sap at 35-37 degrees. I collected sap into 5 gallon pails for 10 days and just about every pail had a slight cloudy tinge, even some sap only a day old. I am a weekend boiler given my first job. We had extremely warm temps this year 70-75 degrees and record warmth here in western N.Y. Here’s some of my observations:

1.) I made some of my best tasting syrup this year, despite slightly cloudy sap
2.) I could see the bottom of every 5 gallon bucket that I used - although the sap was cloudy, it was only ever so slightly cloudy
3.) some buckets had a fruity odor - I suspect from the microbes - all of those were tossed
4.) any buckets that I couldn’t see bottom were tossed
5.) I did nightly test boils for 5 days, on one test boil using the fruity smelling sap, it was horrible. The boiling sap smelled musty and it made slimy syrup that had a fermented taste - simply awful
6.) the other 4 test boils were fine
7.) I also tasted every 5 gallon bucket that I used. As long as it tasted fine without any bite they were boiled
8.) a few really cloudy narsty buckets were really bad. You can tell just by tasting the sap, that it’s bad. It tasted yeasty, sour, and actually was sharp in my mouth…horrible stuff

Im convinced that the warm daytime temps got the microbes going (I collected sap every afternoon from 5 til dark even though the sap started out crystal clear. I think you can make good use of cloudy (or slightly cloudy sap) but the sap has to smell fine, taste fine without any odors or pungent taste to it.

Good luck everyone!

Chris