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A failure of 4-5 spouts on 95 taps is about a 4-5% failure rate. That is not at all bad on a mechanical system, especially one that has been in place for multiple weeks. Regardless, you will see...

It is an interesting question, but unfortunately there are tons of interesting questions in maple and not enough time to look into them all.

My initial reaction is that there probably isn't a...

Tapping below the lateral is a good approach to maximizing the tapping band and is especially useful if you have trees in which the tapping band above the lateral has been peppered pretty hard for...

There is no evidence for this one way or the other.

Settings should all be in the Busch manual. Programming instructions in the VFD manual. Sorry, not familiar with that particular VFD.

Ah...lived probably 5 miles from there in Newport the last 5 yrs or so. Grew up in Barton and sugared with Grandfather/Father/Uncle in Westmore.

We're done. Sap still running, but too slow to keep it fermenting in the lines. Last boil was this morning. Trees are ready for the next phase and so are we. Overall not the worst or the best...

Yes, this is interesting and I check the site periodically. We (and Cornell Maple Program) have done the same/similar sort of thing in different ways. We have photos of tipping bucket gauges being...

This is correct. More taps will work, but less will work better under peak flow. The”optimal“ number of taps will vary based upon the conditions.

Sap still running a bit up on the mountain in Underhill, but we're clearly in the phase of the season where sanitation is critical to maintaining good sap flow. The nice cold and snow we had bumped...

That is correct. The sap spoils in the lines or in storage so much that it gets very acidic and during boiling never (or only for a brief time) gets above neutral (ph 7.0). Above neutral, boiling...

Was it sour sap or buddy? Often the transition from darker to really light-colored syrup is due to heavy fermentation in the line, which causes sour-sap off-flavor. This can go away with a solid...

Freeze-drying is evaporation (actually sublimation) of water from a material using vacuum at below freezing temperatures. No heat involved.

An example is the so-called “astronaut ice cream.”

While there may be a small amount of maple syrup made in Asia, the vast majority of maple sap collected in Korea and Japan (and probably China) is consumed directly as a spring tonic, called gorosoe....

Vacuum can pull sap from one side of the tree to the other...but ONLY after SEVERAL days of no-freeze conditions. The reality is that in many seasons a good share of the flows only last a few hours...

We've done research on this concept beginning a few years before the product (Check-valves) were released. There is no doubt they increase sap yield. The amount of the increase is dependent upon...

In case anyone missed the big story yesterday...

https://www.uvm.edu/news/story/uvm-tapped-house-nations-strategic-maple-syrup-reserve

Visual microbial growth has little relationship to the composition or quantity of growth in the tubing unfortunately.

Good questions. Sap CAN move sideways, but does so about 10x slower than moving vertically. The issue isn’t about whether or not sap CAN move across rings, but rather how FAST it moves out. Wood...

https://www.uvm.edu/news/story/uvm-tapped-house-nations-strategic-maple-syrup-reserve

We've tried and compared several types of refractometers over the years and have settled on using the Misco units. We've had at least a dozen of them. They get a lot of use in our research -...

Steve...that was not my intention and if you re-read what I wrote, I said that light syrup was "historically" thought to be higher quality. I think there is a lot less of that sentiment these days. ...

Not likely to be advantageous. On buckets you might get about double the sap with two taps on a LARGE tree. Typically you’ll get somewhat less than double and well under double for trees under 18”...

As concentrate level increases, "evaporation rate" (the amount of water leaving the pans by evaporation) changes only very slightly -- not enough to notice without really close measurements.

What...

Trees were very "cold-soaked." Takes some time for a big object (like a tree) to thaw out after being down in the teens or colder for an extended period. Air temperature might seem warm enough for...