The taps ran hard when I put them in, like drip...drip...drip-drip....drip, and then later that night when I checked them, the buckets were all nearly empty. Today might be different.
Type: Posts; User: RIFoster
The taps ran hard when I put them in, like drip...drip...drip-drip....drip, and then later that night when I checked them, the buckets were all nearly empty. Today might be different.
After a disappointing season with nonfunctional long lines (huge waste of time and energy), I went back to tapping old school - 1 line per tap, multiple taps per tree, 1 bucket per tree. Put 10 in...
I spent $300 this year in parts and propane, and ended up with 5 pts. of syrup. There will be no next year.
I'll probably pull tomorrow or Sunday, I have 10 gal in buckets to boil, and might get 1 more 5 gal bucket when this is over. Hopefully the heat tomorrow won't spoil it.
This year was a waste of...
I'm using propane on mine, burning a lot. I have no way to handle/process 100gal at a time, otherwise I'd be happy to take it.
In a 22qt steam table pan over a turkey fryer, I boil away about an inch an hour of liquid, and can do ~2 pans full on a single tank of propane. This works out to about $20 per pint, just in propane...
All my buckets were full of sap, then got washed out with rain. Bust year here. Got 2 pints of maple-less sugar syrup. I'll probably have some equipment for sale shortly.
It's about 40 out right now, so it seems like I'm spot on... if not actually a little worse than the reading. Looks like the whole batch goes down the drain this time.
Thanks for the response. ...
My hydrometer reads 1.002, which maps to .5 brix. if I understand this right, that means I'm at .5% sugar, or I'll need to boil down 172:1 using the rule of 86?
.5% sugar sap seems useless. Do...
Or just do buckets, and only invest the time it takes to gather the sap.
I'm getting ~2gal/day out of 3 taps in 1 tree that's split into 3 separate trunks, and then 9 others on 3 separate 5/16 lines produce a total of 1 gal/day. Strange behavior.
Corn flavor as in actual corn, the vegetable? Or corn-syrup flavor, as in, just sweet? My first two pints of syrup have almost no maple to them, maybe a touch if you close your eyes and smell,...
Even with a small dip and a pool, the head created by the tree higher up should push the sap out of the dip right?
The flavor does indeed boil out... somehow. Thanks!
Separate issue - I'm getting almost no flow from my 5/16 line, while other trees nearby that I have on milk jugs are filling 1/2 a jug per day....
Getting about 1/3 gallon per tree right now. Boiled 3 gallons down to about 12 oz of nearly-there syrup - virtually no maple flavor, just a sort of cotton-candy caramel sweet flavor. Not bad,...
With the recent blast of cold in the Northeast, my lines have frozen. Anywhere there's a dip I have a little chunk of ice. Do I need to worry about the lines splitting from the freeze?
Great stuff. I thought you couldn't use the sap after the buds came out? My trees all have those little red tips on them now.
Does the heat simply break it down so that it's no longer aromatic, or does it actually boil away into the air? the last thing I want is concentrated (but tasteless) esters in there.
It was brown, and thick. Like syrup. One batch had an almost honey-like consistency when cooled (overboiled obviously). Crazyjackcsa might be onto something, might just be my trees.
This was mostly just like a simple syrup, boiled down to a sort of carmel color and the consistency of maple syrup.
Still getting basically nothing, but what I do tastes like crap. Where does that taste "go" when boiling? Creeps me out tasting like chemicals.
Last year I ended up with about 5 pints of syrup, all of which was sweet and good tasting, but had little "maple" flavor. I have almost exclusively red maples. Do some trees have less or more...
So the first year you're stuck with the plastic taste? I ask because I have 14 taps on a set of lines, and so far I've gotten about 2.5 gallons, all of which I had to dump.
Bump. Looking for some guidance on the funny plastic taste. Has anyone else experienced this? I still have to dump the sap.
Got 2 gallon from 14 taps, dumped it all out because it tastes like tubing.