tapping?

[acrete]

Is anybody putting some taps in for this upcoming warm up? Will the sap be flowing? I'm pretty new to sugaring but I was thinking of putting a few out to see what I get. I've got more trees than I can handle right now so I figure if the taps dry up ill still have the other trees later in the season.

[Drew Pond Maple]

I would wait til the regular season. Unless you have plenty of extra trees.

[handtapper]

I read a uvm study that said no significant difference in sap collection with tapping early compared to later as the big run days are in march april. They didn't seem to think holes really dried up until march april anyways due to rising temps and some sort bacteria building up. If I get the shack up and evap in Saturday I am going to put out maybe 50 taps. That's 50 less taps I have to put out in 3 weeks.

[optionguru]

I'm waiting until I see the local big guys tap

[CharlieVT]

I read a uvm study that said no significant difference in sap collection with tapping early compared to later as the big run days are in march april. They didn't seem to think holes really dried up until march april anyways due to rising temps and some sort bacteria building up....

Can you find that study and give us a link to it or some kind of reference like date of study and who wrote it?
Thanks.

[handtapper]

When I google "tapping maple trees early" it is the 3rd link from the top. Its in pdf form. I can't do a link or anything involving copy paste from my "smart phone" seeing I'm willing to buy 500$ in maple sugar shack parts but won't pay for landline internet, that really sais something

[GeneralStark]

I read a uvm study that said no significant difference in sap collection with tapping early compared to later as the big run days are in march april. They didn't seem to think holes really dried up until march april anyways due to rising temps and some sort bacteria building up. If I get the shack up and evap in Saturday I am going to put out maybe 50 taps. That's 50 less taps I have to put out in 3 weeks.

The study you are referring to can be found here: http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc/tapping.pdf

Your conclusions aren't totally correct. If you are talking about bucket or gravity taps, you may be able to get away with early tapping on a cold year, but in a warm year not so much.

With vacuum tubing and good taphole sanitation (cv spouts/seasonal spouts, frequent drop change) tapping early generally produces more sap, though weather is certainly a factor.

[morningstarfarm]

If you have the trees I would say go for it...my suggestion is to watch the weather close...2 years ago I tapped in the first week of jan...that year I had my best year ever...and everyone told me I was crazy...until they tapped in in feb and the temps jumped to the 70's...and depending on where you are we have microclimes...I generally run a couple weeks ahead of many of my neighbors...

[acrete]

So I went ahead and put a few taps out on Friday. I only have about a dozen sugar maples and then probably a hundred silver maples, and I only have a half pint evaporator this year. So I thought I would tap a few silvers just to see what happens and save the sugar maples for the real season. I checked them yesterday and nothing. Checked them today and a couple of them are running, not a whole lot though. I put out 18 taps, probably 6 of them didn't do anything, between the rest I probably got a half gallon of sap. Checked it with my hydrometer, 1.5%. This is only my second year doing syrup, last year I did 4 taps off of my two big sugar maples. Boiled down with a turkey fryer and got 9 pints of syrup out of about 45 gallons of sap. I'm not looking forward to the sap from those silver maples if they stay at 1.5%. Another thing I noticed when I checked today is the bark around the tap is all wet. I attached a picture, did I do something wrong here? Pound the tap in too far? or is this normal? This picture isn't the worse one either, a couple other trees were worse.

tap.jpg

[steve J]

It looks like you drilled your hole at an angle thus giving you more of an oval hole vs a round hole thus not a real tight fit!