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Thread: North West Missouri -- First Walnut Tap

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
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    North West Missouri
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    Default North West Missouri -- First Walnut Tap

    This is our first year tapping trees and we tapped 3 Black Walnut (we do not have any maples) trees last Wednesday evening. It is now Monday morning and we have got 4 gallons of sap so far. Seems we hit the timing just right!

    Has anyone ever boiled down in a turkey roaster?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2013
    Location
    Lisbon, NH
    Posts
    385

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    Good luck with your season. I think everyone here has used a turkey put at one time or another. Try to make some kind of surrounding enclosure to hold the heat in. You will waste a lot of propane otherwise.
    Pete Nightingale
    Lisbon, NH

    3 Teenage sap haulers & Plenty of friends and family to restock the beer fridge
    2012 1 tap and a pot
    2013 10 taps, oil tank evap, 2 gallons of slightly too thin syrup
    2014 48 taps improved oil tank evap 3.5 gallons, ouch??
    2015 88 taps 78 5/16" and 10 3/16" nat vac 40"x 48" Homemade Arch 13.25 Gallons
    2016 100 taps 65 on 3/16 & 35 buckets 17 gallons + unknown amount of maple / Jack Daniels testers

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    North West Missouri
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    I mean an electric indoor turkey roaster, like in the link below.

    I don't really have time right now to build an evaporator out of cinder blocks and I do not want to burn an entire tank of propane for this, so I was thinking the turkey roaster can be set as high as 450 degrees and will hold at least 2 gallons. Any thought?

    Turkey Roaster

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    Albion PA
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    5,099

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    Welcome!
    Turkey roaster might work. About like putting a pan of sap on the stove.
    Good luck.
    Regards,
    Chris
    Casbohm Maple and Honey
    625 roadside taps + Neighbors bring some sap too!
    3x10 King, WRU, AOF and AUF
    12" SIRO Filter Press.
    2015 Ford F250 PSD sap hauler
    One Golden named Maggie, Norwegian Forest Cat named Lucy
    Too many Cub Cadets
    Ford Jubilee and several Allis WD's, and IH tractors
    1932 Ford AAB ton and a half, dump truck

    www.mapleandhoney.com

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2014
    Location
    Florissant Missouri
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    137

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    Evaporation is all about surface area. A turkey cooker does not have very much surface area. You will definitely be using a lot of propane. I would fill it up and then add additional sap as it boils down. For walnut trees you need something like 80 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. I would not begin cooking until you have something like 20 gallons of sap. That will give you about a quart of sap. My first year three years ago I used a 55 gallon barrel rocket stove and a large stock pot. It worked well but took a lot of time. I collected about 30 gallons of sap from six tapped sugar maple trees. Good luck.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    North West Missouri
    Posts
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    Well the Electric Turkey Roaster didn't work, not sure if the element was not working or if it just will not heat with out the lid on. However for this first test boil down of our sap we just took the roasting pan and put it on the stove top. We boiled down about 7 gallons of sap to just under 2 cups of syrup. It is wonderful, planning on some pancakes in the morning!

    The sap pretty much has stopped flowing today, but I am going to build a simple fire pit that this roaster pan will fit on to do the next batch, when we get to much to store in our fridge again.

    My wife is ready to identify more Walnuts on our property and buy more taps for next year though after one small sip!

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Mar 2014
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    Florissant Missouri
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    Cooking sap on an inside stove will add a lot of humidity into your house. Keep an eye on your windows for water forming. You can make a really simple concrete block stove outside that should work. You just need a pile of wood to burn.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
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    North West Missouri
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    Thanks for the warning. I knew we would not be boiling down much and since we heat with a wood stove our humidity level was low enough to easily take the extra humidity. Now that we make a successful batch and it turned out so great I am planning to put together a simple cinder block stove.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Mar 2014
    Location
    Florissant Missouri
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    Have you collected any more sap from the walnut trees? I have a bunch of walnut trees on my property. After your posts I am thinking of tapping a few of them next year and making a separate syrup batch from them to compare to the maple syrup. I am interested in knowing how the walnut syrup tastes.
    Crazy River Sap
    55 sugar maple, 15 walnut taps on plastic buckets and tubing
    Block arch on driveway

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    North West Missouri
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    I have boiled down about 14 Gallons of sap to about 3 pints of syrup. we really like the syrup. It is a different flavor than maple but about the same sweetness. We have not had much flow the last week, but this coming week looks good.

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