Early Tapping

[foxtail]

I talked to the guys at Leader Evap yesterday and they said that if the buds have not shown green or yellow flowers that they should be good to go. He said that he had never heard of the cycle starting over. But he did say to give it a test run to see how the stuff tastes.

[TooManyIrons...]

Forties tomorrow after a cold night, will be first time above freezing here in a week. Warm days in forecast for the next five days at least. I had already sanitized the taps/lines I pulled so I will reinstall some in the best producing yard trees to see what happens. I will pull the collecting jugs from the trees still tapped in the woods and replace them with freshly sanitized ones.

Yeah, couple of days off and I am out of my brain fog from all the maple steam. A couple of decent balanced meals on a normal schedule have helped immensely as well, I am so weary of nuked junk food. I am all caught up and have been processing syrup into sugar. Physically I am pretty well conditioned for all the work at this point anyway so I am game to collect and process more. I have enough firewood for two more full days of processing, could scrounge up more, and can always go to propane backup but I think a two day run would be enough for me to get maple out of my system for this season. If it would turn out that any late run produces the best syrup of the season then I would go for broke and find a way to process as much as I can. Heck, I have already had two distinct seasons/runs already this year, why not get in one more?

4010: "Did all your syrup turn out good?" - Yes but some batches produced better quality and more concentrated flavor than others. There is no logic that I can discern about why which batch turned out the way it did but I know it had something to do with the sap from the specimen yard trees that went into full bloom. I should have quit collecting from them sooner once they were obviously in full bloom. My very last batch did not turn out that great because the sap was stored a bit too long. I almost dumped it mid-process but I stuck it out and it is palatable syrup but not something I am proud of nor will I give it away to anyone, will instead try to make sugar out of it and blend it in with all the other sugar I make. My brother says he would take that entire last two gallon batch because he feels it still tastes better than the faux maple flavored corn syrup at the grocery store. He has a point.

Oh, and after reading up on maple nuts I went and bought a pound each of almonds and walnut halves so I could try making some. Wanted to also do pecans but yikes the price was steep so I passed on them for now.

[SilverLeaf]

It is clear to me upon inspection that the tree flowers on trees that were in full bloom have all been frozen and therefore I assume destroyed. The leaf bud covers on those trees were also splitting open, so I assume leaf buds have been crippled as well. So what happens next when the final spring thaw/warmup occurs? The trees will of course leaf out but I assume any chance of blooming is over on trees that have already bloomed, they will not develop new flowers and repeat the process this year, correct? If nothing else it means I won't have to deal with as many helicopter seed pods this summer.

I think you are on to something, TooManyIrons. I wonder if this season is analogous to what sometimes happens in the apple industry in the midwest where the buds get nipped by a hard frost and it destroys the fruit crop. Fortunately for us, we aren't harvesting the maple "fruit"!

This is certainly uncharted territory though... And I'm ashamed to admit that after all these years this is the first year I realized that the flower buds and leaf buds are not the same thing.....! And that its the leaf buds that I really care about in terms of producing off-flavor, not the flower buds. Sheesh, I should've known that a long time ago.

[SDdave]

flower buds and leaf buds are not the same thing.....! And that its the leaf buds that I really care about in terms of producing off-flavor, not the flower buds.

Yes. There is still hope for those hoping. I will be doing the final boil tonight as I am exhausted. Not a bad year overall just a lot of ups and downs. Good luck to all on the final push!

SDdave

[TooManyIrons...]

Only reached 36 degrees here today, was cloudy all day with strong NW winds. A lot of the snow cover from last Sunday's storm melted away during the last two days, around 75% of the ground is showing again. Sap started running slowly late this afternoon, am getting sap from the trees in which I re-installed the taps. Will collect tomorrow sometime. Collection jugs I inspected closely have clear sap that smells good and tastes good. Interesting...

[RileySugarbush]

Sap started up again today. But I noticed an American Elder starting to leaf out, which often signals the end around here so we will need to keep an eye out for buddy smells. Boiling again on sunday. All ready at about a typical years production.

[markcasper]

Sap started up again today. But I noticed an American Elder starting to leaf out, which often signals the end around here so we will need to keep an eye out for buddy smells. Boiling again on sunday. All ready at about a typical years production.

Yeh, I seen one on the south warm side today with a leaf starting, but quite frankly, those things had big buds on already a month ago. We have not had any extreme heat, like 70's yet, and only one day before the cold snap over 60, so I'm optomistic that we will have alot to come. Am anxious to hear if you guys that tapped very early get good runs coming up here, or they start to shut down because they have been tapped so long.

[Keitha333]

My trees were hit and miss. Some had full jugs others had none. It was odd and seemingly not clear as to why. About 14 gallons in 30 taps.

[maplenutter butter]

Am anxious to hear if you guys that tapped very early get good runs coming up here, or they start to shut down because they have been tapped so long

I tapped early Mark and had about 700 gallons yesterday around 6pm on about 1000 taps. Im hopeful it will pick up again.

[davewittwer]

Finished my early sap off today. Ran my new evaporator last weekend and finished today.

What a crazy year. Waited until till last weekend for sap to thaw so I could process and now I'm making sap cubes to keep everything going cold.





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