Still going

[tonka]

I'm 3 1/2 hours north of you Riley, Otter Tail/Becker county line. The only way I'm getting sap is by vacuum and it's not much, taste good but is cloudy.

[RileySugarbush]

Nutter, I'm astounded you are getting good sap still. I took a pint of sap running straight out of my 3/16 last Saturday. Brought it up to the kitchen and boiled it within an hour or so, and it produced a pale yellow and horrible tasting syrup. This is on sugar maples, half of them up on a hill that tends to bud first. When boiling i didn't get any of the tell tale buddy smell, but the resulting syrup was really bad.

My gravity taps were pulled, and the tap holes barely wet, but we tapped way back in the first week of February.

tonka, I have made some of my favorite syrup on late season cloudy sap on a block arch!

[maplenutter butter]

Nutter, I'm astounded you are getting good sap still. I took a pint of sap running straight out of my 3/16 last Saturday. Brought it up to the kitchen and boiled it within an hour or so, and it produced a pale yellow and horrible tasting syrup. This is on sugar maples, half of them up on a hill that tends to bud first. When boiling i didn't get any of the tell tale buddy smell, but the resulting syrup was really bad.

My gravity taps were pulled, and the tap holes barely wet, but we tapped way back in the first week of February.

tonka, I have made some of my favorite syrup on late season cloudy sap on a block arch!

Tonight is the first night it has a hint of off taste. I like package that separate and use it for personal use. It's not bad, just not product I would sell. My woods is in a fairly deep cove with a lot of trees facing north. There was still frost in the ground a week ago. I'm done this weekend for sure, if not tomorrow. Sap content is down to 1.1-1.3. I ready to be done. I only produced .4 gallons of syrup per tap. I would have liked to hit .5. All in all not a horrible season. I also now guys still going down in Waterville and they plan to go for awhile yet.

[supersapper]

Still boiling tonight. 70 gallons today I think the fat lady is going to sing tomorrow.😭😭😭😭😭

[North!]

Well we wrapped up the boiling on Friday the 14th, the trees still producing very well, but the syrup quality had dropped off to a commercial level that unfortunately has very little demand or value. We had a good year, surpassing our goal of a quart per tap, yet did not quite reach our ten year average for the first time in a number of years. We had a good early run in February, but had to wait till the last week of March to get a consistent flow again. With that we needed a long cool April and we didn't get it. Certainly not hot, but warmer than normal. The syrup quality was excellent, not a lot of sugar sand, and we made a much larger proportion of dark syrup, which is always in strong demand. I was very pleased with the CDL white 90degree seasonal spouts 17/64. They hung in there, from our February run, right to the final day when we were still getting 2000 gallons sap per hour in. We had some push out but that was due in part to our careful tapping in cooler weather. The sugar content was a bit low this year, starting below 2, then as the thaw occurred rose to 2.6, held for a few days, then fell slowly over the next week finally settling at 1.7. A bit surprising considering we had cold nights to help regenerate the sugars, but the trees just didn't have it. Now it's time to clean up and start getting things ready for next year.

[markcasper]

With good vacuum, careful tapping, new spouts and early tapping most people would expect a half gallon per tap minimum. Are you's so far north that a quart per tap is considered normal?

Down here a quart per tap would only be a half crop.

[North!]

Good question. Yes we are too far North, in fact we are within about a mile of the most northerly boundary of the maple range. Without Lake Superior we would not have the warmth to have maple stands this far North. There are plenty of trees here, but they are slow drippers. We need long seasons to have even the best of crops. Our biggest issue seems to be the early onset of buddiness. It takes very few warm sunny days for the trees to react and begin to change. Although we will never produce syrup in abundance, we have won several state and international competitions, so the syrup produced here is quite good. Before the onset of the new seasonal spout and high vacuum technology, we averaged about .18 gallons of syrup per tap. We now generally average around .29-.31 gallons per tap utilizing that technology, and that is what has allowed us to stay in business ( that and 24,000 trees to tap). We have never gotten more than a gallon of sap per tap on a 24 hour drip. Our best season in 20 years was last year where we produced about a third of a gallon of syrup per tap. A bucket producer here would be fortunate to produce a pint of syrup per tap. I have been fortunate to see both extremes as I started making syrup commercially in east central Minnesota where I averaged .31 gallons of syrup on buckets, had 4.0 sugar content, and had 5 gallon buckets overflowing on daily flows. Quite a contrast.