Quote Originally Posted by snoskier16 View Post
Sugar Bear, I’m pretty sure that we all hope you are right! We tapped early to catch the week of warm temps, but since then have been really slow. With lots of new systems to test out, early was our way of making sure everything worked before the big runs hit. We have syrup that we otherwise wouldn’t have if we waited so I suppose the tap early or wait debate will continue for another year!

I tap only Rocking Sugars, so I guess those that tap Reds face a different analysis when it comes to the when to tap decision. For certain. But this year I would have waited to February 15th rather then February 1 to tap my rocks. My first run put out 32 gallons of sap, my second put out 75 gallons of sap and my third put out 90 gallons of sap. Tapping Feb 15 would have caught run two and run three and would have left me two weeks younger on the taps.

While they do put out some good syrup, Reds do crazy and unpredictable things at almost any time of the year ( many of them not related to sap ). If i were taping reds I think I would be tapped by Jan 20th of almost any year.

O and by the way that first 32 gallons of sap only produced .54 gallons of syrup so it was about 1.65% sugar. The others were both around 2.25 percent sugar. Much better on the fire wood pile with regards to amount of syrup for the flitch. ( flitch is a legal tender word by the way ... not certain why this blog red lines it )