Tapped in the Berkshires 2025

[berkshires]

Okay, after pulling all my buckets in last weekend, I have rinsed them and will set them back out Saturday night. Forecast looks good for next week. Fingers crossed.

GO

[berkshires]

Okay, after pulling all my buckets in last weekend, I have rinsed them and will set them back out Saturday night. Forecast looks good for next week. Fingers crossed.

GO

Got all my buckets put back out last night. Looks like a good week coming up, with freezes on most nights. Forecast has been worse than usual this year, probably due to the cuts at NOAA, but hopefully after a warm week we'll have a good run this week.

GO

[Aaron Stack]

Got all my buckets put back out last night. Looks like a good week coming up, with freezes on most nights. Forecast has been worse than usual this year, probably due to the cuts at NOAA, but hopefully after a warm week we'll have a good run this week.

GO

How did it end up going? If I did the same I might have had a couple good days.

[berkshires]

How did it end up going? If I did the same I might have had a couple good days.

It was worth it. I had one more good week, with around 60 gallons of sap. Then this last week was poor, with only 12 gallons of sap. I pulled taps and boiled those 12 gallons. Unfortunately as i was simmering down the end of it, without even any coals left in the evaporator, just residual heat, and with the cover on the pan to keep the steam in, I was getting a start on splitting wood for next season when i got that smell. You know the one. Burnt sugar. I ran inside and dumped water in the pan. Kept the pan from warping, i think, but pretty sure the syrup in the pan is ruined. I'm going to finish it on the stove and see if i can use it for something where i didn't mind that caramelized sugar flavor. We'll see how bad it is.

Anyway, difficult season, but i guess i will wind up somewhere in the neighborhood of four gallons of syrup from 17 taps. Not a great season, but it was enough.

GO

[Aaron Stack]

I'll have to think about that when the weather does something like this year again. From what I've read you are now a professional, hope the pans survived!

[berkshires]

I haven't finished, filtered, and bottled anything yet, so I don't know my totals, but one thing I can say for sure is that I made the right call to come back after that warm spell, even though it meant pulling my buckets, washing them, and putting them back a week later, which was a bit of a pain. After the week off, I collected 1/3 of my total sap for the season! So it would've been a much smaller season if I hadn't done that.

The only remaining doubt in my head is whether, in retrospect, I needed to pull the buckets at all. It turns out that that "warm" week was not as warm as predicted. I'm not sure the little bit of sap in the buckets would have rotted and then spoiled the sap for the next good week. Maybe yes, maybe no. I think if I had to do it again, with the forecast available at the time, I'd do the same thing, but if I knew what the weather was really going to do, I'd have left all the buckets out. That first week, I might have had to dump spoiled sap from a few buckets in the sun, but I would have collected a little good sap from a number of buckets. Then the next week, which was my last good one, would've been the same.

Oh, and Aaron, I'm sure the pan is okay. Because the sap was barely simmering, I don't think there was enough heat to warp the pan. I've had worse disasters other years - you can see small warps in the pan in other spots. It's just the lost sap that's the pity.

GO

[berkshires]

My total for the season was a little better than I expected. Just short of four gallons of syrup. Would have been close to five gallons, I think, if I hadn't burned the final batch.

GO

[Andy VT]

If I'm doing my math right, you got about a quart per tap, and that is excellent! I think I had that sort of season as well up here in the Champlain valley. Hard to tell for certain because I had to quit about a week early. So I came out to .19 gallon per tap because of that. After dumping a gallon that didn't taste good, that brought me down to .16! Man that was sad! Some sap went sour I think.

[maple flats]

Sour sap still makes good syrup, but it's very dark. If it had a bad taste it may have gone buddy, although that's not the only way to get bad tasting syrup. If you had saved it, most times it can still be made into sugar.
In fact that's usually what Bascom and other big bulk buyers do with off tasting syrup. The sugar is still good.

[Andy VT]

I was scolded by my neighbors for throwing away the bad tasting syrup. Won't do it again. I mean, although it was 10 times worse than good maple syrup, it was still 10 times better than molasses! Definitely wasn't buddy though because it was batch 5 of 7. Batches 6 and 7 tasted great. Batch 5 wasn't especially dark. Might have been somehow burnt I guess too. Wish I still had it for an expert to taste.

Then again, maybe a tree or two went buddy then didn't produce for batches 6 and 7? Hmm... hadn't thought of that until just now. There was a tree or three that I stopped bothering with after a certain point... not sure at which batch. I had a silver and some reds in the mix this year... pretty sure nothing budded... but the mystery remains...