Maple syrup season again.

With it all said and done we should be able to run 600 to 1000 gallons or so down to 30 to 60 gallons of finished product if all goes as good as well hope.

Looks great BC!! We’ve been throwing around building a sugar shack for a few years now. My buddies dad said if we build it, he’ll pay to run electric to it. Maybe this year is the year.

Where’d you get your rough cut lumber!? Looks sweet!

Poor planning and lots of snow has me questioning cooking this year.

So far this year my trees that normally dont produce well are the ones doing the best.

looking good BC, that is a heck of a setup. I didn’t know you tapped trees. Are you running an RO system? 1,000 gallons of sap is a lot but that looks like a pretty big evaporator! you will be busy! do you run gravity lines or what is your collection process for 300 taps?

I haven’t decided if I am tapping trees this year or not. I’ve taken the last couple years off because I still have syrup left from the last year I did it. Plus like Mike said, lots and lots of snow, so syrupin season would be later than normal in my neck of the woods and late springs I’d rather be turkey hunting and crappie fishing than syrupin.

IceNEyes1986 wrote:

Looks great BC!! We’ve been throwing around building a sugar shack for a few years now. My buddies dad said if we build it, he’ll pay to run electric to it. Maybe this year is the year.

Where’d you get your rough cut lumber!? Looks sweet!

3 of us are in on it, we are all in the trades. All material wass free off job sites and the rough cut was free from a buddy of ours who is a logger. This is all a team process between the 3 of us. Pretty neat stuff.

I’m small potatoes, started last year after retiring. I have out 15 taps, so far about 60 gallons of sap. Evaporator is a 55 gallon barrel stove with a rectangular frame on top that is sized for a commercial stainless food service tray. I use a turkey fryer for a pre-heater, wood fired evaporator to boil and finish. Last year was 4 1/2 gallons, this year will hopefully be 6 gallons. All the trees are on the our block and the blocks just to the north and south in the suburbs. It’s a fun hobby but a fair amount of work for the results.

Bearcat89 wrote:

3 of us are in on it, we are all in the trades. All material wass free off job sites and the rough cut was free from a buddy of ours who is a logger. This is all a team process between the 3 of us. Pretty neat stuff.

have you guys done a season of collecting/boiling before or is this all your first season?

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Bearcat89 wrote:</div>
3 of us are in on it, we are all in the trades. All material wass free off job sites and the rough cut was free from a buddy of ours who is a logger. This is all a team process between the 3 of us. Pretty neat stuff.

have you guys done a season of collecting/boiling before or is this all your first season?

Yes we have. My 1 buddy is the master mind behind it all and us other 2 are just the workers lol, we did it all last year making 20 gallons of finished product, but with our properties we could have done way more. Him and his dad have been in the game for many years, So this year we all went in on it and are doing just that. Way more, bigger scale, bigger set up and hope for bigger results. The cooker will handle all the product we throw at it. We have a huge stainless funnel gravity feed that isn’t quite set up yet, that will hold as much as needed. Then it’s heated and gravity fed. I’ll add more pics as we do it.

I’m as equally as excited about the new deer and bear processing space we are building on to this. Stainless sinks and tables will be awesome. The only real money we will have to sink in is spray foam, but again that’s where being a tradesman comes in. We just have to pay material cost and we have a spray truck ready at the dial.

sounds like you guys will have a productive seasoning. only reason I was asking is if it was your first season, I was going to say 30-60 gallons is a big goal, but with the man power and equipment you guys have, it’s definitely do able if you put the time in.

you guys must have a gravity fed collection system them too? I couldn’t imagine manually pulling 300 taps each day. Is it flowing for you guys yet down there or still a little early? i’m excited to hear how your season goes.

Another week with less than ideal temps.. Hopefully this weather starts changing soon..

Tried to burn my garage down last night. Was just gonna heat up the 2 gallons or so I had done so i could bottle it. Was windy so left the propane cooker in the garage. Apparently got sidetracked. When I went back to look about 1/2 gallon had boiled over and some was on fire on the floor. Lots of stuff that could have caught fire not far away. That was an eye opener. First and last time I will do it inside.

That’s no beuno! Good thing nothing else went up in flames! One of the first year we really got going we had 270 gallons to boil down. Everything was going good until the end. We were cooking over fire pit and it started to boil over, so our first thought was to grab the pan and remove it from the heat. Well, with 13 gallons in a 25x38x5″ pan, we rushed and it sloshed & burnt my buddy pretty good on the hands. needless to say, that whole batch was dumped in frustration and anger.. Now we ALWAYS have a few gallons of cold stuff to dump in when we are getting close to finishing. not making that mistake again..

Super slow start for us in Washburn County WI. Tapped the last week in February and only have 175 gallons of sap total so far from 140 taps. Still have over 2′ of snow in the woods here, bases of trees finally started to show a little. Hoping for a good run soon to get our first boil done. Upgraded to a filter press this year, hoping it makes everything go a little faster at the end.

i noticed a bunch of trees around here just got tapped yesterday!!!

Maybe this will help somebody. Im in Woodbury and my maple tree has large frozen sap sickles all over. It was flowing like mad and I assume will again once the temp comes up. I feel like breaking them off and boiling them but it would only amount to a drop of syrup if that!

Hasn’t been to great for us. 2 days it ran like crazy. Not so much this week

still early yet, at least up here. at least a week or so before it will start running good around here and then the forecast looks great

How many maple tree’s does it take to be worth tapping? I have 2 medium sized ones in my yard, and probably a few more in the neighborhood I could tap but not sure if that is worth the effort.

How big are medium sized? the smallest trees you should tap are about 12 inches in diameter and can support one tap. Once you get to about 24 inches wide, you can put 2 taps in the tree (in different vertical veins). Once you get to about 30 inches wide, I’d put 3 taps in it.

It kind of depends on what your boiling setup would be. If you’re just going to use a turkey fryer or your kitchen stove, I wouldn’t want to boil more than 10-20 gallons of sap or so and that would take a quite a while.

Personally, I think about 10 taps is the minimum I’d want to have tapped for a boil. You don’t want sap sitting around for more than about 7-10 days before it goes bad, so you need to get enough sap in that amount of time to do a boil.

Do you know what kind of maple it is? sugar maples will run at a higher sugar content so you will get more syrup yield per gallon of sap than other maples.

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

How big are medium sized? the smallest trees you should tap are about 12 inches in diameter and can support one tap. Once you get to about 24 inches wide, you can put 2 taps in the tree (in different vertical veins). Once you get to about 30 inches wide, I’d put 3 taps in it.

It kind of depends on what your boiling setup would be. If you’re just going to use a turkey fryer or your kitchen stove, I wouldn’t want to boil more than 10-20 gallons of sap or so and that would take a quite a while.

Personally, I think about 10 taps is the minimum I’d want to have tapped for a boil. You don’t want sap sitting around for more than about 7-10 days before it goes bad, so you need to get enough sap in that amount of time to do a boil.

Do you know what kind of maple it is? sugar maples will run at a higher sugar content so you will get more syrup yield per gallon of sap than other maples.

One is a silver maple and probably just over 12″ diameter and the other is a sugar maple and probably closer to 24″ diameter.

BigWerm wrote:

How many maple tree’s does it take to be worth tapping? I have 2 medium sized ones in my yard, and probably a few more in the neighborhood I could tap but not sure if that is worth the effort.

I have 15 taps out in Richfield, all within a block of our house. Boil with a turkey fryer (pre-heat) and a wood fired 55 gallon drum stove with a food service stainless pan in an opening on the top. I’ll do about 5 gallons of syrup this season, about 175 gallons of sap. A lot of work for a small amount of syrup but a good hobby pickup for me in retirement.