The Official 2024 Maple Season Thread

Looks good! And fairly easy to make. Lots of good recipes on that site. Thanks for sharing.

 

Last boil of the season, the long term forecast spells doom for maple sap. I pulled my taps yesterday. I only have about 6 1/2 gallons to boil so it shouldn’t take long.

 

It was a crap year here. We only made about 1.5 gallons and the last batch didn't taste nearly as good as the first.

My neighbor has a pretty nice setup and last year he made 30 gallons....this year he got 8.

 

It amounted to about 2/3 of a large jar of finished syrup, which I added to this jar from a previous batch that was running low. I’m hoping for a better year next year and to tap more trees in general. I did give a lot of sap away over the past month, since I’ve been too busy to do much boiling. It was fun nonetheless.

 

That is awesome!!

 

Prepping for the end of season here too. Decided I'd try my hand at the turkey burner..to finish what was left in the pan. Going really well ! I learned alot quick ! Even afforded me some time to shop vac the inside of the arch..and floor of the shack. Tidy up....clean both sides of the pan..etc. trying to.stay neutral..just in case we get a lil run in next week. I'm not very confident lol.
So I'll be ready to boil..or half finished on my end of season cleanup lol.

 

Looking good !

 

I'm down quite a bit for totals here too. But im trying to stay positive. It's been a cakewalk collecting and boiling. And not much firewood to process to fill the shed back up.
Look at all the wood I didn't use this year !

 

Who else got a little lighter on the second boil ?

 

All in all..about 3.5 gallons of syrup just from emptying my pan..and finishing it. Half a tank of propane. Got it bottled too. Stuff on the right is from the turkey fryer. Left is from boiling yesterday. Definetly worth it

 

Dang, you're gonna have to be pretty stingy with that! Do many private people sell their syrup by you or do you have to pay the grocery store prices if you want more?

 

Grocery store prices unfortunately. Kind of a bummer I didn’t have more time this year to do a couple more boils. Just been busy these past few weeks so I ended up giving a lot of my sap away. Is what it is.

 

Good laawwd

 

The run has slowed here. Been pretty warm. Boiled around 18 gallons last night to end up with 48oz of syrup. Sitting at about 2.5 gallons for the season, which is plenty for us and to give some away. Gonna try for one more boil before I throw in the towel. Probably pull everything by the weekend. Learning more each season. Sometimes relearning

 

Oven cleaner and pressure washer. Solid combo !
Can always tell when this needs done. The boils act funny . Crud gets thick enough to cause issues.

 

Still going here, slow evaporation with the big pot. Playing with the chain grinder in the mean time.

 

Had a good freeze Thursday night, dumped the sap barrel Friday morning due to all the warm weather last week. Gathered today and it is cloudy. I suspect it is most due to sap it the lines. We’ ll see how it finishes off and go from there.

 

We share a similar climate, I’m using buckets and collect pretty frequently. I keep the sap in a cool place and boil frequently. Haven’t had any cloudiness yet. I did have some tan/brown sap in 2 out of 3 buckets on a 3 leader tree today. I’m kinda curious about that. I have read that rain water can run down the tree and into the bucket and cause the sap to discolor that’s a possibility. We did have some heavy rain. I’m tempted to dump it but unsure? There is roughly 5 gallons of it. Tempted to do a separate boil with it. Might be better off to just dump it.

 

Put the big pot out for the night to finish the last batch on the stove top.

 

Old timers trick: put some in a real small pot/can, small torch to boil and see if smells right or off.