More sap than gravity. The old rule of thumb was to expect a quart of syrup per tap on average. With vacuum and check valves, it is now more like half a gallon of syrup per tap.
Best tap I ever had was constant 7.5% with spikes to 9. Sap out of the tree was sweet. Just a suggestion keep some partially boiled sap about 15% sugar in freezer. Best cure for colic baby young mother's will love ya. Great grandmother had 7 kids swore by it. Never actually sold it by gave a lot away.
Was wondering about that, I've never tapped enough trees to warrant messing with tubes. I've been by some large farms up in Quebec that build bridges over the roads for the lines, they leave them there all year long.
Can you show me where you found those plans? Thanks for all the tips guys.. I'm still learning, so keep em coming! I'd love to see more pics of your setups too!
It is another dangerous site. http://mapletrader.com/ Go to the forums, and in the homemade maple equip forum there are several threads on this theme. I think the login name of the guy that designed the one I built is "hodorskib". He also has his own site ( https://sites.google.com/site/mattatuckmadnessmaplesyrup/ ) and the plans are there. Be warned. Very addictive.
Just what I need, another thing I found on the net to try.... curse this dang inter web! I drive by a little patch of timber every day to work, and one of the hard maples (that's what we farm kids from Iowa call them) has a tap and bucket on it, been there for ages (20 years+), every winter I think about trying it... then I go a find this, oh so wonderful of places on the web, and y'all start talking bout tapping and posting pics... good thing I am to crippled up to try any tapping.... maybe next year! Awesome thread Shawn Curry... keep the info and pics coming!
Had sap flowing today, ( not much but enough to get excited lol ) got the woods all tapped and ran the vacuum pump to make sure everything is good to go .
So I went outside looking for sugar maples to tap. Would sagebrush work. Guess I'll have to find it in the grocery store. (What is the best brand) Are you doing this to sell or personal use? Keep the updates coming.
Truly great maple syrup is almost clear it is so light in color. Around here all I can find in the stores is marked "dark amber". My cousin is a prize winning producer and he always attributed that color to rain contamination of a pail of sap, back before they started using the plastic tubing taps. As a kid growing up I was spoiled because we always got at least a gallon of his best every year.
No sap in this area. Maybe by the middle to end of next week we might get some temps to get er' started. One big producer in this area figures it'll be a late arrival but will flow hard and steady when it comes.
Several ways to answer this question. Properly finished maple syrup should all have about the same viscosity (slight differences between states on minimums). Each state used to have their own grading system, largely based on color, but now we are mid-way in transitioning to a national grading system (which I personally dislike). In general, the lighter the color, the lighter/finer the flavor. In general, it is more difficult to produce the lighter colored syrups (hard to do with poor practices, but not even a sure-thing using the state-of-art practices). I grew up eating just Fancy (the lightest), but my wife grew up with commercial non-maple syrups and now prefers a medium amber. My point is there is a lot of personal preference to the "best" grade, and the new standards are an attempt to remove some of the naming bias against the darker syrup grades because it is easier to sell to people who like it if you don't imply it is the dregs. So we recommend to customers that if they aren't sure, start with a medium amber, or buy smaller bottles of several grades and decide for themselves. We only suggest a dark amber if they are using it as a cooking ingredient or if they already know they want it. There are regional differences in flavor, even on a relatively local scale, but you will need to invest a lot of time and $ to pick up on this, and it is too subtle to worry about. Syrup you get in a grocery store out there is often a blend from a big packing house here in the northeast, so those differences will be washed out. For the full experience, find a farm online packing and selling their own, and have it shipped. Less expensive to buy a gallon than something smaller; it is a lot of work, and none of it is cheap.
I'm hoping to set up my stove and get the taps out this weekend. Hoping to get at least two weeks of flow...... I planned on putting 125 taps out bit the weather really screwed us this year so I'll only be tapping two properties, a total of around 50 taps. Hoping for 8 to 16 gallons of syrup though. We shall see..... Shawn that is the pile of shoveling!
Not so sure about that rain contamination. We always dumped the buckets if it rained. But we also preferred our syrup to be dark and that can be done by cooking it longer and, of course, toward the end of the season it tends to get darker. Still tastes great. Perhaps just slightly less than fantastic!
I was spoiled and am only satisfied with fantastic. Dark amber is better than maple flavored corn syrup, but not by very much.
30 gallons!! They don't call you Scotty Overkill for nothin! Nice work man - hoping things get flowing here this week - we're finally warming up. [EDIT] That evaporator is AWESOME!!! My dad has a couple of those tanks... Does it eat a lot of wood though?
Shawn, the evaporator does eat quite a bit, I had plans to enhance the efficiency of it but didn't get around to it yet. Those plans include shortening the firebox up by half and making the rear section a long skinny flue under the pan, as well as lining the bottom and sides with firebrick. The key to fast production is a hard hot boil, that means stoking the fire hard. I may also install a power draft fan to help drive the temp even hotter.... I normally boil around 250-300 gallons every weekend, but I just got my taps out the other day and it ain't looking like it's going to be a long season at all, so I'm only putting s total of 50-60 taps out for two weeks..... just finished off close to a gallon, more than I expected. I'm using only sugar maples this year and it's noticeably sweeter sap........I'm thinking around 35:1 ratio.....
