Weather is looking good this week around the twin cities. Temps above freezing everyday with nights dropping below freezing. Think it time for us to start the 2018 syrup season. Anyone else tapped any trees yet? Biggest challenge for us so far is going to be plowing some trails in the snow to get to the trees. Last years start was about three weeks earlier. This year seems more in line with 2015.
I’ve got a big soft maple in my front yard and its been dripping sap bigtime yesterday and today, big drops of sap. I know their boiling it down here now, seen pictures of it going on and the bottled labeled finished product.
4 gallons of sap today from the 36″ diameter trees in my front yard. The season is on. SE Minnesota
Tapped 5 this afternoon. Nothing running. Im guessing they will start in the next day or two. Hope to get 20 gallons to boil down by the weekend. First runs of the year always seem to make the clearest syrup.
Got 22 taps going now. Weather seems great for making sap but the trees are just not running that well for us yet. A good day so far is not even 5 gallons. Still plenty of good weather ahead so not to concerned. My goal for the season is roughly 5 gallons syrup. That’s 200 gallons of sap. At 30 gallons now.
How is the season going for everyone else.
Sunday I spotted a fella in the woods on Trenton Island…looked a little closer and he had well over 50 white buckets next to trees.
Seems to be a pretty popular activity!
My problem would be that I would be tapping cotton wood trees… and it would go down hill from there…so to speak.
I have 17 taps out, and have collected 5 gallons of sap in the later part of last week (located in Detroit Lakes). Boiled down that last night beings I don’t like to store it in the freezer more than a week. Came out cloudy for me but filtering into bottles helped clear it up. I can’t wait for the real run to start!
Got 22 taps going now. Weather seems great for making sap but the trees are just not running that well for us yet. A good day so far is not even 5 gallons. Still plenty of good weather ahead so not to concerned. My goal for the season is roughly 5 gallons syrup. That’s 200 gallons of sap. At 30 gallons now.
How is the season going for everyone else.
We put out 21 taps on the 2nd of March. We still have more to get out but things haven’t been running real good as of yet. Still a lot of snow in the woods around Cambridge, makes it tough to get around. Probably sitting about how you are (30 gal.) if I had to guess. Hopefully this weather will cooperate and we can get things rolling a little better. But, like you said, plenty of season left.
Buds popped open on my maples & apple trees this weekend in SE MN. Real heavy flow last week,2 gallons syrup so far. Could be a short season.
I tapped 16 trees March 13th in Linwood and as of tonight have around 34 gallons stored up. Might have enough to fire up the cooker for a little bit this weekend. Things are not flowing that great right now, hoping for a little warmer temps to get things flowing a bit more. Still a decent snow pack out behind the house.
10 pints off the 1st cook down yesterday. 1st batch of the year is usually our lightest. That is not the case this year. This will still make good syrup for cooking and coffee. Collected 7 more gallons of sap yesterday. With any luck should start boiling off batch number 2 Friday or Saturday. Going with 30 to 40 gallons per batch this year.
Still working on collecting sap in the north metro. Just seems to be a long uneventful year this year. Sap runs a little then stops over and over again. No real gang buster days so far. Guess its a good thing we tapped 20 trees this year compared to 5 last year. Last spring if I remember right the season was early and sap ran like crazy. Our cooker could not keep up. Not an issue this year.
Final cook down of batch number 3 later today or tomorrow. That should get us to 4 gallons of syrup so far. 5 gallons is the goal which was the goal for this season. Thinking we will hit that before the end. Long range weather forecast has me thinking next weekend might be the end for us.
Mike, I want some on my french toast sunday morning. Make it happen! 
I’m 20 miles north of Duluth and have 23 trees tapped. I’ve had my taps in since March 17th and we’ve only had 2 days above 40 degrees since then. I’ve got 12 gallons of sap, of which about 10 was from Tues and Wed this week. Long range forecast doesn’t have any days above freezing. It’s not looking like a good year for me – pretty disappointing as this is my first year doing the entire process on my own.
Hopefully your season will still go for a while up there. By the end of next weekend we are looking at temps above freezing at down here. Ive known guys around Bemidji in years past just getting started mid April. Buckets are usually still out on the Rain River when we are up there mid to late april to.
I’m hoping so. Is it true that once the trees start budding, the sap changes and the quality of the sap goes way down?
I believe its when they start to pop open, not when they form. Watch for the color of the sap to change to.
I have heard when they pop open as well, sap will get “buddy” as they say, resulting in poor tasting syrup. My 17 taps have produced 30 gallons of sap resulting in 1.25 gallons of syrup. With the cold this week the sap stopped flowing collected 10 gallons as of Tuesday for the week and will keep collecting until the buds pop, just waiting for warm days and sunshine now.
Aaron – do you use a hydrometer? I’m surprised of the amount of syrup you got from 30 gallons of sap.
Does the color of the sap get darker when this change takes place?
I cooked up 93 gallons last weekend. I had just under 60 gallons for my 16 taps, and my neighbor brought over 35 gallons. We finished down to a little over 2 gallons, pretty close to the 40:1. I have the cooker dialed in now and pushing around 13-14 gal/hr. This was the first year we started later in the day and were done bottling before dinner.
I have had pretty similar reports as everyone else. Been pretty slow this year. Between Saturday and Tuesday evening I picked up another 22 gallons, haven’t checked things since then.
As long as the buds don’t open you should be good.
Hows the sap flowing for everyone? At my location (20 miles north of Duluth), yesterday was only the 4th or 5th day that hit 40 degrees since I tapped my trees March 17th. I did one batch of 13 gallons 2 weeks ago and am hoping to do another this weekend. Problem is I’m not getting much flow from my taps. Yesterday I only got about 1-1.5 gallons from my 23 taps. The last day we had in the 40s, I got closer to 5. I’ve heard that after your trees have been tapped a few weeks, they start to heal and the sap flowing decreases as the tree heals. Should I take out the taps that aren’t producing and tap some new trees? Really bummed that this season is a bust for sap so far. The trees aren’t close to budding yet so thats the only consolation. Here is the boiler I built this year:
syrup-boiler.jpg
Its slowed down considerably for us. But we’re blaming most of that on this weather. We boiled down about 55 gallons couple weekends ago and haven’t hardly had any since (maybe 6-8 gallons/26 taps).. Tomorrow we are going to check again and hopefully have a few more gallons to play with. I’ve never heard of trees “healing” themselves but I’m also curious if the weather is allowing this too happen?
@Jake I do not use a hydrometer, I go by the old fashioned way my mom know when her syrup is done, watch it drip off a spoon. My trees must have good sugar content or something they seem to average 25:1. If you have spare taps I would go explore some other trees they may be healing but my taps have not slowed down throughout the sap season, granted this is only my 2nd year doing it. I like your evaporator as well! building one just like it tonight.
My trees produced a gallon of sap the past 1.5 weeks with the cold. I am anxious to go see how they ran to day, hoping for full buckets to run the new evaporator, and get more syrup going.
I tap trees about 15 miles inland from Two Harbors. Just tapped trees this week, the latest I have ever tapped. Very little run so far. Still 18 to 20 inches of snow in the woods. Tough year!
I went out and emptied buckets last night and I was surprised how much sap was collected! When it was all said and done I had filled our 55 gallon drum almost full! hopefully this keeps up for another couple weeks and we should be good to go for the season.
Aaron – I checked my taps yesterday and was disappointed to only find about 2 gallons from my 23 taps. Yesterday was the warmest day we’ve had this spring thus far and like I said, last time it got in the 40s, I was getting ~5 gallons per day. Some of my healthiest trees have completely stopped running. The weather this spring has been unbelievable. I’ve done some research on some maple syrup forums (I didn’t even know they existed until I googled it) and found trees healing is definitely a factor if you tap too early, or if the cold temps extend much further than you anticipated. It definitely makes sense – the tap holes are usual mostly healed by mid summer so its very plausible in my mind.
On the evaporator – thanks! I followed some similar designs I found online and added some angle iron for the stainless steel pans to sit on. I like that it adds support, blocks out smoke from coming out around the pans, and the steel also acts as a hot plate and really helps the pans hold heat, even when the fire isn’t raging.
IceNEyes – very nice haul. I’m guessing you are much further south. It’s an entire different ball game down there.
IMG_1109.jpg
Also on the evaporator, I highly recommend adding a 90 degree elbow at the top of the smoke stack. I’ve used a friends evaporator the last couple years with a similar design, but the smoke stack went straight up. When the wind blows just right, you’d get noticeable amounts of ash landing in the boiling sap. With the 90 degree elbow pointed away from the boiling pans, this seems to have been eliminated. Even though you filter the sap after boiling it, I believe the specks of ash landing in it while its cooking give it a smokey taste.
That is a nice Haul IceNEyes, I collected 5 gallons off my 19 taps yesterday and tapped 4 more trees, which were dripping to beat hell. Total of 10 gallons so far this week hopefully get another 5 today, and picking up 50 or so gallons from a fellow that tapped more than he bargained for, which is fine by me. I am excited to try the new barrel out! I am going to have to try the angle iron thing you did there Jake.
EVAPORATOR.jpg
I did my final batch last night, cooked up another 50-60 gallons or so. With the snow coming I decided to pull my taps, I have had enough of this weather (plus I have a lot on my plate at the moment). What a long drawn out season.
Here are some pics of my setup:
Cooker-1.jpg
Cooker-2.jpg
Pre-warmer.jpg
If anyone has extra sap they want to get off their hands in the Duluth area, I’d gladly come by and pick it up. PM if interested.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
