Maple Syrup 2024

Sure looks to me like tapping season is here. Perfect weather forecast for the next two weeks.

I put 20 taps in this weekend and only 2 were wet. Still a little early here in the area north of Duluth. We are always a week or two behind everywhere else.

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

I put 20 taps in this weekend and only 2 were wet. Still a little early here in the area north of Duluth. We are always a week or two behind everywhere else.

Good to know. We never got around to tapping, put a bunch of miles on the sled, ran to the cities to help a friend with a project, went fishing, and lastly one of the boys came down with the barf/diarrhea bug yesterday.

So now I know what my plans will probably be sometime this week (blowing chunks and shitting my pants too). Yey

buckybadger wrote:

The neighbors stopped by last night and said they are putting out one round of taps this weekend to see what things do. We don’t have many mature maples near the house out here, but I told them to have at it if they find a tree they like.

32-49 degree temps every day for the next 8 days here, with temps at night in the 20s and low 30s. I’ve got a feeling the temps could overachieve once this snow is gone early next week and the dark ground is out to soak in the sun.

Update: I stopped next door and the sap was flowing. We are a couple miles off of Pool 4. It’s definitely “go” time for now. The coolest day in the 10 day forecast is 38 with nighttime lows in the mid 20s to low 30s.

I just tapped a few trees, two trees were slowy dripping. I would expect this week they will start flowing like crazy.

B-man wrote:

Good to know. We never got around to tapping, put a bunch of miles on the sled, ran to the cities to help a friend with a project, went fishing, and lastly one of the boys came down with the barf/diarrhea bug yesterday.

So now I know what my plans will probably be sometime this week (blowing chunks and shitting my pants too). Yey

Ya I’m not sure where you’re located but my theory is the abnormally low snowpack for most of the winter along with the severe cold stretches pushed the frost a little deeper than most years, so I think it will be a few days before the trees “wake up”. Thats my theory at least.

A buddy in Eau Claire tapped over the weekend, they are dripping. I won’t tap this year due to travel plans. Going to miss it.

Everyone give up this year? My trees aint doing much. Nothing yesterday which surprised me. Only collected like 41 gallons so far which is cooked down to about 3 right now.

South side of Gull, tree’s not doing much. Got taps in Saturday. Ground is still frozen, but hoping this wind today thaws things out. Hoping it is still early!

I was in Eau Claire the last two Fridays. Two weeks ago spent most of our time chasing down buckets that blew off. Not much fun. Last Friday things were flowing, ran 75 gallons through the reverse osmosis system. He ended up with five gallons that day using sap previously run through the RO system.

Ma and I were on a drive last Saturday and we saw several large maples with bags hanging the looked pretty darned full and in more than just a couple locations.

It’s 69 degrees currently, and 76 degrees forecasted for Friday here along Pool 4 .

The neighbors have reported quite a haul on sap the last 10 days or so. After the rain this weekend we could have enough of the frost gone for things to start to green up on the upper most layers of the soil. It seems like it’s about a month too early, but winters are just not as long anymore here.

I added about 20 more taps this weekend which puts me at around 60. Only about 1/3 were wet as of Saturday.. Another 1/3rd started running yesterday. Hoping the last 1/3 woke up today. Would really like to do my first boil this weekend.

We tapped 20 trees in our sugarbush Sunday. 1/3rd of them were dripping pretty good, some others will need some more time.

The boys are planning on tapping another 20 today after school.

The dude that buys their sap ($.50/gallon!) dropped off hangers, taps and some bags. Those are going to work soooo much better than milk jugs that blow around all the damn time lol

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Nice to see the kids out tapping. Hopefully they get some exposure to the boiling and finishing process too – that’s the best part. The bag holders work the best out of all the tapping methods I’ve used. Unfortunately they get blown around in the wind pretty bad too until they get some sap in the bags to hold them down.

I added about 10 more taps last night which puts me close to 70 – not totally sure as I haven’t done an official count. Only have about 20 gallons so far but am hoping it will pick up enough this week to do a boil this weekend. Still about half of the ground where I’m at is snow covered. The trees haven’t woke up yet.

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I pulled all mine down yesterday almost all of them were running cloudy already. Some trees will probably almost have leaves after today. Them few warm stretches we had earlier must have screwed my area up.

Jeremy what area are you in?

Belle Plaine. SW metro.

Had good sap run yesterday, todays mild weather seems to have brought it to a standstill. Still a fair amount of frost in the ground. Probably going to pull the bags for the weekend and be ready for Monday

We tapped March 1st in Washburn County, WI. Collected 100 gallons Thursday and got it to boiling point after running it through the RO to kill bacteria. Had good runs Monday and Tuesday this week with another 200 gallons those two days from 160 taps.

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I only put out 10 taps this year to let the kids eat through the stock pile from previous years. Should have done more. I only collected 39-40 gallons before my trees turned. Ended up 3 tbs shy of 1.5 gallons from that. Like 26 to 1. Last year was by far my worst I was at about 57 to 1.

I remember back in the day driving around Mille Lacs and there were maple trees being tapped everywhere. Now you don’t see one. Why not?

Eelpoutguy wrote:

I remember back in the day driving around Mille Lacs and there were maple trees being tapped everywhere. Now you don’t see one. Why not?

My guess would be that those guys from “back in the day” are much older and its a lot of work.

We have 76 Taps out in the Cambridge area and are still going strong. Boiled down 200+ gallons last weekend and already sitting another 75 as of yesterday. Hoping the season hangs on with the crazy temperature swings we’ve been having. Long range temps still looks great.

Our 30 trees have barely done anything so far (Duluth area), some haven’t even ran at all.

The forecast doesn’t look too promising yet either…might get a little run Thursday-Friday but cooling back down after that.

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In my part of Duluth, the weather has been great the last week and looks great the next week. Bman Id be cautiously optimistic with that forecast for you. Once its above freezing, even by a couple degrees, I feel like sun is more important than adding a few more degrees.

I’ve got about 125 gallons ready and probably another 30 in the bags to be collected. I plan to start boiling tomorrow and will boil for a few days straight. My number of taps keeps climbing as I’ve been adding more every couple days – currently at 89 taps. Average sugar content of the sap I’m getting is just north of 3%

Got my first 80 gallons boiled last night and have about 115 left to boil today plus whatever we get in the bags today. Should be a good batch based on how it looks so far.

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Gitchi Gummi wrote:

Got my first 80 gallons boiled last night and have about 115 left to boil today plus whatever we get in the bags today. Should be a good batch based on how it looks so far.

Awesome Gitchi! How would you say this compares to other years? Just curious. It was about average for cold maybe a little warmer than normal, but definitely colder than last year, but similar snow as last year right? Interested how it compares.

It seems like it took a bit longer for the trees to wake up because of the deep frost. I think the frost was deeper than normal this year due to a light snow year and several stretches of really cold temps. I still have some trees that just woke up in the last day or two. But its looking like we will have a deep freeze over the weekend so I want to get everything I have boiled today. Then we look to have another run of nice weather days starting Monday going thru Friday next week, so it looks like another long boil is going to be slotted for end of next week. If all goes well, I could end up with 10 gallons this year.

I lost my sap hydrometer so I’m not able to measure sugar content of the sap when it comes out of the tree but I’ve heard people are getting higher (4-5%) sugar content than normal (3%). I’ll see what we end up with for syrup at the end of this batch and will do some back math to figure out sap sugar content.

Very cool! Thanks for the info.

I agree with Gitchie. The frost prevented them from running early on when temps first got warm enough. We put taps out one the 23rd of February and didn’t get anything until the 4th or 5th. But once it started, it ran good! I think we’re on par this year compared to other years. Some are better than others. It All depends how long we can keep these perfect temps going. Made just over 5 gallons of syrup last weekend. This week we are now sitting on at least 150 Gallons in the storage barrels plus whatever ran in the woods from yesterday and now today. Gotta work till noon today, then the boiling will commence!