Question for maple syrup makers

[David Wayne]

I am boiling sap for my second year as hobby. Question is how to know when sap is sour? I ask because there was an article on the news from a syrup maker talking about this being another short year due to the fact the temps wont fall below freezing at night spoiling the sap.
Thanks in advance
David

 

[motownbrowne]

Hey David, it's pretty easy to tell when sap goes bad. Basically it is sugar water, so as soon as it's out of there tree it starts to break down from exposure to bacteria, yeasts, etc from the air and your containers. If it's cold out this action is greatly delayed. The warmer it gets the faster your sap spoils. Sap that smells a little off or is cloudy is definitely on the way to being bad, but it's not necessarily bad. Often it cooks down into great syrup. But once it smells like bread dough and starts to have a texture to it, it's probably too far gone.

Usually you get 24 hours at least to get it heated up and pasteurized, often much more at the beginning of the season, and sometimes at the end of the season the sap is bad right off the tree. I hope that helps.

 

[David Wayne]

Thanks, I think bad out of the tree is what he was referring to.

 

[Avondale]

We usually stop collecting sap when any of the following events occur: the buds start to form, when the sap in the pail becomes cloudy to the point of being yellowish and when the moths and other critters floating in the pail become prevalent on a daily basis. There are always various opinions, which is why it is as much art as science. In recent memory, we have had a number of season that were "interrupted", meaning they started and ran good but all of a sudden stopped (either weather changed to very cold both day and night or very warm for sap season both day and night). We have been fooled, thinking it was over and pulled our 300+ pails in only to discover the season re-started shortly after we cleaned up.
Bob

 

[David Wayne]

Its been warm here in Ohio the last two days, both day and night. Sap slowed down yesterday & the next six days are calling for overnight lows
of upper 40s lower 50s before we get back to freezing nights. I will just wait and see what happens then.
Thanks
David

 

[Toyboy]

With this crazy weather we've been having, they're starting to tap trees here in N Wisc. already.

 

[motownbrowne]

Its been warm here in Ohio the last two days, both day and night. Sap slowed down yesterday & the next six days are calling for overnight lows
of upper 40s lower 50s before we get back to freezing nights. I will just wait and see what happens then.
Thanks
David

Yep, that's all you can do is wait it out. The warm weather doesn't do your tapholes any favors, but if they were pretty fresh before this weather you should still get good sap flow once it freezes again.

 

[motownbrowne]

With this crazy weather we've been having, they're starting to tap trees here in N Wisc. already.

Yeah, lots of guys near me are tapping, but I'm not quite ready yet, so I'm holding off until the 27-28th at the earliest.

 

[Quebecguy]

I just finished boiling about half an hour ago. I only had 465 buckets hung out of the usual 800 when I had to stop tapping and start gathering as the sap ran so much since yesterday's tapping that I was going to have many over flowing buckets. Ended up with about 3 gallons of syrup - not bad for the first day. Since I started sugaring in 1976 this is the earliest I've made syrup. I'll continue the tapping tomorrow or the next day.