sugaring

[mitchmaine]

njfarmer, i’m guessing that means new jersey. hard to imagine your season being over but keep an eye on the holes you bored in your mystery trees. they may weep a little yet. we are two or three weeks early here and it alreday looks like the end. no moths or snow fleas. i hung a few pails to see what was happening and got an inch of sap in two days. looks like warm nights next, then some proper weather but very hard to predict how long our season will last. cleaned up the sugarhouse and boiled some water in the pans, and will probably start tapping tomorrow. my heart isn’t in it. the weather is toooooooooooooooweird.

[Mark Cowdrey]

njfarmer,
Check out http://mapletrader.com/community/index.php for a forum with lots of in depth maple info.
Looks like a runner here in NH today, we’ll see. We are still not all tapped out (1100 total) but will get some more done today.
Ya Mitch, this is weeeeeeiiiiirrrddd weather.
Mark

[sean518]

@Jean 32645 wrote:

Bill, when you make your beer from sap do you substitute all the water with sap? Hoping to make a batch this year, but I am new to beer making.

Jean,

I’ve been homebrewing for about four years now and it’s been extremely rewarding and an incredible amount of fun! If you have any questions or anything, PM me! Though I haven’t made an ale with maple sap, sounds interesting. I have tried adding maple syrup, but it’s very difficult to get a maple flavor as most of it seems to evaporate during the boil.

– Sean

[Anonymous]

currently apprenticing with bill acquaviva at Livewater farm. here are some photos of our rig, double bob sled with a three barrel tank, pair of mares and 300 buckets. what’s everybody using to gather with?

[LStone]

I home brew as well. It’s been a while but I’ve tried using maple sap, and maple syrup extract. Best results in my opinion with using the extract and I have settled on that. It is all about control and consistency which always impacts the flavor. The raw sap I am afraid is too much of a wild card for use in in brewing. Remember your ratio of sap to syrup is 40:1 plus or minus to result in the desired sugar content in the syrup. There are many recipes available on the web. I think the loins share of recipes you will find will be to add syrup or extract on top of your 5 gal boil. In using sap, yes, I boiled my full pot (7gal) of maple sap down to 5 gal. in that particular test and it was a big disappointment. I won’t be doing it that way again.

Cheers!

[Ed Thayer]

@ethalernull 32732 wrote:

currently apprenticing with bill acquaviva at Livewater farm. here are some photos of our rig, double bob sled with a three barrel tank, pair of mares and 300 buckets. what’s everybody using to gather with?

That is a sweet setup. I wis my wood lot were a little less rocky so I could do something similare.

I working on mounting a 65 gallon horizontal leg tank to the forecart for single horse work.

But for now I use my utv to gather.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXJBeKrHkto

Ed

[Ed Thayer]

The first boil of 2012. If only the sap and pans stayed this clean all year 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFWb9NKFc4s

[Mark Cowdrey]

Ed, Nice looking setup. What size rig & head tank are those?
Mark

[mitchmaine]

Evan,

This is our sap sled, the stock tank is full of buckets to hang. We hung 60 last weekend that are about half full. We hung 220 today and sap was running well. Will throw some more up tomorrow. Shooting for 4-500 depending on our spirit. We have a galvanized collecting tank , three barrel, to gather with that sets on the same sled, and we use a four wheel cart on bare ground.. Hey to bill, and good sugaring.
Ed, nice rig there. 2×8? Hard to quess. Nothing to guage the size by. Sweet! Snow is about 5” deep in the woods and all but gone out here. I can tap real close to the ground in wood that is fairly tap free. And I’m tapping a few more on the north side this year with this warm weather. Hope it pays off. Good luck to you and mark and michael and the rest of the sugarmakers. mitch

[Baystatetom]

Heading out to gather for the first time. Using a cart this year instead of a sled, we’ll see how it goes. The cart is wider then my little sled, might be hard to maneuver between trees like I am used to.
I have also used sap to brew beer, just remember the sugar in the sap is only there for the yeast to eat. It will give you a higher alcohol content but will not make your beer taste like maple syrup.
~Tom

[Michael Colby]

Judging by the photos, I’m now certain that I’m one of the few using snowshoes in the woods this year. I’m at 2000 feet in Walden, Vermont and we’ve now got a good two feet of snow in the woods. I collected about 800 gallons of sap on Wednesday and Thursday but now winter has decided to return. It’s fine with me because I needed a day to occupy the sofa. 🙂

[Baystatetom]

Showed up at my neighbors pancake breakfast sugar house with a tank of sap on my ox cart the same time as a television crew. The reporter was more impressed with my kids carrying buckets then my steers and wagon but that’s fine with me. Maybe we’ll will be on Channel 40 out of Springfield MA tonight.
~Tom

[Tim Harrigan]

@Baystatetom 32799 wrote:

reporter was more impressed with my kids carrying buckets then my steers and wagon

Tom, maybe it is more common to see a team of oxen than to see kids working these days.

[Claddagh Farms]

Boiled for the 1st time this year, yesterday. A full month earlier than I’ve done in the past. Sugar season in Mid-coast Maine seems to be in full swing. I tapped over a week ago, and that may have been 7 or 8 days late. We got 4 inches of snow the night before last….makes me wish I’d finished the sled for the team that I gave up on because of the complete lack of snow here. Flow has been slow and steady with a few frozen days and a few high-peak days so far.

[Baystatetom]

Ha Ha Tim that is true, certainly more common to see oxen working then kids at my place! The news did a nice piece for my friend and neighbor. He always donates his opening day profit to Habitat For Humanity which was the focus of the news story but they did have a nice shot of my kids and the steers. I would post the link but if you blinked you’d miss it.
~Tom

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