Another week into my first sugaring season.
I gave one pound (12 fluid oz) of my syrup away at the beginning of the week to a guy at work who is going to be brewing some maple beer. The beer, either a porter or stout, should be ready for consumption in a couple months.
Tried to keep some better sap collection data this week, but it’s been hard measuring without a bunch of graduated containers. So I gave it my best shot and this is what I came up with for my 10 red maple taps:
Monday 1.5 qts
Tuesday 1.5 qts
Wednesday 4.0 qts
Thursday 11.0 qts
Friday 10.5 qts
1/2 Saturday 6.0 qts
Total 34.5 qts or 8.625 gallons of sap.
The big question is how much syrup does this equal? Well after checking my syrup with a hydrometer and filtering it into mason jars I ended up with 17 ounces of syrup. This means that I am getting about 1.971 ounces of syrup per gallon of sap. So it would take me a little less than 65 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup.
Using the rule of 86, which says it takes about 86 gallons of sap with a sugar content of 1% to produce 1 gallon of syrup I am able to figure out that my red maple sap has a sugar content of about 1.32%. Now thats after filtering and checking the density which both consume syrup in the process. So my sugar content and sap to syrup ratios may be a little low. Next week I will try to take some measurements prior to filtering to get a more accurate reading.
I also put in my last two taps in a couple of decent sized trees Sunday morning. No sap was flowing 1st thing after tapping but the jugs were 1/3 full by 1pm. Monday is a holiday so if the temps stay good and I can get another 5-6 gallons I may try another boil.
