Periodical: Maple Syrup Digest

Showing 171 – 180 of 218 resources

The Timing of Tapping for Maple Syrup Collection

There are a variety of reasons why sugarmakers might want to tap earlier than the traditional date: thousands of taps that take several weeks to install, lower snow cover and easier walking before mid to late winter, climate change generally moving the season forward and providing more sap flow weather in January and February. For most sugarmakers, the bottom line is simply this: what tapping time frame results in the highest sap yield? The experiments described below, which were performed between 2000 and 2007, were designed to answer this question.

Publication:
Maple Syrup Digest
Date:
June 1, 2008

Effects of Various Filters on Sap Quality and Characteristics

Sap filters can remove residue or debris, which may inadvertently enter the sap through the collection system or during storage. Moreover, filtering may improve the storage potential of maple sap, improve sap quality especially during mid- to late-season and help in keeping the evaporator system clean.

Publication:
Maple Syrup Digest
Date:
February 1, 2008

Lecanium Scale: What A Sticky Mess!

If you have a sugarbush in the Northeast, you may have noticed brown scale insects, sticky dripping honeydew, and black sooty mold on your sugar maple leaves in 2005 and 2006. That most likely was European fruit lecanium scale, Parthenolecanium corni.

Publication:
Maple Syrup Digest
Date:
October 1, 2007

Vacuum Sap Collection: How High or Low Should You Go?

Questions of how vacuum affects maple sap, syrup and trees have existed for many years, and these issues are perhaps more important today than ever before due to the increasing use of collection systems that can achieve very high levels of vacuum. This article will describe recent research performed at the University of Vermont Proctor Maple Research Center that was designed to answer questions about high vacuum.

Publication:
Maple Syrup Digest
Date:
October 1, 2007

Temperature Patterns with an Oil-Fired Evaporator

Knowing the temperature in the evaporator is an essential part to making quality pure maple syrup. This article will discuss observations of temperature in each partition and how the front and back pans temperatures are influenced by the draw off events.

Publication:
Maple Syrup Digest
Date:
October 1, 2007

Survey of Important Issues Facing the Maple Industry

In October, in Green Bay, an informal needs assessment survey was conducted by Sumner Dole, Henry Marckres and Kathy Hopkins to identify the most pressing issues facing the maple industry.

Publication:
Maple Syrup Digest
Date:
June 1, 2007

Comparison of the “Small” Spout with the Traditional 7/16″ Spout

The “small” spout, 19/64″ or 5/16″ in diameter, has been widely available to maple producers since the mid to late 1990’s as a “healthy” alternative to the traditional 7/16″ spout. While now in general use by producers in some regions, particularly those collecting sap by vacuum, the utility of these smaller spouts is still questioned by many sugarmakers, particularly those collecting sap by gravity. This article will review several studies conducted at the University of Vermont Proctor Maple Research Center comparing 7/16″ spouts with small spouts (for the purposes of this article, 5/16″, and 19/64″ will be considered equally as “small” spouts).

Publication:
Maple Syrup Digest
Date:
June 1, 2007

Comparison of Visual Grading Methods

There does not appear to have been a published comparison of the different grading kits subsequent to the research that introduced caramel standards followed by glass standards. Consequently, we undertook a comparison of most of the grading kits that are currently in use.

Publication:
Maple Syrup Digest
Date:
February 1, 2007

Sugar Profiles of Maple Syrup Grades

Although many analyses of the chemical composition of maple syrup have been conducted, relatively little information exists on the differences in composition of the individual syrup grades. As a first step in acquiring this information we performed a study to determine the characteristic sugar composition of each maple syrup grade.

Publication:
Maple Syrup Digest
Date:
December 1, 2006

Should Lateral Lines Be Vented?

A great deal has changed since the 1960s and 1970s in terms of maple production and recommended practices, especially given the introduction of the new polyethylene tubing formulations and new types of spouts. Consequently, we are occasionally asked whether lateral lines in gravity tubing installations should be vented. As a result of these questions, we compared sap yield from standard non vented (closed) 5/16″ lateral lines alongside a vented 5/16″ installation under gravity conditions.

Publication:
Maple Syrup Digest
Date:
October 1, 2006