Maple Science
Maple education for Junior High School Audience
Topic: Sap Production
Showing 111 – 120 of 279 resources
UVM Proctor Maple Research Center examines effect of spout diameter on sap yield
In order to determine the optimal approach to sap collection in their operation, maple producers need to be informed about how the choices they make will affect sap yield. One of the decisions they face is what spout size (diameter) to use.
Tapping Depth & Sap Quantity
Accepted tapping practices for 7/16 inch spouts with no vacuum called for tap holes to be drilled 2-2.5 inches deep. Later practices for 5/16 inch spouts under vacuum, call for drilling the tree to a depth of 1.5 inches. The reason for the reduction in depth, was to reduce the occurrence of drilling into dead wood, especially on trees with a long history of tapping. This can lead to reduced sap yield. When the 2018 season left us with an unusually low sap yield, the question arose: does tap depth matter when the system is under vacuum?
UVM Sap Pricing Calculator
This spreadsheet can be used to determine the price per gallon paid to the seller for sap or concentrate based upon a finished syrup density of either 66.0, 66.5, or 66.9¡ Brix and calculated using the “Revised Jones Rule” which can be found at: http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc/jones.pdf
Tapping on National Forest Lands
When looking to expand the maple industry people often look at the large acreages of forested lands in the public domain. In West Virginia, 16.5 percent of the land is in public ownership, and in Virginia, 17.1 percent. Of that, the largest acreage is managed by the federal National Forest System (NFS). Sugarbush owners adjoining NFS lands might look across the line to tapable maple stands in the national forest. Private citizens or community groups could also look at public lands as a way to get in the business. In this study, we investigated an example of a community group, the Mt. Rogers Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad, that is running a successful maple sugaring operation by tapping trees in the adjoining George Washington-Jefferson National Forest. We examined the sugaring operation and the impacts that the sugaring operation is having on the Whitetop community.
Reduced sap yields from tapping into stained wood
What is the impact on sap production when your tap into an old wound? With tubing systems, it is almost impossible to know for sure. This presentation covers preliminary sap yield data from clean tap holes versus holes that hit brown wood.
2018 Maple Season Replicated Re-Tap Study
Documents experiments conducted by Cornell researchers involving re-tapping mid-season.
Stained wood
What happens when taps are set into wood impacted by previous years’ taps.
Tap Below Lateral
How producers can effectively set taps below the lateral line.
Composition and Properties of Maple Sap, Concentrate, and Permeate
Reverse osmosis is used widely in the maple syrup industry to concentrate maple sap and increase the overall efficiency and profitability of syrup pro-duction. Sets of samples from maple producers utilizing a range of sap con-centration levels were collected and analyzed to provide a portrait of the phy-sicochemical properties and chemical composition of maple sap, concentrate, and permeate across a single production season. The results reinforce that re-verse osmosis functions essentially as a concentration process, without signifi-cantly altering the fundamental proportions of sap constituents.