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Gem Lake News Page 2 of 6 Sap was still flowing in some of this year's trees until the first week of May! Generally speaking, sap flows when temperatures during the day get above freezing and nighttime temperatures get below freezing. In order to tap your trees you will need an assortment of spiles, hooks, buckets and lids. You will also need a drill and a hammer to put the tap into the tree. The height of the tap really doesn't matter too much, so it should be a height that is convenient to you. There are many diagrams on-line that will show you ideal tapping conditions. You drill a hole slightly upward using a 7/16 inch drill bit and then install your spile. Whether you hang the bucket on the tree or place it on the ground, your collection container will need to be covered at all times. You can store your collected sap for up to seven days, as long as you can leave them somewhere that stays 38 degrees or colder. Sap is like milk and will spoil if it isn't kept cold. The reason most hobbyists store their sap outside is the time it takes to boil it all down. When storing the sap outside please make sure you are using food grade containers of some kind that you have thoroughly cleaned and sterilized, for instance with a mixture of 20 parts water to 1 part bleach. Unless you like ants and peeling wallpaper, do yourself a favor and boil down the sap outside. Most people collect as much sap as possible before starting a round of boiling, or evaporating the sap down to syrup. With an ideal set up and a very hot fire, you could evaporate your sap down to syrup in 8 hours. It can also take several days depending upon your set up. Most hobbyists seem to do the major reducing outside until they get the mixture mostly boiled down to the size of a two or three quart pot. You will need to filter the mixture at least once through a white dishcloth or an actual maple syrup filter. If you don't filter at least once, you will end up with syrup that looks like it has sand it in. Banner Year for Maple Syrup (continued from page 1) You can do the final boil of your 2-3 quart mixture inside without damaging your stove too much. However, you will notice that the rolling and happy sort of boil you saw initially starts to look like an angry volcano as you approach the final syrup stage. Be careful at this point, as all your work can be ruined if you let your syrup boil over. The process of making syrup has been compared to watching paint dry. It takes a considerable amount of time. Because of the time spent watching that stupid pan, your mind will tend to drift at the end. This writer ruined a stovetop at this point by allowing the mixture to decorate the countertop. The final boil is temperamental . When the mixture reaches 219 degrees it is ready to bottle. Use a funnel, unless you like ants in your kitchen. Put the syrup into sterilized glass jars or a similar sterilized container. For every forty gallons of sap, you will end up with about one gallon of syrup, but it will be probably the best syrup you have ever tasted.