Making Maple syrup question

[stifflej]

Was reading a post yesterday on here about making maple syrup, and want to do a small set up this year, using taps with plastic tubes, into 5 gallon buckets (have access to free buckets). Was looking at these taps:

http://www.rothsugarbush.com/index.c...reitemid=16631

Will these work OK, or do you guys that have done this have a better tap to use, and tell me where I can order them from? Also, what size of tubing would I need?

Thanks all.

[Wis Bang 2]

The county conversancy has a sugarbush and sugaring 'shack' in the state forest next to my cabin. They use those taps, two per tree w/ plastic 'surgical' tubing, looks to be around 1/4". They start up the slope around 5' high and wind their way downhill collecting around 30 trees getting a bit lower w/ each line ending at a 50gal rubbermaid trashcan.

They have 4 or these lines plus a huge bunch of metal 'hang on' buckets on metal taps. School groups come to see the history & 'how to' of making maple sugar ending w/ the placement of a metal tap on a tree and then pancakes to sample the syrup.

The 'Sugarshack' has a wood fired evaporator capable of running 200 - 300 gal a day. They do one weekend open to the public and after seeing bits of the operation when I visited the camp, DW and I attended last year and found it to be an interesting program.

[MN Gardener]

We just started doing maple syrup last year. Those are the same taps we used. We tapped the tree and used clear tubing and put the tubing in 5 gallon buckets. The buckets had the lids on them and we drilled holes big enough for the tubing to go through it (this keeps debri from getting into the sap). We collected the sap and took it to a friends house to boil down. It worked fine for us since we were just doing it as a hobby. This year we are hoping to get our own evaporator pan / fire set up going and will expand from that.

[MELOC]

my first year (and last year due to time and budget), i used plastic tubing spouts and vinyl tubing from lowes. i used plastic jugs that had a handle on the top and hung them right over the spout. the tubing was basically used just to make sure the drip entered the jug. my brand of drinking water has changed their jugs and i cannot get the 1 gallon jugs with handles anymore, but hawaiian punch sells their product in jugs that look to be at least one gallon and have the same handle that can be hung right over the spout.

[ET1 SS]

Last year was my first season of working maple sap.

I used a coupel of the steel taps, but mostly the plastic taps.

I used 3-liter soda bottles and they seemed to work fine.

[beaglebiz]

stifflej, Agway sells the taps for a buck or so. We do the plastic milk jugs

[seedspreader]

I've always used milk jugs. They work ok. Going to be doing a bit different this year. I'll try to post on what I decide I like.

I've got a few articles up over on my website. Feel free to check it out.

http://www.themodernhomestead.com/news.php

I've got a couple of articles up on Maple Syrup making. Feel free to stop by and check them out.