Beer yuck. Whiskey good.
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Beer yuck. Whiskey good.
I have no enemies, but I'm intensely disliked by my friends.
Oh I remember . . . unfortunately as my wife would tell anyone who will listen the stuff I remember is the stupid, useless stuff . . . as could be attested to by Maniac and Hiram from our adventures this past weekend when I would rattle off obscure facts from Star Wars . . . and insist I am not a Star Wars Geek . . . really . . . I have seen the movies a few times, but I'm not a fanatic.
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the realization that there is something more important than fear."
"Death is only one of many ways to die."
Can you make beer from maple surple?
Ahhh, this all brings back memories. In the late eighties I dated a girl whose parents (Ray and Ginnie Titcomb) owned Maine Maple Products in Farmington. In addition to their own trees with the tubes running between them they had sap trucking in from all over Maine, Golden Road, etc. I recall the sap dribbling into this huge stainless steel flat maze device....wood fire underneath....and the sap would start out clear and then go back and forth along the maze (much like the ticket line at an airport) boiling off the water along the way. By the time it came out the other end it was syrup which was graded according to the color. Such a simple, but yet ingenious, method.
So its that time of year again...My brother and I are putting the taps out this weekend as we dont have time next weekend. Last year we had no idea really what we were doing so it was experimental. We only put out 15 taps to try it and see what the result would be. We ended up boiling down enough to fill about three pint containers. The final product was great so this year we marked off (another fun use for the GPS) another 25 trees. Any of you that do this on a regular basis, when re-tapping the same trees the following year, i know you're supposed to rotate your way around the tree but do you get better results tapping below last years hole or above it?
There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and ‘mental illness'. ---Dave Barry
Jim Stacey makes some of the best I've ever tasted. He actually placed 4 quarts of the stuff in the final cache of his state series.
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
The hole rotation is not so important but when tapping the same tree again and again you MUST put the new holes about 1.5 inches away from older holes. Remember the tree has died about 1 inch around those old holes and needs several years to heal itself. Sap does not flow through dead wood! I may put some back in the Maine cache just for the first few finders this year. I know NO food or drink in a cache but because I own it and do the upkeep and it is very close by I think I will be okay.
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?-Steven Wright