(Galien, MI) - The maple syrup making season is just about over.  18-year old Tyler Klopfenstein said he collected as much as 1,600 gallons a sap in one day during the peak of the season.

Now, Klopfenstein said he’s not getting nearly that much in a week.  He said sap flow begins slowing down when the temperatures start rising and over the past one to two weeks he’s collected only about 800 to 1,000 gallons of sap.  “It’s definitely slowed down from where it was the first two weeks,” he said.

He has about 700 taps in maple trees in two separate woods on his family farm between Three Oaks and Galien.  It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.  Klopfenstein said he’s made over 190 gallons of syrup, so far, this season compared to about 170 gallons of maple syrup last season.

His sap is boiled down into syrup with an evaporator.  He uses a reverse osmosis machine to remove some of the water from the sap which greatly reduces boiling time.