Many people think strictly of sugar maples when it comes to valuable tree saps though many trees are tapped for their sap to make sugar syrup including walnuts, maples, pecans, sycamore, hickory, birch, butternut, box elder, poplars etc. see these links 22 Trees That Can Be Tapped For Sap And Syrup | Wild Foodism & http://homestead-honey.com/2014/03/10/beyond-maple-syrup-tapping-black-walnut-trees/. This is the basics on how to make syrup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d74a6uKAz2o. I’ve even heard of people tapping elms and hackberries. Rubber trees were something that completely changed the modern world when their valuable sap was extracted, see this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrJ1LGNPmHU. Tree sap can be used to make glue, see this link All is Safely Gathered In: Making glue out of pine tree sap and ash & this one http://www.survival-manual.com/pine-pitch-glue.php. Almost any tree can be tapped to make something. My personal experience is limited to having tapped about every maple around here. In my area tree tapping is something not typically done.
I tapped a silver maple once and collected half a gallon of sap. I cooked it down in a pot and just before the pan went dry it made a few drops aid sweet syrup
Yes a good sugar maple 40 gallons of sap boils down to 1 gallon of syrup. A silver maple is 80:1 though I have seen them produce much higher sugar levels than that.
What is the ratio on sycamore Clark?
I googled it and the link said 40 to one. I have never tasted it but I thought it might be an interesting spring project
Sycamore is 10 gallons of sap = 1 quart of syrup. You get at least a gallon or two per day of sap http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/survivalist/2014/02/how-make-sycamore-syrup-easy-and-cheap. Black walnut has high sugar content somewhere around 30:1 or in some cases less http://homestead-honey.com/2014/03/10/beyond-maple-syrup-tapping-black-walnut-trees/.
I ghetto tapped a sugar maple in my yard a few years back and overnight collected a very small amount of sap. I put it in a pan and boiled it down. What was left was incredibly delicious. It was only a few tablespoons and after posting a picture of it on Facebook I think my family was ready to call an intervention. Lol. It looked exactly like I had cooked heroin in a spoon. The debris in the spoon is the wood shavings that must’ve drained into my collection bucket after drilling the hole in the tree.
We posted at the same time but yes 40:1 is about right. Good yielding trees when you think about it!
Speedster,
That syrup is delicious! Are you tapping it this year?
Yes , I was surprised it was that high. What about flavor? I’ve only tried maple.
They are all different flavors. Not bad flavors unless you tap a red oak or something then it might be pretty high in tannin. I’ve never tapped a white oak but believe me I would if time permitted one year.
I bet they are, I would imagine black walnut would be particularly strong
That was from a sugar maple at my old house. I have a lot of red maple and poplar here at my new place. There may be some sugar Mae in the woods but didn’t get a chance to I’d them this summer and now that the leaves are gone I can’t tell the difference between red and sugar. I could tap the reds but would rather tap the sugar maples
For those of you that tap trees do you prefer the poly tree saver types with tubing or do you use the stainless steel type that a bucket hangs from? Does anyone have e a good source for supplies
We tapped a large silver maple in our front yard by just drilling a hole and inserting a short length of narrow garden hose over an ice cream bucket hung from a nail. We made several quarts of syrup, but it just tasted like sugar, so we had to add maple flavoring! We learned to store it in the freezer to be able to have it year round.
I am using these type spiles https://www.amazon.com/Tap-My-Trees-Individual-224/dp/B00IX635FU/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1482528798&sr=8-14&keywords=maple+spiles but it looks like they have really gotten expensive! These are far more economical https://www.amazon.com/Maple-Spile-Ecolo-Spouts-Syrup/dp/B01B55945A/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1482528954&sr=8-15&keywords=maple+spiles. I think the best deals to be had are here http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=spile&_sacat=0
Thanks Clark. When I did my ghetto tapped I used a milk jug with a hole in the cap. Looks like many people use open metal buckets or pales but I don’t like the idea of having the top open to the environment.
can you tap tulip,poplar for syrup? i didnt c them in the list.
I’ve never heard of it. But it might be possible. If that’s the case I’d be loaded with SAP because I own a bunch of big poplar trees.
Actually I just read this Eating Wild: Birch And Poplar Syrup Great Everyday Substitute for Maple that states that poplar sap can be boiled down to syrup. It doesn’t have as much sugar buy apparently tastes great. Also says the sap runs later than it does with maple
St Lawrence Nurseries used to have a silver maple which had very high sugar content (higher than many sugar maples as I recall). Not sure if they are still selling them, but if I thought they would grow here, I’d get some of them…