Most soft maples around here are actually hybrids between silver and red. The leaf shapes and bark texture vary quite a bit. We average around 65:1 for soft maples. However, I think sap production varies a lot from one location to another due to different weather patterns and ground conditions . I’ve never seen bud sap because the trees stop flowing just before the buds swell noticeable.
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AJ,
This year I think the timing will be tricky. I usually tap my large maple in February but this year I’m not sure that will work.
Somewhere, at some time, I read an article (maybe in the NNGA proceedings?) detailing a taste test of syrups made by tapping ‘unusual’ trees… like black walnut, butternut, shagbark hickory, boxelder(Acer negundo, aka Manitoba maple, ivy-leafed maple, etc.).
IIRC, in the walnut family, butternut was the winner, flavor-wise. Boxelder was well-received, with a rich, buttery flavor, preferred by some over sugar maple.
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I got my taps from Amazon the other day and I’ve read that many people in my area are now tapping trees. Maybe I’ll put a few in tonight and see what I get.
Anyone else tap trees yet?
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If the days are warm and nights are cold and the trees are not blooming it’s a perfect time to do it.
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The sap can freeze solid if the nights get below 20ºF. Depending on your system, ice will start to accumulate if the days aren’t significantly warm enough to thaw it out. Freeze-ups can make progress real slow, but I think sap collected during colder weather produces the best flavor.
The weather here in the past few weeks was perfect for collecting sap, but I didn’t bother because I’m expecting much colder weather in the coming weeks. I usually tap in late February anyhow. A couple of times I started in January, but those were very mild winters with forecasts for early warm-ups. Maybe now is normal for warmer zones.
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I tapped a maple tree in my yard last evening and I just checked the 1 gallon jug I set out and it was dripping out from over the top. Not sure how long it’s been filled but I appear to have lost a little sap. Todays temps reached 46 degrees. I should store it in the fridge but I think I’ll boil down a small batch on the stove tonight. It should yield about 4 ounces. lol enough for a couple of waffles tomorrow.
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I’ve done this a few times, and I grew up in Vermont where lots of families would have sugar shacks.
I tap two trees in my yard and get enough syrup for my wife and I for the year. I use the plastic taps from amazon, with tubing to guide the sap into 5 gallon water cooler jugs. On a good day a single tap can almost fill one of those jugs.
The main factor that determines sugar level is how much sun exposure and open canopy the tree has. A tree in forest competing for light may have half the sugar concentration of a tree in an open yard or field. So a silver or red maple can have higher concentration than a sugar maple if the conditions are ideal. However silver and red mples tend to produce more sugar sand, which is the mineral crystals left behind after evaporating the sap. I bet that’s most of what’s in that picture, sugar sand is mostly calcium malate, which is actually a very good source of easily absorbed calcium. Old timers used to eat it by the spoonful it as a mineral tonic. Probably good for people with osteoporosis.
If the sap freezes that’s good. Throw out the ice, which is pure water, and save the unfrozen liquid, which is concentrated sap. As it freezes, the sugar gets squeezed out of the ice crystals, and the unfrozen liquid gets more concentrated. A few years ago I froze my sap in gallon jugs, let it thaw half way, then poured off the liquid into new jugs. Then I froze those and repeated the process. Each freeze/thaw/pour cycle almost doubled the sugar concentration, and reduced the volume by half. So 3 cycles increases the concentration by 8x. It saved a lot of boiling time.
some
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That is one of the methods the Native Americans used. I tried to take advantage of this a few times when my storage contains near the garage started freezing. I drained the unfrozen sap from the center because it theoretically has the concentrated sugar. Getting the ice out of the containers was the only issue. They didn’t thaw well in the garage, so I had to run hot water through them.
My collection system is completely different story. It is a multiple closed systems with about 100-150 taps in all. It is cheap and efficient, but there isn’t much I can do when it freezes up. It creates number of problems depending on the circumstances. I could spend more money to make it less prone to freezes, but then I have to remind myself that I can by syrup for about $50 per gallon. I guess it comes down to how much you want to spend on your hobbies. I prefer to wait until danger of hard freezes are over.
Seems like sugar will be lost this way, but it shouldn’t be an issue if you have a surplus of sap.
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It’s been below freezing for 2 days here and the sap has slowed way down. Today when I came home I check my bucket and there was only.a quarter gallon and about half of it has froze. I took my refractometer and checked the unfrozen portion and it was 6% sugar. I took the chunk of ice and set it in a bowl on the counter and let it melt. I checked it and it was about 1% sugar. So the ice formation did increase sugar in the unfrozen sap, but there is still some sugar in the ice.
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yeah, I guess it wouldn’t really be very practical for a large scale operation like yours. I only put in 2 or 3 taps a year.
Anyone tap trees this year?
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Gonna be a few years before i can tap, just planted a bunch of super sweets last fall…
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Too cold here yet, we need a few more weeks
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This is the first year that we haven’t tapped in a very long time. We decided against it because we are busy with several other outdoor projects. If all goes well, we’ll be back at it next year.
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It’s that time again if you are not doing it already.
Close. Looks like at least one more week in southern Michigan. The warmest temp in the next week is 42. It’s not worth tapping here yet.
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Here in Southern Vermont we put 10 taps in our backyard sugar and red maples last week to take advantage of a couple brief thaws. The thaw is long gone, we got another foot of snow, and it looks like we won’t be above freezing for the next week, but we collected about 8 gallons of sap while it lasted. We simmered it down on the woodstove in a deep restaurant pan spread over a couple days, and finished it on the gas range to make a little over 3 cups of syrup.
While this was early for us, I was surprised to see that some of the commercial producers to the north of us have started tapping extremely early to take advantage of the volatile weather. Here’s a story that talks about several producers who put their taps out in December of last year! And they made 1000 gallons of syrup before New Years! I’m tempted to go similarly early next year to see what happens.
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