Tapping trees
Massachusetts
Contributors to this thread:
Anyone tapped your maples yet? They must be flowing well with this sudden warm surge. I think I'm going to get mine tapped up sometime next week.
I was debating... But my wife is feeling like she wants the year off from running the stove top for hours at a time. We shall see... I may tap one...
I know the tree I tapped last year, a broken branch on it I could have put a bucket under and collected my first couple gallons already!
Not yet, but this warm up is tempting, probably run 3/16" this weekend and tap 40 or 50.
I usually wait till Presidents day I still have a lot of stuff to get ready before I tap
Will you could get one of those cheap plug in stove tops and do it outside or in the garage. I got one to boil heads with and it works great. I think I paid $15 for it.
Presidents day-ish for me....
If you tap to early you can crack the frozen trees or the taps will seal up I do around 50 taps and have a small evaporator to boil it down that burns wood I've been doing it over 20 years hold off to after President's day it's still way to early
Good point Shawn!
Also Snowshoe, that makes sense. Am I crazy? (hold off... :)) I feel like as a kid, folks tapped late Feb, and ran through a good chunk of March. Now I feel like folks are tapping earlier and done by early March? Is that just the last few winters or, for those of you doing this more than I, has that been the trend? Different technology a driver there or just random variation?
I used to wait but I stopped. If a good warm day happens at the end of January I tap and get a better yield as a result. I've moved to some new property and downsized this year so I have less than a dozen taps in; still the last couple warm days have given me over 10 gallons of sap stored and ready to boil. I tapped Jan 26th.
I agree it seems early but the seasons are a changing. Though it might depend where in the state you are too. Back when I did a few dozen trees I could afford a short season without too much of a hit. Now that I've only got a handful of taps in I need as many runs as I can get. My ice fishing season is cut shorter all the time, and so is the maple sugaring season. If a tap turns out not to run at all by the next warm day, I drill another hole. If the tree cracks a little, I loose some sap, so what? The tree will be fine (I use the small 5/16" diameter taps so might be different with the larger ones).
I think I'll probably end up tapping this weekend or next week. I boiled my first batch on Feb 15th last year and my last batch on April 3rd. We've still got a few jars to go through from last year. Good excuse stuff a bunch of pancakes in my face hole.
Matt with that ten gallons of sap how much syrup will that produce..I've never done it but I'm very interested and would love to learn. Any pointers guys? Where do I start? Yes I know..look for a maple tree..haha..lol
The ratio of sap to syrup is 50 or 60 to 1 for non sugar maples and 40 to 1 for sugar maples. I don't have sugar maples, mostly red, so that 10 gallons will be roughly a pint of syrup if my math is right.
It's really pretty straightforward to get going, find some taps at a local hardware store (5/16 or 7/16 are better than the big old style hook ones) and use a tube or other collection system (we use bags and bag hangers because it was really cost effective to get a "lifetime supply" of bags). You'll want to boil a lot at once so invest in some kind of food safe storage container for the sap you get until boiling day comes. I use clean 5 gallon buckets that don't get used for anything else during the year.
My only tip is to tap early and tap often. If you're not so good with tree ID you can identify maple trees at this time of year with binoculars. They have small red buds on their branches.
Then just boil it down till it's syrup. I boil in big restaurant roasting pans ("hotel pans" in restaurant jargon) over a fire in a cinder block fire pit. I've also boiled on a normal wood stove but a big pan vs tall pot makes for more efficient boiling. It's not cost effective at all to do all the boiling on an electric or gas stove inside.
Wow.. had no idea it was that easy.. so when you boil you don't add anything?? And when do you know when to stop?
You can get fancy and use a hydrometer to tell you the specific gravity of the syrup but I stop when it looks like syrup and is the thickness I want. It's really that easy. Boil down the clear sap, it changes color, gets thicker, and the flavor gets concentrated. Nothing to it. Pour it in jars and go to town.
There are a few small tricks and tips, like if you boil outside having some kind of chimney or smoke path that doesn't spit ash and soot up and into the pans etc. Some folks stop boiling outside when it's ALLLLLMOST the way they like it and then finish the last few minutes of boiling inside in a smaller pot to prevent the hotter outdoor fire from scortching the syrup in the pan but that's all kinda fine details you gotta work out as you try it. For me I'm just boiling and boiling, continuously adding sap and watching it reduce and by the time I'm ready to stop and call it syrup the fire is dying anyway and I'm less worried about scortching. The basic recipe is: collect a bunch of sap, apply heat until it looks and tastes like syrup, stuff you face with pancakes.
I grew up drinking the sap from the buckets it was so good. Definitely protect the sap from ash and smoke or all your efforts will be for not. Smoke favored syrup is not appealing. Good Luck!
OK.. so now where can you tap? Does it have to be your private land?
Public land is totally legal to tap. I've been tapping in a wooded area owned by the town for the last few years. People walking on trails love to talk about the process when they see me lugging my buckets from the woods.
so...do you guys mark maples when they have leaves, or do you go in now and identify by bark?
anyone ever tap birch?
Bark + red buds on the limbs + maple leaves on the ground is close enough for a positive ID for me. I have done birch because I love birch tree juice but don't have any tapped right now. There are other trees you can tap and make syrup from too but I've only done maple and birch.
Did somebody say 10 gallons tree juice for one pint of syrup? Was that a typo?
I dont know the exact gallons to pints... But I know for me last year, If I used my bucket, which was about a full sized home depot bucket (food grade though), and it was full... I could get about 12 ounces of syrup out of it. Some runs a bit more, some a bit less. I was very small scale and just tapped a couple trees.
Shawn, Xi and the guys here got me to try it. the kids loved it. I ended up buying a "starter" kit online - came with a how to book, taps, hose, a drill bit and some filter paper.
It's fun - though the boil does take a while.
Nice!! I'm definitely looking for a starter kit!! Thanks for all the great advice guys!
Another thing I do (I think I stole this from someone here) is to go to the bakery department at your local supermarket to get your buckets. They get their frostings in buckets that are like 1.5 gallons and they just recycle them when empty. I just grabbed about 2 dozen tree buckets and a bunch of 5 gallon carrying buckets from my local stop n shop last week.
It all depends on sugar in sap red maples have less sugar so it takes more to boil down I tap sugar maples and that usually runs 2 to 3 percent sugar and 40 gallons of sap for 1 gallon of finished syrup and I do that with a syrup hydrometer then there's no guess work filter it then bottle it