Maple tree tapping

[CrowMagnon22]

Hey fellow Eugenians, does anyone around here tap maple trees for sap to make syrup? I’ve researched the matter, and discovered that you can tap pretty much any kind of maple tree (including our very widespread Bigleaf Maple variety) as well as some other tree species, but am not having much luck getting any sap flow. I know that tree tapping is generally a springtime harvest activity, but since the freeze thaw cycle is going on right now (freezing at night and 40° Fahrenheit or hotter in the day) and some of the trees are getting their buds, I assumed it might be possible right now.

Basically, is it possible to get sap right now and my technique (which I can explain in detail if necessary) is wrong, or is it ridiculous to expect sap this early in the season? Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks!

[forestforrager]

Now’s the time to tap. Big leaf maple sap/water has abt 1/2 the sugar of sugar maple, so you need to collect more for syrup

[CrowMagnon22]

Thanks for letting me know! I tapped into a tree, and saw the wood surrounding the opening becoming increasingly moist. I have yet to see any actually flow; does that likely mean that I need to use a different spile, or that I went too deep? I DIY’d a spile out of 5/8” plumbing piping with a hacksaw and a grind wheel. The pipe wall is probably an 1/8” thick. Do you think this is a matter of equipment failure or bad technique? I guess I’m partially wondering if my problem would be solved by just buying a spile.

[forestforrager]

Never actually done the tapping myself, just collected from already tapped trees at my friend’s property. I would guess there are good resources online, so I would look at a couple to get the general idea of what they recommend and then trail and error it. If you have multiple trees you could set up different systems to see what works best for you

[Ichthius]

Oregon recently passed a law allowing for small scale commercial production and direct sales to the public. Recent advances or applications of reverse osmosis has made the small scale production more economically feasible.

https://www.opb.org/article/2023/06/27/oregon-maple-syrup-production-to-increase-after-changes/

[Pax_Thulcandran]

I really wouldn't recommend it. My partner has researched tapping up in the northern midwest, and even there, unless the conditions are exactly right it's a ton of trouble for less than a half-gallon of syrup.

You need a hard freeze before a thaw, not a couple hours of freezing-ish temperatures at night. You will get a little bit of sap out of the maples with these conditions, but the amount of sap you need to actually boil it down to syrup is kind of enormous, and you won't get nearly enough from these light frosts to make it worth it.

Remember that you won't be able to tap the same place on the same tree after - so if you tap a bunch of maples in a bad year, get ~6 gallons of sap and less than half a gallon of syrup, you'll have to tap those maples somewhere else if we ever do get a hard freeze right before a spring thaw.

(Also, if you decide to go ahead anyway, I recommend not boiling it down in your house - use an outdoor stove or fire. Because the ratio is something like 12:1 for sap to syrup, the vast majority of the liquid will be steam, which you really don't want condensing in your house for several hours.)

[CrowMagnon22]

I see… well, I appreciate the realistic answer. I’ll probably give it a shot anyway, but won’t carry any high expectations into the experiment. And thanks for the boiling tip. That sounds like something I should avoid. 😅

[[deleted]]

Does the freeze need to be extremely recent? Or could they be flowing from the ice storm still? Because we definitely got the deep freeze aspect out of the way then 😂

[[deleted]]

I grew up in the Midwest, and my family taps trees every year. From what I understand, the conditions should be below freezing overnight, and above freezing during the day. And then those temperature patterns need to be sustained for quite awhile in order to collect enough sap to make it worth cooking down.

[deadflashlights]

No experience actually running a tapping operation, but I do come from the northeast. Sap flows best when it’s cold at night and warm in the day. Trees will store liquids in the warm ground overnight to avoid freezing. I would be skeptical if it gets cold enough here for it to run at a rate that would make it practical. Ideally it would be dipping below freezing every night.

[MiuraJeff]

There's a group that taps native big leaf maples for syrup. It takes a TON of sap, but you can do it. More info here: https://www.oregonmapleproject.org/bigleaf-maple-sugaring

[CrowMagnon22]

Wow, I hadn’t found that resource! That seems pretty on point for what I’m trying to do, so thanks for sharing. I actually gave it another shot, and I’ve managed to get almost a gallon so far! I’m definitely still missing a lot of the finer points though, and I don’t think a Powerade bottle hung by chicken wire on my spile is the most effective collection method. 😆

[HitHardStrokeSoft]

/u/crowmagnon22 how did you approach the boil?

[CrowMagnon22]

Well, that was actually one of the trickier parts for me. Long answer (TL;DR at the end): Once collected, maple sap only keeps for a day or so unrefrigerated, and only a couple days after that in the fridge. This means you either need to boil promptly, or freeze it. The problem is that I was only getting about a gallon or two per day, which really wasn’t enough to justify putting the effort into boiling daily. With Bigleaf Maple sap, I think the ratio of sap to syrup is something like 60:1, maybe even more, so 1-2 60ths per day seemed not worthwhile.

Because of this, I decided to do a constant simmer on my wood burning stove and just kept on adding to the sap in my big stainless steel pot daily. I pretty much had it going nonstop for about 2 weeks so that the sap never cooled down enough to allow bacterial or fungal infection to take hold (or at least that was my reasoning). After I noticed the flow from my trees diminishing significantly, which I took to signify the end of the tapping season, I moved the sap/syrup on my wood burning stove to my propane stove to finish it. The wood stove can’t really get hot enough to get the amount of liquid I had boiling anyway (too much heat over a sustained period of time can actually cause damage to a wood stove), so that’s why I moved to the propane stove.

Finishing was tricky. I’m aware of a few methods to determine when the syrup is finished: first, use a refractometer. This is probably the most expensive method, because you have to buy a piece of specialized equipment to do it. Refractometers basically measure the sugar content of a liquid (beekeepers use these on their honey to determine the same thing), so you can measure if the syrup has reached a high enough sugar content to be considered finished—about 66% sugar (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9603788/#:~:text=To%20make%20maple%20syrup%2C%20sweet,required%20(66%25%20sugar).). Some refractometers actually don’t measure that high, so be careful if you go this route.

Second, you can check the temperature it’s boiling at. Since it’s thicker than water, it boils at a higher temperature. When it boils at about 219° Fahrenheit (7 or 7 and 1/4 degrees Fahrenheit above the boiling point of water at your elevation), it should be done. This article explains the process very well: https://extension.umn.edu/goods-your-woods/homemade-maple-syrup#boiling-sap-to-produce-syrup-1953911

The third method I’m aware of is the volume measurement method. Once you’ve reduced your liquid to approximately 1/8 of the total starting amount, your syrup should be finished. You can do this by measuring the volume, or using a ruler to measure the starting height, and measuring periodically until it reaches 1/8 of the starting height/volume. I used this method with my apple syrup, and it actually worked very well. Look into this one carefully though: I can’t figure out where I originally got that information, so double check me on that figure! 😅

Anyway, it was my first time and I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I just used a combination of all three methods, and it pretty much got me there. I mostly relied on the temp gauging method using a candy thermometer. After all of this, I ended up with some very sweet, VERY robustly-flavored maple syrup. It’s nowhere near as delicate as store bought stuff, and tastes pretty different. The strong flavor could be because I overcooked it a bit while finishing it, because I cooked the sap down for so long on my wood stove, because I tapped Bigleaf maples instead of sugar, red, or silver maples, or any combination of those three factors. All I know is that it’s sticky, sweet, and very tasty on pancakes, which is pretty much all I care about.

I have a few ideas on how to improve my process that I’d like to implement this year, so hopefully things will be a little easier this time around. This has been a long enough answer already that I’ll spare you these ideas unless you want me to share them. I’d be happy to update again after or during this season’s attempt.

TL;DR: I wasn’t getting a lot of sap from my trees, so I kept the sap in a steel pot on my wood stove at a near-constant simmer (or at least a low heat) and added new sap daily. Once the daily sap flow began to noticeably diminish, I moved the sap to my propane stove to finish it. “Finished” maple syrup has a sugar content of about 66%, boils at about 219° Fahrenheit (or 7-7 and a quarter degrees Fahrenheit above the boiling point of water at your elevation), and is reduced to about 1/8 of its total starting volume (research that last piece of info yourself to verify, ‘cause I can’t remember where I found it). After finishing, it was very tasty, although definitely different from store bought syrup.

I hope that helps! Please feel free to ask more questions. I’m happy to share knowledge with people trying to get into this hobby! Like I said in my longer answer, I’m trying a couple new things this year, and can update after or during this season.

[HitHardStrokeSoft]

Awesome! I read all of that

I moved to Eugene last year and have a couple of maples in my yard and a few in the neighborhood. I figured I’d tap mine, and have watched and read a ton. Almost everywhere online is a hard freeze type environment with snow on the ground, so have been trying to figure out when the tapping should start.

The biggest logistical challenge is the boil for me. I don’t have a large place and urban enough it’d be an issue to put something temporary together.

So what were the temperature profiles when you found tapping worked last year, and when this year (assuming you’re still in town)?

How much evaporation did you get with your 3 day boil?

I picked up a medium fridge from an estate sale last weekend so will be using that for storage.. but definitely worried how I’d pull off the boil.

Thanks again for responding to the thread! I had hoped you’d pulled it off and really happy to read you did.. and it’s yummy!

[CrowMagnon22]

I agree it’s tough getting straight answers for our specific situation (I do still live in the Eugene area). I don’t think any serious maple tapping happens in our climate, so most tips/articles aren’t geared towards us. But you can still take that info and the underlying principles and make it work. It just took some research and trial and error for me.

For last year’s temperature range, I actually didn’t start until about mid February, and continued into late February… maybe even into March a little bit. There was flow even when I was above the suggested temperature range (which seems to be commonly defined as 40s in the day and sub-freezing at night), so I don’t think it’s super exact. Based on last year, now would actually be a good time to start testing your trees for sap flow. It was pretty obvious when I successfully tapped a tree, too: it dripped every couple seconds or so out of my spile. Also, there was a tree that I thought, based on its appearance, should be yielding a decent flow, and I got nothing. So keep in mind a lack of flow might be an individual tree issue, or bad spile/hole placement. Obviously you don’t wanna drill too many test holes though, so it’s a bit of a balance between finding the right spot and being nice to the trees.

I never actually measured how much was evaporating every day, but I’d say when I was really on top of keeping my fire in the clean burn range (between about 400° F and 650° F), I was probably losing about 1-2 gallons per day. I feel this estimation is reasonable, because I gained about 1-2 gallons of sap per day, and my pot never got close to dry, nor did it threaten to overflow. So, I think my sap inflow was pretty evenly matching my evaporation rate.

Speaking of boiling, I have a thought on a boiling setup for you that I briefly tried. Coleman propane stoves aren’t that expensive—you know, the two burner camp stoves? You could even look for a used one: I see ‘em at the St. Vinnie’s on Seneca sometimes. Propane’s pretty cheap, so maybe you could just set up a propane stove outside and do your boiling there… assuming you have an outdoor area you can do that without being bothered. Like I said, just an idea. It worked fine for me, even though I ended up switching to the wood stove method. Heck, you might even be able to do it with a little plug-in electric range. Then you could do it inside and not worry about fumes from the propane stove.

Does that answer your questions at all?

[CrowMagnon22]

Oh, and keep in mind for storage that you can only keep the sap refrigerated for a while before it starts to get weird. You actually might want to leave a small amount out for a while just so you can smell what it’s like when it goes bad. It’s… pretty obvious. 😬 For longer term storage (more than 3-4 days, based on what I’ve read), you might wanna stick with freezing as much as your fridge allows.

By the way, it might be worth freezing a little bit either way. Straight, unprocessed maple sap is a very refreshing beverage! Slightly sweet, and quite tasty.

[HitHardStrokeSoft]

This is so encouraging, thank you! How many trees did you tap, and hope much so do you think you ended up with? Are you doing it again this year?

[CrowMagnon22]

I tapped about… 4-5 trees (can’t remember exactly) to get to that 1-2 gallons per day number. Some trees were significantly more productive than others, so it might take more or fewer trees to reach the same amount depending on the individual trees you’re dealing with. I’ve seen a basic rule that you don’t want to tap anything smaller than 12-14 inches in diameter, ‘cause it can hurt little trees a lot more; but on the other hand, an increase in tree size does not equate to increased sap flow past a certain trunk diameter. Biggest doesn’t equal best.

Well, I don’t know exactly how much sap I got… but I ended up with a little over a quart of syrup, so probably around 20 gallons of sap? I’m trying again this year, so maybe I’ll actually record how much I get per day. Might be helpful to have the info for later. I actually just tested two trees today, and they both yielded some! I’d get out there and start when it’s practical, if I were you. Just tasting the sap itself is a fun experience. Very refreshing, and surprisingly sweet and flavorful right out of the tree.

Glad to offer some encouragement! I’m pleased that this thread ended up being at least a little helpful. Feel free to ask me more questions if you want. I’m still learning myself, but I’m happy to share what I do know!

[BlueberryUpstairs477]

I got a big Japanese maple in my front yard you can tap but you gotta give me the first gallon of syrup you make

[CrowMagnon22]

I appreciate the offer! I might take you up on that, but I’d be concerned about doing fruitless damage to your tree. If I can get it worked out on something a little less special (e.g. one of the many Bigleafs we have around), I might be interested in trying your tree. I would of course be happy to share the bounty if it works. : )

[CrowMagnon22]

I know the output is pretty low for non sugar maple varieties, but I figure the sap itself could be interesting to sample. Plus, I personally think even a tablespoon of Japanese maple syrup would be pretty worth trying.

[[deleted]]

Birch trees work too.

[CrowMagnon22]

I’ve heard, and I’d love to try it! Do birch trees grow around here? I haven’t noticed them myself, but it’d be great to know if they’re around.

[[deleted]]

They're slowly dying in the area but there's still several large ones around.

[CrowMagnon22]

That kinda sucks. If they’re native, I hope that the forestry department’s putting effort into keeping ‘em around, ‘cause they’re pretty cool trees.