This article was pretty informative. I never knew some of these trees were usable.The resulting sap of various trees ranges from 40:1 all the way to 100+:1 (100 gallons of sap make 1 gallon of syrup).
27 Trees To Tap For Syrup
Trees to tap for syrup go beyond just maple—discover a variety of species that produce sweet, drinkable sap for homemade syrup.practicalselfreliance.com
Bob
Tapping trees for syrup
- Thread starter ChinaVoodoo
- Start date
Box Elder:
en.wikipedia.org
Bob
"The sap has been used to make syrup by Native Americans, including the Dakota, Omaha, Pawnee, the Ponca, Winnebago, Cree, Sioux, and the indigenous people of Montana. The Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache dry scrapings of the inner bark and keep it as winter food, and they also boil the inner bark until sugar crystallizes out of it. The Cheyenne mix the boiled sap with shavings from the inner sides of animal hides and eat them as candy. The Ojibwa mix the sap with that of the sugar maple and drink it as a beverage."
Acer negundo - Wikipedia
Bob
I looked for my bookmark to this link all day, off and on. I just now located it.
The site includes step-by-step videos.
Bob
The site includes step-by-step videos.
Bob
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
I read a few websites that said Manitoba maple (box elder) produced a sap that had to be boiled down 60:1, and was more like birch water than maple.
I'll probably just drink what little I get.
The article that Bob posted says the boil rate for Boxelder is 60:1
I’m going to look for some Walnut trees to tap today. We have a slew of sugar maples that we tap when we can. The walnut will be new to me. The sycamore also.
No, maple burns easy
Amberbeth84
Well-Known Member
Since I tapped on Saturday, I've collected almost 7 gallons of sap. My partner picked up some cinder blocks and steam table trays yesterday and we built our very basic evaporator. I'm starting to think it's possible we'll end up with a goodly amount of syrup for what amounts to only a little bit of work.
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
I tapped my tree and have gotten zero gallons of sap. I guess the tree knows it's going to be -15° Friday night.
Congrats on your haul Amberbeth!
Congrats on your haul Amberbeth!
Amberbeth84
Well-Known Member
Amberbeth84
Well-Known Member
Yes, though the fire took a fair bit of babying as we don't have any wood that's seasoned. The house is heated with propane, so building a wood shed wasn't really a priority for us this first year. Still, we were able to reduce our volume considerably.
skychaser
Well-Known Member
Thanks for starting this thread China. I knew you could tap Paper Birch but that the sugar content was pretty low. And I was told that you couldn't tap any maples other than sugar maples. Well, thanks to this thread and a little on line research, that turns out to be wrong! I have 3 large Norway maples that are 20' from my house. The little one is 22 inches across and the big one is over 36 inches. I love those trees for the shade they make and the beautiful golden leaves in the fall. Although I hate raking up all those leaves and every November I threaten to cut them down. lol And I have a few more that are a bit further from the house.
A few years ago a lady who buys produce from us gave us a quart of real Vermont maple syrup. She gets several gallons shipped to her every year. (she's rich) And OMG was it good! After tasting REAL maple syrup, there was no going back to the artificial cheap crap made from corn syrup ever again. And you only need to use half as much. A little goes a long way. So I have ordered some taps which will be here in a few days. This is the perfect time to do it and the day and night temps are just getting to the right place for the sap to start running. This is going to be a fun little project that won't take up all my time. And I have this small mountain of branches piled up waiting for the chipper that will be perfect to use for boiling the sap down. Win Win. Leaf raking season is going to be a little less painful next fall after a big pancake breakfast covered in my own home made maple syrup.
A few years ago a lady who buys produce from us gave us a quart of real Vermont maple syrup. She gets several gallons shipped to her every year. (she's rich) And OMG was it good! After tasting REAL maple syrup, there was no going back to the artificial cheap crap made from corn syrup ever again. And you only need to use half as much. A little goes a long way. So I have ordered some taps which will be here in a few days. This is the perfect time to do it and the day and night temps are just getting to the right place for the sap to start running. This is going to be a fun little project that won't take up all my time. And I have this small mountain of branches piled up waiting for the chipper that will be perfect to use for boiling the sap down. Win Win. Leaf raking season is going to be a little less painful next fall after a big pancake breakfast covered in my own home made maple syrup.
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
My tree started to trickle yesterday.
Amberbeth84
Well-Known Member
The sap is going to be running for a couple more days, but yesterday I boiled down a fair bit of syrup. Right around 5 pints.
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
All wood powered, eh?
Amberbeth84
Well-Known Member
Indeed. We cut down and split up a dead sassafras for dry wood. With that, the wood fire inside the evaporator was able to keep the sap at a rolling boil for more than 5 hours.
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
Do you get much wood smoke in the syrup? I don't have much good quality wood but I could probably burn free pallets.
Amberbeth84
Well-Known Member
I didn't taste much in the way of smoke, but the flavor was darker than commercial syrup. How much of that was due to smoke and how much was due to using red maples instead of sugar maples I couldn't say. I would recommend making sure your fire is hot enough to have stopped smoking much before you put your sap on it.
