It happens only once each year, and now’s the time.
Across Minnesota people enjoy the tradition of making maple syrup. Many people tap a few trees for fun and a homemade treat; others tap thousands of trees and produce maple syrup as a part of a business. The following are some tips and tricks that you may find helpful.
More than Maples
Birch sap–yes, you can tap birch!–usually runs just after maple stops. Maple sap often has a higher sugar content than birch, and sometimes birch has no sugar at all. Even then, birch sap makes a fun drink. One year I tapped a birch and the sap arched out of the tap hole, spilling onto the ground before I could get the bucket to the tree. I collected five gallons of sap in under three hours. You might have guessed there was no sugar in that sap. For fun you can try tapping many different types of trees. Adam Haritan lists 22 different species that can be tapped at his Wild Foodism website.
Tapping and Collection
You might think you need dozens of trees and lots of time to make maple syrup. It does take time, but even if you only have one or two trees that are 10 inches or larger in diameter you can tap them to collect sap. Three or four trees will typically yield about 20 to 30 gallons of sap, enough to make one-half to three-quarters of a gallon of syrup.
Small diameter taps, or spiles, are available. These measure roughly 5/16” in diameter, rather than 1/2”. These taps require a smaller hole and thus create a smaller column of discoloration and damage to the tree than the larger half-inch spiles used by my grandfather. Do a web search for “maple tapping equipment” to find a number of suppliers of spiles, tubing, buckets, and more.
To make sap collection easier, I use a spile made to be connected to food grade tubing. I cut a 3- to 4-foot length of tubing and attach it to the spile, and put the open end of the tubing into a plastic water jug. To keep the sap from spoiling it has to be kept cold. I bury the jug in a snowbank and check it once a day. The sap should be kept cold until you are ready to boil.
Boiling the Sap
You can freeze the sap and boil it when you have time, or you can wait until a warm, dry summer day. Allow the sap to thaw in the jugs. When there is a fist-sized junk of ice in the jug, cut the jug open and pour the thawed sap into the pot. Take the remaining ice chunk and use it to cool off–it will have very little sugar left in it. Adding it to the boiling pot just makes the boiling process take longer and will result in darker syrup.
The sap can be boiled down in pot, although a shallow pan will allow for quicker evaporation. The pot that comes with a propane turkey cooker works well.
From Sap to Syrup
When the sap in the pan begins to boil over, it may be getting close to syrup. Of course there is a specific sugar content that defines syrup. For producing syrup for home consumption it comes down to your preference. Test the syrup by dipping a large spoon into the boiling sap. Allow spoon to cool, then allow the sap to drip of the side of the spoon. If it runs off, more boiling is needed. If it spreads out before dripping off the spoon it is close to done. If the sap forms a sheet coming off then it may have boiled too long. Syrup that has been boiled too long (in other words, boiled beyond the syrup stage) will crystallize in the canning jar.
The difference in time between when the sap is almost syrup and when it begins to burn is surprisingly short. To prevent from burning the sap, monitor pot closely: A watched pot doesn’t burn. When the sap has boiled down to where it has nice color, smells like syrup and before it begins to spread out as it drips off the side of the spoon, bring it indoors and finish boiling it on the stove.
To learn more about the process of tapping check out our Minnesota Maple Series.
If you have access to a few maple trees you can make maple syrup–remember, it only takes one or two trees to collect enough sap! It is fun and surprisingly easy to do.
Banner image “Sugaring Season 2012” by Chiot’s Run is licensed under CC BY-NC
