Time to Tap the Trees

It's just about that time again.   Time to tap the maple trees and start gathering sap for syrup.   And syrup means SPRING.  

Spring is good.   So is homegrown, home made, maple syrup.   We finished our last bit this week and there was much sadness in Mudville.  

Our old blue sap bags wore out last year and we moved to a tube and bucket system.   Behind the bag in the pic, you can see what I'm talking about.   That's what we'll be putting in in the next day or so.    I'll try to get some pics of how exactly this works.

For more links about how we do this, check out this post.

Sap Runneth

One of the only things to get me through this winter has been the now steady drip, drip, drip of sap into the sap bags.    We're getting a bit more than a gallon a day from each tree as long as the temps go below freezing at night.    Some days, we get more.  


It's the freeze/thaw cycle that pumps the sap through the tree.

I let the sap bag get about 1/3 full and then empty it.  We've had it spill because it gets so full and I don't want to lose a single drop.    This week I've been emptying a couple of times a day - and one day we emptied three times.   We got close to 2 gallons that day.

I'm so looking forward to the boil.

Thinking About Syrup

This is the time of year to start planning for maple syrup season.   You need taps and collectors.   We use metal taps and these awesome syrup bags.   They last for several seasons.

Here's a post describing how we tap our trees and where we get our stuff. 

We'll start actually tapping the trees late this month or at the beginning of February, collect all month, then do our boil at the beginning of March.  

Maple Syrup Time

Round about this time of year, it's time to start watching the night/day temperature patterns.   For the best sap flow, you want below freezing temps at night and above freezing temps during the day.     We've got that starting this week, so we're tapping the trees a bit early.     If it gets cold again, the sap will be fine.   If it warms up fast this year again, then at least we've got a head start, too.  

You can tap any kind of maple, but sugar maples give you the best syrup.

Here's a link to a basic How To Tap.

If a tree is big enough, you can put more than one tap in it. If the diameter is 12-20 inches, then 1 tap; 21-27 inches, two taps; greater than 27 inches, three taps. That's diameter, not circumference.

If you've tapped the tree before, you need to put your taps in  a new spot.     These two articles suggest only 2 inches over and up:  Here and Here.    More conservation minded folks suggest moving the tap at least 6 inches over and 4 inches up.

Want to know how the whole sap thing works in the tree?   Here's a link.


Here's a link to a post on how we boil the sap down.   We boil over an open fire most of the time, without the fancy arch.   Small pieces of wood make hot fires, but you literally burn through a lot of wood.   Shoot for a lot of wood the size of your forearm with some big logs in there around the edges to hold the heat.

There are other links to great information in those two posts, so make sure to check them out.  

Did you know...

that maple sap comes down from the leaves and twigs, not up from the roots.    When you cut a maple tree down, it will ooze from the top that was cut off, not the stump.  

The time to tap trees is when it is freezing at night and above freezing during the day.    

Maple sapwood is different from most other trees.   In all trees, the sapwood consists of tiny water conduits that move water up from the root to the rest of the tree.  Surrounding the conduits are billions of tiny cells:  live tree cells and dead wood cells.  In most trees, the dead wood cells are full of water, but in maple trees, they're full of gas.  When the sap starts to freeze, frost forms on the insides of the gas filled cells - like frost on the inside of your windows on very cold nights. The gas inside the cell is compressed. As the frost forms on the insides of those cells, it pulls water from the water conduits, which forces more water up the tree.    When the temperature goes up during the day, the frost melts and is forced out of the gas-filled cells and pulled down the tree by gravity.   That is sap.

Source:  Melvin Tyree.   Maple Syrup Journal 4(1): 10-11. 



We tap our trees with taps like these.   

Tapping Time

The winter has been mild and we're tapping early this year.    My goal is to collect 20 gallons off the two trees that we're tapping.    That'll give us 1/2 gallon of syrup.  Enough for pancakes and waffles and jam and more jam and soup. 

Mmmmm.   I can't wait.

See this post for a look at how we tap.

Maple Syrup: Tapping the trees

We made our first maple syrup from our own trees last year and discovered that it's not hard at all.

What you need: drill bit, taps, collection system [bag, bucket & tubes, etc depending on how you want to do it.  We use bags.], maple tree at least 10 inches diameter at 4.5 feet off the ground.   We got the taps and collection system from Leader Evaporator Company.  They've got tons of stuff for all types of collection and evaporation and you don't have to spend a fortune.

1.   Use the same size drill bit as taps you have. [We have 7/16 inch taps]  Drill 1.5 inches into the tree.    Wet maple is not easy to drill into so Eric used a smaller bit first, then used the big one to finish it. 

2 .  Put the tap in so the hook is at the top.   You can use a hammer to tap it into place.   We have 7/16 inch taps from Leader.

3. The bags and bag holder.  The sack holder comes in two parts: a ring and a holder. Notice the hole on the side of the bag holder. That's where you'll put it all on the tap on the tree.

4.  Put the bag on the ring from the inside and then fold the edges down over the outside of the ring.

5. Slide the ring inside the holder; make sure the ring is secure.

6.  Put the hole in the holder over the tap.   The hook on the tap will keep it all there, even when the bag is full of sap.

7.  Gathering:   This time of year the sap runs fast.   Keep an eye on it.   We empty everything into food grade buckets in the morning and in the evening.  You can keep the full buckets outside out of the sun in cool weather until you're ready to boil, but they can sour, so boil as quickly as you can.   The ratio of sap to syrup is 40:1, so one five-gallon bucket will give you about a pint of syrup.   We're going to shoot for a whole gallon of syrup this year.   That'll be about 40 gallons of sap - 8 buckets.

For more great info on how to tap your trees, check out the University of Maine's page.    In a week or two I'll post on the evaporation process; it's an outdoor, open fire activity.  [You don't want all that water vapor in your house.]