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Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 4:07 pm
by pmcgrady
Never made before but I've got a couple huge sugar maples, and lots of silver maples.
I've started taps that are 1 gallon and 13 gallon containers. I'm thinking to drill taps will be second or third week of February. Also going to drill a few of wild cherry and black walnut.
40:1 40+ gallons sap to 1 gallon syrup
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 4:39 pm
by Nan6b
Can you make anything from cherry and especially black walnut? Birch works.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 4:49 pm
by worth1
Nan6b wrote: ↑Thu Jan 02, 2020 4:39 pm
Can you make anything from cherry and especially black walnut? Birch works.
Oh yeah black walnut works too.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... Eny6EVUgIg
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 4:57 pm
by pmcgrady
Nan6b wrote: ↑Thu Jan 02, 2020 4:39 pm
Can you make anything from cherry and especially black walnut? Birch works.
I will see what the cherry and walnut sap is... soon. No birch around here.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 5:38 pm
by pmcgrady
Great article!
Unfortunately this property was log/logging for white oak and black walnut, half of the bigs walnuts already gone...
The white oak is going to make whiskey barrels (USA)
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 6:13 pm
by Tormahto
pmcgrady wrote: ↑Thu Jan 02, 2020 4:07 pm
Never made before but I've got a couple huge sugar maples, and lots of silver maples.
I've started taps that are 1 gallon and 13 gallon containers. I'm thinking to drill taps will be second or third week of February. Also going to drill a few of wild cherry and black walnut.
40:1 40+ gallons sap to 1 gallon syrup
Have you ever heard of Sweet-Sap Silver Maple (St Lawrence Nurseries)? It can be about 25 gallons of sap to 1 gallon of syrup. If I was young, and had the land...
To slightly change the subject, how about a story about "city folk". I know this woman, when she first got engaged, she and her boyfriend took a trip up north to Vermont. When she saw her first ever sap buckets, she asked him, "Honey, why do these people hang their garbage pails on trees?"
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2020 6:29 pm
by pmcgrady
Sounds great maple!
Silver Maple are so thick, they need mowed...
Got a few nice cherrys and walnuts today.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2020 9:25 pm
by pmcgrady
The garbage pails might be removed soon to lead in galvanized buckets.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2020 9:28 pm
by pmcgrady
I've been making a few of these
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 1:09 pm
by OneoftheEarls
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:56 pm
by Shule
Can you just drink the stuff strait from the tree (right after it's collected, I mean)? How does it taste that way?
Apricot trees seem to make a lot of sap. I wonder if you can make syrup similarly there, and if it's toxic or not. Apricots and cherries are in the same genus. Apricots seem to get big trunks fast, too, and they can live up to 150 years. It'd be nice to make use of them in areas where the frost kills all the blossoms some years.
I'm not sure what breed our one with the most sap leakage was.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 4:18 pm
by Shule
If you can tap apricots, that would be great to breed them specifically for sap content. (Or it would be great to breed other tree species like that, for that matter.) Just find a fast-growing kind of tree that isn't toxic, and breed away.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 6:14 pm
by pmcgrady
Looks good! Are you tapping already?
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 6:25 pm
by pmcgrady
Shule wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:56 pm
Can you just drink the stuff strait from the tree (right after it's collected, I mean)? How does it taste that way?
Apricot trees seem to make a lot of sap. I wonder if you can make syrup similarly there, and if it's toxic or not. Apricots and cherries are in the same genus. Apricots seem to get big trunks fast, too, and they can live up to 150 years. It'd be nice to make use of them in areas where the frost kills all the blossoms some years.
I'm not sure what breed our one with the most sap leakage was.
Sap tastes like water with a tinge of sugar.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2020 6:15 am
by worth1
Sweet things have been around forever but the affordability of them hasn't.
People went to extreme measures to make syrup from this tree sap.
And without me looking it up I can just about bet much of the sugars produced and or collected like honey were used to turn grains into alcohol.
I have read the sticky sap oozing from the mesquite tree is sweet.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:02 am
by Tormahto
The darkest of the darkity dark dark amber is for me. Light amber is the Yellow Pear of Maple Syrup. And go figure, I don't like most dark tomatoes.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 am
by OneoftheEarls
Old photos...I get A1 grade here and we tap in the spring.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2020 2:32 pm
by pmcgrady
This morning, I made a test on 2 taps on a Sugar Maple. It is 34 degrees at 2pm and ran 5-6 oz already at this cold.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2020 4:50 pm
by Shule
Do we have any tropical members?
I've read that a palm tree that I believe is the Palmyra palm outproduces sugar maples by a lot. It might have been another species, but you can tap Palmyra palms.
Re: Making "maple" syrup
Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2020 4:57 pm
by Shule
Here's the link I saw about tapping 'Asian Sugar Palms':
https://practicalselfreliance.com/trees ... tap-syrup/
I couldn't find a species commonly referred to as the Asian sugar palm, but I did find the Palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer), which sounds like it might be what was intended.
