The maple leaves are falling. Yesterday I bought some Grade B maple syrup from Trader Joe’s. (I like Grade B because it tastes better than Grade A.) I know that maple syrup is made from the sap of sugar maples or black maples. What kind of maples grow here in NoWA? Has anyone tried making syrup from them?
Box Elder has been used for syrup, so I’m sure in the past all varieties of North American maples have been tapped. The sugar just makes the better syrup, and sugar.
Birch trees are also tapped to make syrup, though it takes more sap because of the lower sugar content than maple.
I agree with you that Grade B has a more “mapely” flavor. There is also a Fancy grade, the most expensive and the least flavor.
The sugar maple tree grows only in North America. To get the syrup, or even the sugar, they just boil it down until all the water evaporates and the produict is left. Most people find that difficult to believe, thinking something must be added.
In the olden days, people made or bought maple sugar as it was cheaper than white sugar. Not now!
I find grape vines run in the spring when you cut them and the juice is sweet. I wouldn’t be surprised if they could be used for syrup if you wanted to. Yes I try plant sap because I’m curious.
So theoretically I could tap the maples and/or birches around here and, assuming I could get enough sap, actually make edible syrup? That’s kind of neat. Not that I’m going to do it, but it’s interesting that I could do it.
I’ve tried birch syrup. I still have some in my fridge. It tastes about like you’d expect sweetened wood to taste.
Keep in mind that in order to make one gallon of maple syrup, it takes about 50 gallons of sap.
(Cite: volunteer pretending to make maple syrup in a local nature center last winter. The weather was wrong for the sap to run, so they were using melted snow as fake sap).
According to wikipedia the PNW bigleaf maple has been used to produce maple sugar.
To get maple syrup, you’re going to need sap from sugar maple trees (or black maple trees which are closely related). Otherwise, you might get some sweet syrup but it won’t taste the same as maple syrup. Sugar maples grow in New England and the Maritime provinces, New York, southern Quebec and Ontario, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and to a lesser extent in the surrounding areas (black maples grow in this same area). I’m not sure exactly where NoWA is but if you’re outside this area, you’re going to have to get maple syrup at a store.
The Mackenzie Environmental Center in Poynette Wisconsin has a Maple Festival and they have maple syrup workshops. The Sugar Shack which houses evaporation equipment is constructed by donated funds. I will add that they have a nice collection of taxidermy including hermaphrodites and other oddities. Go there to walk the trails and see the educational displays.
All the following is from this article.
The Isthmus Article How sweet it is This is the paper where first found the Straight Dope.
While sugar maples produce the most sap, it is also possible to tap red and silver maples, box elders and birch. Sugar maples take about 40 years to reach tappable size.
Grades have nothing to do with purity or sweetness, but rather with the syrup’s ability to transmit light.
Sure you can, but as has been posted, it takes about 50 gallons of sap to get a gallon of syrup. You will need to collect a lot. Sap only runs when you get alternating freezing and thawing (usually night and day).
You drive a spile (a little tube with sharp end) into the trunk, hang a bucked on it, cover it to keep the bird droppings out, as they don’t add much flavor. When full, empty into something big (like a garbage can) and start a fire.
We used to laugh at the flatlanders who came to Vermont and decided to do this in their old colonial houses. They boiled the sap for days, and eventually most of the wallpaper peeled off. 
It is fun to do it though. You have to sort of know when to stop and collect the syrup. If you keep a’boilin’ it, you’ll get maple sugar. Have fun.
There is a noticeable difference in flavor.
That is deliberate. If you’re using maple syrup as a sweetener in cooking, the less it tastes like maple, the more useful it is. The grading for syrup was set up at a time when you didn’t want your cake (or coffee) to taste like maple.
I tried birchh beer once. Same impression.
Polar Beverages makes a non-alcoholic birch beer soda, which tastes a lot like cream soda.
I’ve known a couple of people who’ve tapped sugar maples that were growing wild to try making some of their own syrup.
My favorite was my dentist, my father’s former grad school roommate, who tapped a couple of sugar maples growing next to his (Mass) town’s colonial era cemetery.
Must’ve had a full-bodied taste.
As Harmonious Discord implies, you can tap sap from almost any tree. However, the only trees with a sweet enough and concentrated enough sap to produce decent syrup are Acer saccharum and Acer nigrum, the sugar and black maples.
The Box Elder is of course actually a maple, Acer negundo, one in which the customary “maple leaf” shape is comprised of three (or occasionally five) leaflets resembling ash leaves (hence the other ‘correct’ common name, “ash-leaf maple”). It is also referred to as Manitoba Maple. Because of the Box Elder’s opportunistic nature, general lack of value, and ability to live in marginal habitat, it is considered something of a weed. But it is in point of fact a maple, with all the maple characteristics. Having tasted Box Elder sap as a child, I can vouch for the fact that there is nearly no sweetness to it.
Which is not what the grading is for.
I won’t be in the thread after this, as today is the last day I can post. Have fun dopers.