I once tried tapping some trees on my parent’s property but didn’t get anything. My guess is that they were too close to the coast and didn’t get a good temperature swing.
Are you sure you didn’t tap an oak? 
Freezing nights and above freezing days are important, and you need enough of them for the tree to thaw out, along with a ton of other factors to get the sap flowing. I’m a neophyte in this hobby, only doing it for 5 years now, still learning.
I’m expecting a good run here today, but tonight is not quite supposed to freeze. Tomorrow should give me some, but tomorrow night isn’t supposed to go below about 49. That means Friday is likely to not give me much.
A few warm nights like that could spell the end of the season, but fortunately it’s supposed to get cold again Friday night.
@tofor Where are you at? I’m in eastern WI, right on Lake Michigan. Nice microclimate here, spring is later due to the cooling effects of the lake. Everyone around here who taps seems to have their equipment out now, most seem to be doing the blue bag bit these days. Haven’t seen any complex systems with vacuums or webs of tubing running all over the place. Must be mostly home hobbyists around here.
I just learned that since black walnut trees are among the last to blossom (mine sure is!) we can expect to get sap into April or even later some years. That helps make up for the fact that it only gives 1/3 the sap of maples.
New Hampshire. The weather is highly variable from year to year.
I’m sooooo jealous. Not jealous enough to want to move to a cold climate ever again, mind you, but jealous nonetheless. When I was a kid growing up in New Hampshire, the family of a friend of mine used to make their own maple syrup. It was a revelation!
And as if the syrup doesn’t make me jealous enough, you have BLACK WALNUTS? Dayyum. I hadn’t tasted those in years, until I recently bought a little bag of them through Amazon. They weren’t bad, but didn’t have the same heady aroma I remember from summer camp in Pennsylvania, decades ago.
I must exact revenge for the envy you’ve created. Let’s see, the other day I made pork chops using wild pig that a friend had hunted and butchered. Since meat from the local wild pigs is often tough, I first wrapped it in fresh papaya leaves [a great tenderizer] that I walked into my yard and picked; the result was mouthwateringly succulent and tender. In addition, the garden around me produces abundant amounts of oranges, limes, rose apples, jaboticaba, rambutan, star fruit, mint, lemon balm, ginger, lemon grass, Okinawa spinach, and sweet potato. So there!
(That didn’t work. I’m still jealous of the maple syrup and black walnuts.)
This is how trade routes got started –
sadly, yes.
We’ve had a black walnut tree on our family property for well over 75 years.
My grandmother harvested the nuts. Once.
My mother harvested the nuts. Once.
My wife harvested the nuts. Once.
That should tell you something.
What a PITA to process. Hard as stones, they are a MESS to get the rinds off, and even worse to crack the shell. Ordinary nutcrackers don’t work, vises work best. Some try driving over them with cars. Trucks are better.
The resulting nut meat is small, and if you don’t remove the skin, rather bitter.
Squirrels overrun us, move into the attic, and make a mess.
If I can get tasty syrup from the walnut sap, that’ll be the first nice thing I got from the tree.
BTW, here’s a Wikipedia article on Black Walnuts. It features a photo of my wife’s hands, after she harvested the nuts that one time.
That’s fascinating! I never knew that. All I remember is that there were a lot of black walnut trees at the Girl Scout camp in Pennsylvania where I spent summers. No one tried to harvest the nuts, so to me they were just these fragrant green spheres that fell to the ground in abundance.
And now my season’s through. It was a short one around here, due to unseasonal warm weather. Usually the maple syruping season lasts 6 or so weeks, with some luck. We got our last decent sap out of our trees on 3/22, a bit over 3 weeks from when we started.
We’ve got over 1.5 gallons of maple syrup, and we’ve got nearly two cups of walnut syrup, which honestly tastes pretty damn impressive, and quite different from maple.
Taps are pulled, bags/buckets/hoses etc are washed, ready for next time.
My grandmother had a few black walnut trees and my parents made pulled black walnut taffy at my parents house. Once. My parents realized it was not as fun as it had been when they were kids.
My grandfather collected them every year and my grandmother used them in cookies or would give them away. There is no way that they would have just let all of them go to the squirrels.
The last time my dad brought home black walnuts from Ohio, the local squirrels got into them. He was rather annoyed at them, but also at himself, for letting the squirrels get into them. At least he hadn’t shelled them yet.
I have a black walnut from our tree sitting on my desk. I think I’d rather try to open a whole coconut than attempt to crack that thing.
I find them all the time in the garden beds and occasionally in my container plants, where the squirrels have left them. I’ve never found a sprouted one. I wonder how long it takes for that outer hull to soften up enough to let the seed grow.
I had never heard of black walnut syrup before. I knew about birch syrup and always wanted to try it. This thread finally spurred me to try both. Maple syrup is probably my favorite flavor and I buy it by the gallon.
I wasn’t too pressed by the birch and black walnut flavors on the first taste. Both have have a strong underlying bitterness and the walnut adds a medicinal flavor. Neither are very sweet.
It’s possible I’m comparing them too strongly to maple which might be unfair. Does anyone have a suggestion for how to use the birch and walnut syrups that bring out their best qualities?
@Deeg While I agree with you about birch syrup in terms of medicinal and a bit bitter (despite my love of birch beer), my black walnut syrup seems quite mellow and rich and sweet to me, without those notes of bitterness or medicine. It is a more subtle flavor to me than Maple, and I’ve found it works best on high quality vanilla ice cream. I’ve not tried it on a lot else, as I don’t have much of the stuff. I think I will try it with my oat groats though.
I’ve found my maple syrup really is quite nice on high quality cherry or chocolate ice creams too, really complementing those flavors.
Thanks! I often make my own ice cream so I’ll have to try it then.
Where did you find Walnut syrup? The only ones I found were advertised for using in cocktail mixes and I’m a little leery that they may just be walnut flavored syrup.
Yeah, that is a problem, a lot of the commercial stuff out there is made from sugar and crushed walnuts etc. NOT the same as syrup made from walnut sap. Look for a vendor who sells both walnut syrup and maple syrup, along with walnut/maple syrup blends. And talks about the syrup making process on their website
Here’s where I got mine: Black Walnut Syrup
That’s certainly made from sap, or so they explicitly state.
Though whether you can trust someone who writes “it’s” when they mean “its” on their website is up for speculation.
They’re from Ohio so I cut them some slack. I went ahead and ordered the 8 ounce bottle so that I can have some other people sample as well. Or if I like it keep it for myself. If not good on waffles I’ll try it on ice cream or mix it with some bourbon (or maybe both!).
Thanks for lead fellows!