The tree is the sap. The sap is the tree. The sap enhances oatmeal and brussel sprouts. The sap expands waistlines. The sap maple, of course.
After a sketchy two weeks here where the temperatures never went below freezing, I took hope in the forecast of a good solid 12-14 days of below freezing nights with above freezing days predicted, and set my taps on Feb 9th. I’m a little spooked that the warm days and nights might have prepped the trees to bud soon, which really does ruin the sap for making syrup. But what the heck . . .
This year I added two huge old silver maples in a neighbor’s yard into my tap regimen. My other two silvers gave enough last year to make about 3 gallons of syrup, while my sugar maple and red maple made another 1.5 gallons together. So if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll hit 5 or even 6 gallons this year. BIG if.
But the real big difference this year is that I got myself a reverse osmosis set-up. It can concentrate my sap by about 50% without all that tedious boiling, and it can handle up to 8 gallons of sap an hour, turning that into 4 gallons of concentrate.
I collected my first sap today, with the eager participation of the neighbor who’s volunteered two of his trees for tapping. He’ll get a third of the syrup I get from his silver maples. He was also thrilled to help me put in the taps, listen to me drone on about the ‘art of the sap’, and he happily hauled the sap pail for me! I love it. We collected about 2.5 gallons of sap from all my taps, with his trees providing maybe about a tenth of that.
The reverse osmosis device worked pretty smartly, filtering the sap and concentrating it at an amazing rate, especially when compared with boiling. I’ve now got about 1.25 gallons of very sweet sap concentrate, which I’ll store outdoors since our temps are nice and low. Once I get about 10 gallons of concentrate, then I’ll do my first boil and make syrup.
I don’t think I’ll make walnut syrup this year, it’s just too much of a PITA as my sole walnut tree produces small amounts of sap, it takes adding enzymes to turn the sap into syrup instead of jelly, and no one really gets excited about walnut syrup. They try it, say “yeah that’s nice and delicate and different than I imagined; now pass the maple syrup”. And frankly I agree with them.
Anyone else tapping this year? In past years? Interested in trying it in future years?