(Photo credit: Kent Wheiler)Īlthough bigleaf maples are found throughout western Washington, our temperate climate makes relying on freeze/thaw cycles a challenge to produce significant sap flow. Right: Five natural gravity vacuum lines flow into this 300-gallon collection tank from about 100 taps. Left: A 3/4” blue mainline with 5 3/16” green lateral lines run to this 300-gallon tank after flowing through a diaphragm pump that provides artificial vacuum to about 125 taps. In eastern North America, sugarbush operations have reliable freeze/thaw cycles as part of the annual change from winter into spring. After opening, store syrup in the fridge for up to a year.Elaine Oneil, Executive Director, Washington Farm Forestry Association, syrup is produced from the sap of maple trees that flows during the dormant season. (To prevent the bottles from cracking, warm them by filling with hot water and pouring it out right before decanting.) Unopened bottles will remain shelf-stable for two years. Use a metal funnel to decant the hot syrup into clean glass bottles, and cap them immediately. Birch sap features fructose instead of sucrose and scorches more easily.) (Note: If you’re working with birch sap, watch the heat level carefully. A gallon of sugar-maple sap will yield roughly four ounces of syrup, while other saps will give you one or two. If the sap starts to boil over, touch the surface briefly with a stick of butter to settle. In a large pot, over high heat, bring a gallon of sap to boiling, then reduce heat to medium high and maintain a low boil for about an hour – until the liquid thickens and drips from a spoon slowly. (If debris has gotten into the sap, you’ll need to filter it through cheesecloth before boiling.) Refrigerate the sap in any large covered container until you’re ready to boil it down. (Spiles, lidded buckets, and tubing are available at and .) Collect the sap daily by pouring it into a second bucket or replacing the current plastic jug with an empty one. Or you can adopt my preferred – more affordable, if less aesthetically pleasing – method ( inset), by running tubing from the spile to a plastic gallon-size water jug with a tube-sized hole drilled into the cap. Then hang a lidded tapping bucket from the spile’s hook. Place the pointy end of a spile, as the spouts are called, in the hole and lightly hammer into place. (Trees with diameters over 18″ can manage two taps, while those with diameters over 25″ can accommodate three.) The hole should be situated at a comfortable working height, approximately 2′ to 4′ above the ground and tilted upward at a slight, 5-degree angle. Using a power drill and a sharp bit that corresponds with your chosen spout ( see Step 2), bore a 2″-deep hole in a tree with a diameter of at least 10″. Think of it as an arboreal version of donating blood, only far more delicious. If done correctly, the process won’t hurt the tree. To get started, follow these simple steps, and be sure to disconnect the tap when the tree’s leaf buds swell, a sign that the sap will soon turn bitter. And while the extreme climates of New England, the upper Midwest, and eastern Canada boast the most serious syrup-industry cred, I can attest to success below the Mason-Dixon Line and have heard of tree-tapping as far west as Kansas. Just be forewarned: Many of these alternatives contain less sugar than the aptly named sugar maple, so you’ll have to boil a lot of sap to yield a very small amount of syrup.įor any kind of sap to start flowing, though, below-freezing night temperatures must alternate with warmer days, hence the prime tapping time of late winter and early spring. Other trees that produce sweet saps include sycamores, butternuts, and shagbark hickories, as well as all manner of birches, box elders, and maples. I make my own syrup now, albeit from the black walnuts in my neighbor’s North Carolina yard. Their front yard boasted seven regal sugar maples, and I’d help ferry buckets of the clear, watery sap to my aunt’s kitchen, where a stockpot was continuously aboil.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |