Tapping Maple Tree Questions. Advise Needed.

[Sunny & the 5 egg layers]

I am planning on tapping 10 maple trees in my yard this year. This will be my very first year of doing this and I have no idea how to tell which type of maple tree to the next. When I process the sap and make it into maple syrup, does it matter if I mix together sap from different types of maple trees? And also, what is the best way to store the maple syrup? And what is the best way to store the sap (before I process it)?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Denim Deb]

I've never made maple syrup, don't have the trees, but from what I've read you can make maple syrup out of any type of maple.

 

[THEFAN]

A Maine late winter, early spring tradition. Almost all maple trees are fine to use for maple syrup. Mixing different trees is fine. Only tap trees bigger than 10 inches in diameter. Anything smaller you can and will hurt the tree. 14 inch tree can support 2 tapholes. 18 inch tree can support 3. The holes will heal up after the season. We use milk cartings. We cut a whole in the side and leave the caps on so dirt and stuff doesn't get into the sap. We still filter it before we boil it. A lot of times we store or pre-boil sap in milk jugs in our refrigerator til were ready and have enough to boil down. No more than 3 days. After that the sap starts to spoil. A sap hydrometer is nice. It will measure the amount of suger in the sap. 2-8% suger content is normal. I have collected old maple syrup containers over the years and reused them for storing. Good luck and have fun. It's about having fun. Learning something new. Our first yr was a bomb many yrs ago. Over the yrs we gathered the items we needed to make it easier. God Bless

 

[Sunny & the 5 egg layers]

A Maine late winter, early spring tradition. Almost all maple trees are fine to use for maple syrup. Mixing different trees is fine. Only tap trees bigger than 10 inches in diameter. Anything smaller you can and will hurt the tree. 14 inch tree can support 2 tapholes. 18 inch tree can support 3. The holes will heal up after the season. We use milk cartings. We cut a whole in the side and leave the caps on so dirt and stuff doesn't get into the sap. We still filter it before we boil it. A lot of times we store or pre-boil sap in milk jugs in our refrigerator til were ready and have enough to boil down. No more than 3 days. After that the sap starts to spoil. A sap hydrometer is nice. It will measure the amount of suger in the sap. 2-8% suger content is normal. I have collected old maple syrup containers over the years and reused them for storing. Good luck and have fun. It's about having fun. Learning something new. Our first yr was a bomb many yrs ago. Over the yrs we gathered the items we needed to make it easier. God Bless

THANK YOU!
Thanks so much for all that information. What do you store the syrup in after it is processed? Would it be fine stored in a large glass jar in the fridge?

 

[THEFAN]

A Maine late winter, early spring tradition. Almost all maple trees are fine to use for maple syrup. Mixing different trees is fine. Only tap trees bigger than 10 inches in diameter. Anything smaller you can and will hurt the tree. 14 inch tree can support 2 tapholes. 18 inch tree can support 3. The holes will heal up after the season. We use milk cartings. We cut a whole in the side and leave the caps on so dirt and stuff doesn't get into the sap. We still filter it before we boil it. A lot of times we store or pre-boil sap in milk jugs in our refrigerator til were ready and have enough to boil down. No more than 3 days. After that the sap starts to spoil. A sap hydrometer is nice. It will measure the amount of suger in the sap. 2-8% suger content is normal. I have collected old maple syrup containers over the years and reused them for storing. Good luck and have fun. It's about having fun. Learning something new. Our first yr was a bomb many yrs ago. Over the yrs we gathered the items we needed to make it easier. God Bless

THANK YOU!
Thanks so much for all that information. What do you store the syrup in after it is processed? Would it be fine stored in a large glass jar in the fridge?

Jars would be find in the refrigerator. I like the maple syrup jugs you get when you buy the stuff in the store. Just feels right. Good luck.

 

[Joel_BC]

Out here in western Canada, we think of the sugar maple tree as being an eastern tree. In other words, it does not occur naturally here. We do have maples on our place - but most are the naturally occurring Douglas maple (a soft maple), and some clumps of it grow wild here. Nobody seems to tap them. Weve got several types of selected, ornamental species that we've planted on our place, including a couple of Japanese maples, that we planted.

We have only one sugar-maple type, a tree we bought from a nursery as a two-year-old sapling and planted about 18 years ago. Man, did I pamper that tree! Especially in about its first eight years or so. Its about a foot across at the base now where the diameter started out at about an inch and a quarter, when I brought it home from the nursery!

I tapped that tree for the first time last year in the third week of March. It had grown in a fairly columnar shape for a long time, and has only really started to spread its limbs and be a good shade tree in the last few years. I guess I was still protective of its wellbeing. Over a period of four days I took a very limited amount of sap. The small amount of syrup I got is all about the fun of having some from the tree we planted close to the house.


I just cooked the syrup down slowly on our stove. I believe I got 1/40 the amount of syrup as I had sap to begin with. One tree, at the age of ours, will probably never afford enough sap to provide much syrup to anyone. As the tree grows larger, maybe (as THEFAN seems to suggest) we can take more sap from it, hence get a bit more syrup.

If there were more trees around - growing wild - I'd definitely tap more and get more.

 

[THEFAN]

Here's a link to our Maine education site for syruping http://www.umext.maine.edu/onlinepubs/pdfpubs/7036.pdf
I'm not to far off what I said

I only have maybe 30-40 suger maples on my property. I seem to know something.

 

[BrandedX]

Planting about 3 or 4 maples is right at the top of the list when I eventually buy some land.

Good luck Sunny.

 

[Joel_BC]

Spring seems to be coming a bit earlier here this year than what's typical. On the past, I've probably waited a little too late. My friends from Quebec recommend tapping early for higher-quality syrup. I think I'll tap in the next day or two.

 

[k15n1]

I am planning on tapping 10 maple trees in my yard this year. This will be my very first year of doing this and I have no idea how to tell which type of maple tree to the next. When I process the sap and make it into maple syrup, does it matter if I mix together sap from different types of maple trees? And also, what is the best way to store the maple syrup? And what is the best way to store the sap (before I process it)?

Thanks in advance.

Mix away. Some people mix in birch and other trees from that family.

Store the syrup in 1/2 pt jars.

You can't store the sap for long. Get to work on it ASAP. Daily is best.