The Season of Sap

It's sugaring season up here in Vermont*, and over at Allison's homestead, we're joining the old tradition of tapping maple trees. I've never collected maple sap before, but I thought, how hard could it be? Well, in fact, it's not hard at all. Trevor, Allison, and I gathered our materials (a drill, a hammer, taps, and plastic buckets) and headed out into the woods.

*What makes a good sugaring season? Temperatures that dip below freezing during the night, but are above freezing during the day. I don't understand all of the mechanisms involved; however, sap flow is entirely temperature dependent, as it dictates the pressure changes in the tree. The tree has a greater internal pressure, and the sap 'leaks' out of the hole created by a tap, just like a kitchen sink. Cool, eh?

We first picked suitable maple trees. We looked for sugar maple, as it gives the sap with the highest sugar content of the Acer genus (you can tap red maples, but it takes twice as much sap to create a similar amount of syrup). The trees we tapped were at least 20" in diameter, which allowed us to put two taps and two buckets on the trees. Smaller trees might be damaged by more than one tap.

Next, we drilled small holes 5/16th of an inch thick upwards into the tree.


The taps are simply metal cylinders -- they hold the bucket onto the tree, and allow sap to flow through. Taps can be made of anything (including wood or a plastic straw), but we got our aluminum taps from the local Agway.


The sap starts flowing as soon as it is inserted (click on the picture for a larger image). It's quite tasty.


We prepare the plastic buckets for hanging on the tap by drilling a hole in the side. It's classic to use metal buckets with tin covers, but we decided to use a cheaper (and equally effective) route. Some professional sugarers use plastic tubes to transport the sap to a collection bucket, which can lead right to the evaporation trays.


All ready for the sap to flow! We put up a total of 7 buckets on 4 trees.

We've so far collected 2.5 gallons of sap in a half-day, so we're well on our way to maple syrup! It takes approximately 40 gallons of sap to produce 1 gallon of syrup. I'm not sure we'll collect that much, but I'll give it my best shot! As we collect the syrup, we've put it on the cookstove or the woodstove to boil, and we add more when the pot is low. The weather forecast for sugaring looks good, so wish us luck this week!

If you're close enough to visit, come join us for waffles and homemade maple syrup when we're done!