It’s almost that time of year to start tapping the maple trees for their sap. My family has been tapping trees for a few years now as a hobby, just for the taste of some homemade syrup. The first thing you need is for the nights to be below freezing and the days to be above. I myself have two 80 foot maples in my back yard that are about 10 feet in diameter. I put two to three taps in each tree in the hope of getting 30 to 40 gallons of sap before I pull them out. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. My brother will put out about 15 taps on the boxelder trees on his property. That’s right, I did say boxelder trees. The boxelder is in the maple family. There have been times when the syrup from the boxelders tasted better than the maple did.
I boil my sap down using a propane burner and a 20 gallon pot, while my brother uses a wood fire and a 30 gallon pot. For me, it would most likely be cheaper to just go buy the stuff, but I always say you can’t put a price on fun. If we get a couple of gallons for our families we call it a good year. I know some other families that are a bit more into the entire process. One of them has purchased a sap evaporator so they have more surface area for evaporation and better control of the process. The other family made their own evaporators and both use wood for the heat source. They also try and put up 25 to 30 gallons of syrup a year for their family members. So if all goes well, we all will be boiling sap soon.
– Larry Knott, JETPUBS Inc.