PSA: Tap Your Maples! And the health benefits of maple sap

Just go outside and tap some trees, I encourage you! It does not take any fancy equipment. I whittled some second year sumac twigs, drilled the pith out (make sure to blow the remnants out), hammered them in. My collection vessels are random jars, bottles, etc. that I recycled from other things. The worst that can happen is you have lots of delicious, blood purifying sap to drink as a late winter tonic. At best, you get some delicious, flavorful maple sugar you can use throughout the year.

A lot of people here do tap their maples, a lot don’t. There is no reason not to except sluggishness. Go out, have some fresh air and much needed activity for the end of winter, and as a result you will have something delicious for free that would otherwise be extremely expensive. I implore you all who live in places where maple sugar runs!

If you don’t have the “right kind” of maples, try it anyway. Some of the best maple sugar I have tasted came from silver maples. Norway wasn’t as promising, but some people even tap boxelders. One tree is plenty to start out with, you don’t need to tap the whole forest. Later on people will tap the birches, but for now it’s maple.

For reasons I won't expand upon, I've shelved my box elder tapping for the time beingbut can attest to the wonderful taste it has!  It's about half the sugar concentration of sugar maple, but still worth doing....especially if it grows like a weed in your area.

Another reason, here is an article about the health benefits of drinking maple sap: https://wildfoodism.com/2015/02/24/the-health-benefits-of-drinking-maple-tree-sap/

Summary: good for your bones, more effective at preventing gastric ulcers than conventional drugs, and lowers excessive blood pressure.

Judson’s entry was near the top of the search for “maple sap blood purifier”!
https://permies.com/t/177972/Medicinal-Trees-Acer-Maples

More uses, especially as a liver aid and in the case of pain in the liver, but also good for the lungs and kidneys.

It is also a much needed source of carbohydrates to get oneself out of the lethargy of wintertime. (Some might call it a  “sugar high”… but it’s so much better for you than that would suggest…)

I have tons of box elder and silver maple at my place in Memphis but nobody taps out here.  Need to educate myself

Maples (the wrong kind) are running here in northern MN and the almost syrup on my stove is delicious -- way better than the birch syrup I made (and burned) two or three years ago.

I tapped 5 maple trees this year. Not sure what kind. Got a couple gallons of syrup.
Only one was in my yard.

At one place, I got the lady to drink some of the sap.
The next couple days, she came out with her big cup when I drove up.
So I made sure she got some everytime I stopped to collect the sap.
Her friends loved it too.
So even if I don't do the maple syrup next year, I will have to tap a tree for her.

I tapped a couple walnut trees too.
Got very little sap, or syrup.
But the flavor spectrum (that's all I can think to call it) is very nice.
Broad spectrum flavor.

I made some syrup with norway maple sap yesterday—it came out mild, sweet, and with a slight touch of bitterness.

I also pruned a tree limb (which I was going to do anyway) and put a bowl underneath it which seems to collect a lot of sap.

Also check out more of M's knowledge on Paul's Grow Our Own Food 2 part podcast which was recently recorded.

Do you filter it after boiling it down? That seems to be common but I don't mind it being cloudy and love the unfiltered flavor. I'm wondering if there's any advantage I'm not thinking about. (I have been pouring it through cheese cloth out of the bucket and into the evaporation pots, to catch bits of bark, etc.)

Christopher Weeks wrote:Do you filter it after boiling it down? That seems to be common but I don't mind it being cloudy and love the unfiltered flavor. I'm wondering if there's any advantage I'm not thinking about. (I have been pouring it through cheese cloth out of the bucket and into the evaporation pots, to catch bits of bark, etc.)

It has been seeming better to filter before putting in the pot—spiders and wasps seem to dive in and get stuck!

I’m trying something today that I heard from someone who is from a very old sugarmaking family, which is to boil eggs in the sap. It tastes good, and uses less energy than cooking them on their own, without tainting the sap.