Sugaring non-maple hardwoods

Hey folks,

My family property in the eastern Ozarks was one of those wrecked by the tornadoes a month or so ago- no major structural damage, but lots of shattered trees- blasted and broken 15-20 feet off the ground.

The site is 40 acres, half upland, half bottomland, and it's been high-graded in the past.  Upland is dominated by shingle oak and bitternut hickory, bottomland canopy has some nice black walnut and cherry, and a lot of sycamore and river birch.   I'd like to use some of these "trash trees" as shelter trees while establishing more marketable hardwood species in the understory.  

I was reading online about folks in other parts of the country tapping birch and sycamore for syrup.  Has anyone tried it in the Ozarks?  I've read sap production takes off in spring when daytime temperatures are above freezing but nighttime temperatures are still below freezing.  I was figuring late February-early March, but I'm interested in hearing from anyone who's tried it.

I can't speak to your location, but tapping white birch for syrup has been done since forever.

Oddly enough, another thread has been bumped during the day entitled "how did you find out about Permies.com?".  It's odd because tapping box elder trees was the first question I posed on the forum several years ago.   We had some success with the idea, but the sugar concentration in box elder is, on average, about half of what is found in sugar maple.  The volumes needed to go from raw sap to desired product was too much for our interests at the time.  Still think it could be made into a soda, something like cream soda with sap overtones.  Good luck!

We tap birch trees and it works pretty well.  The sugar in birch is not very concentrated so it takes 100 L of sap to make one liter of syrup.  I'm a long ways from your location but I would think the only difference would be what month you tap in.  Your on the right track with when to start tapping but it takes some practice to know when exactly to start. I've found its best to watch and learn what other changes are happening in the forest a sign to start tapping.  In my case I know that about two weeks after the pussy willow bud it is time for a test tap to see if things are flowing.  Of course every year is a little different depending on the weather.

of the trees you mention, black walnut can also be tapped.

Greg Mosser,  I have lots of black walnuts and have tried tapping them but can't figure out the timing when the sap flows.  I know '40s in the day and 20s in the night, but that rarely happens for more than a day or two, then either way up in the 60s or way down in the 20s for lows.  I understood some people actually tap in December occasionally, but again, I haven't found the right days this month.  do you have any hints that might help me?  Thanks!  Lisa

PS. Feel free to use my email:  l.rollens@gmail.com   I have trouble getting around this site.

what’s your location? i try to tap my walnuts in january, when and if temperatures cooperate.

Greg,  Douglas County, MO, south central MO.

I've always fancied doing sycamores as we have a ton but I have never been able to get a drop out of them, we don't get frozen nights and warm days in spring the we might get 1C  or -1C at night and then 2 or 3 during the day, most likely if it freezes at night it will stay frozen and vice versa.

So is there another way of seeing when to tap them? When the buds begin to swell? Or when they burst? That's not until May here though.

it probably different for different species. buds bursting is way too late for maples. walnuts too now that i think of it. birch seems to run later in the spring, so it may be closer to that line. i don’t have any experience with sycamore.

Walnuts are the last to bud out here so I thought that might be the time, but they break buds in April and the temps are not anywhere close to 40s/20s.  Hmmmm???

hate to say it, but in your (probably similar to my) area, it’s frequently just a case of watching forecasts like a hawk and taking advantage of the few days/nights that fit the bill. too many days with night above freezing will move toward bud break and the flow will noticeably stop before then. a good freeze or two resets it somewhat if temperatures go back to the right kind of deal afterwards. real luck of the draw stuff, with dividends paid to really paying attention to temperatures. like i said, it’s usually january for me, but we’ve got highs in the 70’s coming up and for a while, so i’ll be waiting for another cold snap to get to it.

and try to record temps and sap volumes! you may discover a pattern i haven’t noticed yet!

thanks, Greg.  I pretty much decided, esp with the climate changes, tapping black walnuts just might not be possible.  But I do watch the weather all the time, for other reasons, too, and will continue looking for the perfect time.

John Weiland wrote:Oddly enough, another thread has been bumped during the day entitled "how did you find out about Permies.com?".  It's odd because tapping box elder trees was the first question I posed on the forum several years ago.   We had some success with the idea, but the sugar concentration in box elder is, on average, about half of what is found in sugar maple.  The volumes needed to go from raw sap to desired product was too much for our interests at the time.  Still think it could be made into a soda, something like cream soda with sap overtones.  Good luck!

I've heard of people using reverse-osmosis filters to take some of the water out before boiling, so you end up starting with a more concentrated sap.

I don't know the details, or if some model filters work better for sugaring than others. I just know that it's one tool in the sugaring arsenal that might help.

Lisa Rollens wrote:thanks, Greg.  I pretty much decided, esp with the climate changes, tapping black walnuts just might not be possible.  But I do watch the weather all the time, for other reasons, too, and will continue looking for the perfect time.

oh, it’s possible, but i admit the yield-to-hassle ratio can be pretty terrible.

Russians make wine and other concoctions from birch juice. Its tapped in the summer, fermented till winter then consumed.

Looking around the net I found some info on Sycamore in the UK, they are suggesting the last couple of weeks in March, and to make a very small hole in the tree just through the bark, if a bead of sap forms in 30 seconds you have the right time.

I've got 30 or so big sycamores so I hope I can remember to go abuse them at the right time.

We had a silver maple about 130 years old on our property.  It wasn’t doing well. We tapped it for syrup two years in a row.  The syrup was a lighter almost vanilla flavour.  With getting chicken and letting them roam around the tree and the tapping, the tree came back to life big time and is still going strong. Circumference was over 7 ft

Concentrating tree sap to make syrup was mentioned here. So, I'm going to ask if anyone has used freezing the sap to start the concentration process and to reduce the amount of fuel required.  
As I heard it, you place the initial sap in a freezer, or outside if cold enough, until a block of ice forms. You then discard this block of ice (or use it to cool drinks) because it is almost pure water. The liquids left in the container after you remove the ice is concentrated sap. You will then need to concentrate this sap even more by boiling it until you have syrup. sdo

Oldina Wahlers wrote:We had a silver maple about 130 years old on our property.  It wasn’t doing well. We tapped it for syrup two years in a row.  The syrup was a lighter almost vanilla flavour.  With getting chicken and letting them roam around the tree and the tapping, the tree came back to life big time and is still going strong. Circumference was over 7 ft

THAT is a big maple!

I looked up the range of Sweetgum and its all over Arkansas.  Can be invasive in riparian zones so maybe its on your land.  It's call Sweetgum for a reason.  

Paul Young wrote about freezing sap to first reduce the water. (It freezes) I've heard of using that technique to make fruit brandy from your finished fruit wines. Skim the slush. Water freezes, alcohol doesn't. Leaves more fruit flavor than distilling would. Love the idea of using for sap. You can also make birch wine using the sap straight up add a little sugar and yeast and ferment. Thanks Paul

Any western tappable trees known?? We have black walnut but does it not get cold enough?

It depends on what you include in as the "west", Cherie. Here in the lowland Pacific Northwest (or PNW, in general), just about anything tappable can be tapped. Bigleaf Maple is most commonly tapped in my area. I'm about 10 miles from the coast in Washington where most years we get only a few days of a little snow that doesn't stick. So, not real cold.
If "west" means southern California, it seems probable that tapping may not work so well in lowland coastal areas, though tapping higher up in the mountains is probably another story, but I don't know this for certain.

Diane Woiak wrote:Paul Young wrote about freezing sap to first reduce the water. (It freezes) I've heard of using that technique to make fruit brandy from your finished fruit wines. Skim the slush. Water freezes, alcohol doesn't. Leaves more fruit flavor than distilling would. Love the idea of using for sap. You can also make birch wine using the sap straight up add a little sugar and yeast and ferment. Thanks Paul

 

Thanks Diane for some other useful suggestions. I HAVE frozen home pressed apple cider to reduce the amount of cider requiring storage space. First, you freeze the fresh apple cider in containers with a wide opening so you can remove the ice block that forms. When the cider is frozen, remove the ice block. The remaining liquid is concentrated apple cider. Pour the concentrated apple cider into food and freezer safe containers and put in the freezer or refrigerator. Saves storage space.

for what it’s worth, in my area we’re coming into a second week of decent sugaring weather. have a had a couple good solid cold snaps and around that, highs and lows have been about where i want them to be. it’s slow going with black walnuts, and i’m just doing low-volume, stock-pot-on-the-woodstove amounts - i’ve got around a half pint of syrup done and may get another pint or more in the next week if the forecasts are true. beyond that, who knows.

Black walnut will yield sap during much of the year. I've tapped 30-40 trees in Kansas from late winter (now) to late spring. The flow ebbs and flows, but they'll keep producing until summer heat.

I've tapped birch, sycamore, walnut, and butternut in addition to sugar maple.  The Walnuts and butternuts seem to run around the same time of year.  And we did some experiments on flavor--walnut syrup surprisingly tastes almost identical to sugar maple.

What you can't tap is hickory.  I've tried and tried and it just doesn't flow. I think that any hickory syrup you see is made as a simple syrup with shagbark hickory bark!

Here in Western PA, our trees are flowing amazingly well right now.  It is so far shaping up to be a good sugaring season .

Side note - Black walnut syrup gets sticky, like taffee, when fully reduced. I will do that sometimes, or I'll stop it while it still flows freely. This makes a great sugary base anything - syrup, infusion, dressing, drinks. I am currently experimenting with using it for foraged fermented beverages and brews.

I've tried sycamore. Yummy, but way less productive for me.

Howdy,

Good advice in all the above.

Here in the PNW, Red Alder is a tappable species.

Also in the PNW, lots of big Big Leaf Maple at about a 30+:1 return. But, probably not quite as big as eastern maples.
I've always heard that you shouldn't tap trees less than 10'' in diameter in order not to harm them by taking too much sap. More taps on larger trees.

To reduce the boiling needed, reverse osmosis filters and freezing have already been mentioned but there is a third way: reducing the pressure with a vacuum pump. If you could pull a good enough vacuum, the sap would boil at room temperature. There are probably no easily obtainable vacuum pumps to do that but using the most commonly available one, that from a milking machine, should still give a useful drop in the temperature required. See this link for more details of boiling point vs pressure - http://www.eclecticon.info/index_htm_files/Water%20boiling%20point%20vs%20pressure.pdf.

There would be a serious amount of research and tinkering involved, which I would enjoy but I doubt if most of the folks here would, after all, what they want to do is get the job done rather than make it unnecessarily complicated in order to get even more fun out of doing it which is what I tend to do! If you do go for it, be sure to put a stop valve in between the pump and the syrup boiler and shut it before switching the pump off, otherwise you might pull oil out of the pump and ruin the syrup! For a boiling vessel, I would take a hard look at a pressure cooker or canner or a stainless steel milking bucket like we used on the farm back in the day. I haven't looked to see if there is a tinkerer's/mad scientist forum here but if not, there should be!

Paul Young wrote:
I've always heard that you shouldn't tap trees less than 10'' in diameter in order not to harm them by taking too much sap. More taps on larger trees.

There's a way to tap younger trees, but I've never used the method myself. I have no idea if or how it'll effect the longevity of the tree.

You'll need a flexible tube of some sort, a pipe clamp, and pruning shears or a pruning saw.

To tap a young tree, choose a branch that is the right thickness to just barely fit the inside of your tube. Cut the end off the branch, slip the tube over it, and secure the tube in place using the pipe clamp. I recommend choosing a branch that is healthy, but is positioned where you would prune it off eventually anyway. It also helps if the branch is pointed slightly downward, so that gravity helps the sap drain.

The cut on the branch will leak sap into the tube, and the tube carries that sap to your container. In the article I read that described this method, they also used some kind of vacuum pump to pull the sap out faster, but you'll still get some amount of sap without that.

Later, after the sap has stopped running, you can prune the rest of the branch back properly.

(In the article, this was done with trees as young as 5 years.)

Jim Webb wrote:To reduce the boiling needed, reverse osmosis filters and freezing have already been mentioned but there is a third way: reducing the pressure with a vacuum pump. If you could pull a good enough vacuum, the sap would boil at room temperature. There are probably no easily obtainable vacuum pumps to do that but using the most commonly available one, that from a milking machine, should still give a useful drop in the temperature required. See this link for more details of boiling point vs pressure - http://www.eclecticon.info/index_htm_files/Water%20boiling%20point%20vs%20pressure.pdf.

There would be a serious amount of research and tinkering involved, which I would enjoy but I doubt if most of the folks here would, after all, what they want to do is get the job done rather than make it unnecessarily complicated in order to get even more fun out of doing it which is what I tend to do! If you do go for it, be sure to put a stop valve in between the pump and the syrup boiler and shut it before switching the pump off, otherwise you might pull oil out of the pump and ruin the syrup! For a boiling vessel, I would take a hard look at a pressure cooker or canner or a stainless steel milking bucket like we used on the farm back in the day. I haven't looked to see if there is a tinkerer's/mad scientist forum here but if not, there should be!

I've seen vacuum desiccators for sale once in a while, but never thought to use one for syruping. Great idea!

Now you've got me thinking about using it to concentrate other foods, like tomato pulp or raspberry juice. So many possibilities . . .

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:

Paul Young wrote:
I've always heard that you shouldn't tap trees less than 10'' in diameter in order not to harm them by taking too much sap. More taps on larger trees.

There's a way to tap younger trees, but I've never used the method myself. I have no idea if or how it'll effect the longevity of the tree.

You'll need a flexible tube of some sort, a pipe clamp, and pruning shears or a pruning saw.

To tap a young tree, choose a branch that is the right thickness to just barely fit the inside of your tube. Cut the end off the branch, slip the tube over it, and secure the tube in place using the pipe clamp. I recommend choosing a branch that is healthy, but is positioned where you would prune it off eventually anyway. It also helps if the branch is pointed slightly downward, so that gravity helps the sap drain.

The cut on the branch will leak sap into the tube, and the tube carries that sap to your container. In the article I read that described this method, they also used some kind of vacuum pump to pull the sap out faster, but you'll still get some amount of sap without that.

Later, after the sap has stopped running, you can prune the rest of the branch back properly.

(In the article, this was done with trees as young as 5 years.)

Thank you Ellendra! This method never crossed my mind. It seems it should be useful on the branches of older trees as well, I like the idea of not having to drill a hole in the bark that, it seems, could easily allow insect or disease entry.
Has anyone done this?

So many great comments here!  I tap a few black walnut trees here in mid-Michigan.  They do not yield as much syrup per sap volume as maples, but I still get enough for our use.  It tastes like maple syrup but with a hint of butterscotch flavor.  I evaporate it in a stainless steel stock pot on top of my Woodstock soapstone woodstove in the living room.  It doesn't quite boil due to the soapstone moderating the surface temperature of the stovetop.  It also gently increases the humidity in the house to a nice level for winter.  Since I'm still using the woodstove to heat at that time of year, there is no cost to reduce the sap to syrup.  

I saw bottled birch syrup offered at a farmer's market several years ago, but it had added sugar!  So I wouldn't think it would be a good candidate for syruping.  Maybe worth an experiment if you have the trees anyway.

But definitely tap the black walnuts!  Yummm!  

Tom Worley wrote:Hey folks,

My family property in the eastern Ozarks was one of those wrecked by the tornadoes a month or so ago- no major structural damage, but lots of shattered trees- blasted and broken 15-20 feet off the ground.

The site is 40 acres, half upland, half bottomland, and it's been high-graded in the past.  Upland is dominated by shingle oak and bitternut hickory, bottomland canopy has some nice black walnut and cherry, and a lot of sycamore and river birch.   I'd like to use some of these "trash trees" as shelter trees while establishing more marketable hardwood species in the understory.  

I was reading online about folks in other parts of the country tapping birch and sycamore for syrup.  Has anyone tried it in the Ozarks?  I've read sap production takes off in spring when daytime temperatures are above freezing but nighttime temperatures are still below freezing.  I was figuring late February-early March, but I'm interested in hearing from anyone who's tried it.

We've done birch. It's done a bit later than Maple, here it's when the spring peeper frogs start waking up, or just a few days earlier. The nice thing is you don't have snow to deal with. The not so nice is the mud and the ratio is more like 100:1, so you'll be better off with a reverse osmosis machine to take off most of the water, then finishing with wood.

We really like the birch, and will expand into Maple and Black Walnut soon.

I wonder if any of the fruit trees are tappable.
Trees that produce crappy fruit might produce decent sap.
Trees that are pruned to create lumber might not make much fruit at all, but still produce sap.

Grape vines will produce large volumes of potable sap at the right time of year.
Tapping black walnuts might be less work than processing the nuts.

Drinking unrefined sap seems like a healthy thing to do.
With a little heating , it could be bottled as a drink.
Carbonation, is another option.

Since the sugaring process is a lot like distilling, could the evaporated water be directed into an indoor storage tank , for drinking and space heating?
"Wood fire distilled maple water" sounds like free money to me.

"...a lot like distilling..." How so? Am I missing something? I thought boiling sap was done in an open container to evaporate the water - more akin to boiling water. I thought distilling was an art and science that requires careful attention. Don't you have to dump the first bit of distillate as it contains toxic compounds? Maybe not. Maybe someone was trying to scare me? You can tell I don't know anything about distilling, but thought it was much more involved than boiling water?

Distilling is boiling liquids to separate the constituents.
Some constituents evaporate before others, some do not evaporate at all.
The difference between sugaring and distilling is what part is valued.
In sugaring we value what is left behind, in distilling alcohol we value a portion of what is evaporated.

Sugaring set ups evaporate water and leave behind sugars.
They usually have wide shallow vessels that maximize the surface area of the sap that is exposed to open air.
As far as I know, the steam is encouraged to escape the area entirely.
A lot of energy go into every gallon of steam that is turned to steam,  more than the amount of energy that goes into bringing it up to the boiling point.
Instead wasting that energy, I'm suggesting the steam be redirected into a building and cooled back to liquid water form, warming the building in the process.
The liquid water could be bottled, using techniques borrowed from the home brewing hobbyists.
It would just be distilled water, but people pay for bottled tap water, so it's not much of a stretch to get them to pay for this.
Alternatively,  the near boiling water could be used to steep easily obtainable leaves, creating herbal tea.
The shagbark hickory drink mention up above might be a great product.

Even if you just stored gallons of distilled water, and reused the heat produced from sugaring to heat the structure, you would be stacking three functions.