Maple syrup - and how to tap your own trees

It’s sweet, it’s sticky, and brunch just isn’t the same without it. Maple syrup is a natural sweetener made entirely from the sap of maple trees during the spring season. Part of the magic of maple syrup is that anybody living in the North Eastern part of North America can easily make it at home from their backyard maples. And by virtue of its DIY-worthiness, I’ve dedicated an entire post to maple syrup.

​In this article I’ll show you how to tap maple trees so that you can make your very own syrup at home. When to tap, what to tap, and how to turn maple sap into maple syrup - it’s all here and it’s all based on my own recent experiments with the fine maple trees of Newfoundland. I’ll also share some tips for purchasing your own tapping equipment (for a song) and point you on your merry tapping way to sweet local events like the upcoming Pippy Park Maple Syrup Festival which will be held in St. John's on April 2nd. 

My very first batch of home-made maple syrup.

Inspiration

By chance, I was first inspired to learn how to tap trees for maple syrup while barreling down the Interstate 49 on my way to Houston. It was March 2015, and as was usual on my drive home from weekend climbing trips, I tuned into my favourite Sirius satellite radio channel 169: CBC Radio. (I like to imagine the entire Canadian diaspora in America doing this on their drives home.) On this particular day, a replay of The Vinyl Cafe was on and the late Stuart McClean was telling a story of ‘ol Morley and the gang making maple syrup. "Unapologetically Canadian," I thought as I listened. And before long I was captivated. Stuart droned on in that voice of his like he’s been drinking maple syrup all life. Images of the spring thaw in maple forest, steaming maple sap in wooden sugar shack, the quiet wilderness landscapes of the North. I didn’t know it at that time but a powerful force was underway - the pull of home. I couldn't know it then, but that force would eventually bring me back to Canada, where almost exactly a year later I'd be driving down the TCH with a gallon of maple sap in the back seat on my way home to boil it down into my very first batch of maple syrup.

Some things are just better with maple syrup. Here's french toast made from my favourite Georgestown Bakery brioche.

The basics

Maple trees store starchy water in their trunks during winter. In the spring this water thaws and the starches convert to sugar. This sugary water is called xylem sap (pronounced “zeye-lem”) and its purpose is to carry minerals and nutrients from the roots upwards toward the leaves. If you drill a hole (“tap”) into a maple tree during spring, the sap will escape, leaking out in sugary beads like from a leaky faucet in Willy Wonka's factory. Now, if you rig up a bucket to catch the escaping sap, you’re taking part in a classic perennial Canadian activity: tapping maples for syrup. Take this sap and boil it down to about 1/40th of its original volume and you’ve got the unmistakably sweet and delicately nuanced hero of the brunch table: maple syrup.

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Tapping a maple tree with a 1/2" drill bit.

When to tap

The time to tap is during the first weeks of spring. There’s no hard-and-fast rule, but what you want to look for is daytime temperatures reaching above freezing and the nighttime temperatures dipping back below freezing. It’s this daily freeze-thaw that effectively pumps maple sap within the trees' trunks, since the flow of sap is driven by pressure changes associated with the freeze-thaw cycle. Here in Canada a good indicator of when it’s time to tap trees might be when you see those first people wearing shorts on a sunny 1 degree day. It's not only long frozen thoughts of summer time that are being thawed out - it's the sap in the maples, too. Time to tap them!
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What to tap

Any maple tree will do. Some are better than others, with the Sugar maple species (Acer saccharum) being the choice tree since it produces the most sugar in its sap. But red maples (Acer rubrum) are more prolific in Newfoundland and despite producing less sugar in their sap, they produce syrup just as sweet and delicious. So do Norwegian maples (Acer platanoides), but produce less syrup than Sugar maples and Red maples.  You make great syrup out of any of these trees, though, so don’t worry too much about identification - if it’s a maple, tap it and see what happens.
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Brand new tap

Some things you'll need before tapping

• Hand- or power-drill with ½” bit.
• Sap tap (called a “spile”). With the rising popularity of DIY-tapping you can buy these locally now without having to order them from specialty dealers. I got a package of inexpensive plastic spiles at Home Hardware. You can pick up pricier metal ones at Holland Nurseries, but the plastic one worked just fine for me.
• Hammer.
• Food-grade tubing.
• Food-grade container. I recommend a plastic carboy from a local home brew supply shop. Skipper picked up some inexpensive carboys from Brew Craft.
• Spool of narrow-gauge wire and wire-cutters. Wire will be helpful to keep the tubing attached to the tap.
• Sharp carving knife. This is important so that you can carve a small stick and plug up a tap once you’re done collecting sap (or in the case you’ve tapped a non-producing tree).

The taps that are placed into trees are called "sap spiles."

Tools of the trade. Hammer, knife, wire, cutters, 1/2" drill bit.

How to tap

• Drill a hole into the trunk of the tree at about waist height. Drill at a slight upward angle of 5 degrees to allow gravity to do its job as the sap starts to leak out.
• Using your hammer, knock the spile firmly into place.
• Run the tubing from the nozzle of the tap to the top of the carboy. Cut some wire and “twist-tie” it into place at the tap end.
• Ensure that the carboy is firmly in place and won’t tip over when it’s burdened with the weight of the sap. You might need to prop it up with supporting material if you’re on uneven ground.
• Optional: if the tree has multiple trunks, you can tap each trunk separately and effectively multiply the rate at which your carboy fills.

Tapping a maple early one spring morning after a fresh snowfall

Once that spring sun comes out the sap starts flowing

What to expect

• Sap yield will depend on the temperature and the tree. But if you’ve got the right conditions (daily thaw and nighttime freeze) you can expect anywhere from 3-6 lbs (1.5-3 kg) of sap daily, or about 1.5-3 liters from a medium-sized maple.
• If the temperature stays below freezing for more than a day and night, you can expect no sap.
• The yield will approximately double from a double-tapped tree trunk. (Look for trees with multiple trunks like in the photo to the left.)
• Once you’re done tapping, remove the spile and plug the tap by carving a small stick and hammering it into the hole. This will prevent the tree from losing too much of its sap, which will otherwise drain freely from its trunk, possibly harming it.
• Store the sap in a cool place. The fridge is best - if you have the space!

Boiling the maple sap

• Once you’ve got your sap, you need to boil it - and boil and boil it -  to get syrup. The typical ratio is about 40:1 parts sap to syrup by volume. In other words, 5 L of sap will produce 125 mL of syrup.
• Boiling is typically done in stages. I recommend doing the first part outdoors over a fire in a large stockpot. Use a stockpot that you’re not too fussy about as it will get sooty beyond repair over open flames. Boil off the first two-thirds in this step. Taste it - it’ll be noticeably sweeter! Getting there...
• Boil the remaining sap indoors, using a smaller saucepan as the volume decreases. A fume hood helps to keep your house from smelling cloyingly sweet as the sugary vapours emerge from the pot. It also helps to strain the sap between boils in order to remove any particles.
• Once it has reached an amber colour and a sweetness you’re happy with, it's done.
• Let the syrup cool and then strain it through cheesecloth or a coffee filter to remove any unwanted debris.
• Bottle the syrup and store it in the fridge.

It's helpful to boil off the first batch outdoors over a fire

Community events

Finally, check out what’s happening in the maple-tapping community by visiting your local farmer’s market during the spring or by checking out syrup-themed community events. If you’re in St. John’s like me, then you can’t miss the 3rd annual Pippy Park Maple Syrup Festival on April 2nd, which will have activities and demonstrations for the young and old, newbies and experts alike. If you’re going, I’ll see you there.

Happy tapping!

Written by Erik Veitch. Send me an email or comment below.
Edited by Michael Lee. Thanks, Mike!