On hacking maple syrup

Last year I learned how to make maple syrup by tapping the maple trees in my backyard. What a revelation it was that I could harvest my single favourite condiment in the world with just a few basic pieces of equipment.

I couldn't help but notice, though, that on some days the buckets were overflowing while on other days there's was hardly a drop. Clearly, something was affecting the rate at which sap came out of the tree. But what could be affecting it?

I had observed that on warm, spring-like days there appeared to be more sap in the buckets. But just observing this wasn't enough to convince me of anything. If I was to be sure, I had to collect some data and find out for certain.

 And so I recorded the yield of sap in various buckets located around the yard from March 20-29, 2017. I took the average of these sap yields and recorded the temperature that day, along with some notes about the weather. After 10 days of this I plotted my data and, like any good cook-turned-data scientist, I began to look for trends. 

What did I discover? Nothing. What a complete waste of time.

Wait...
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Just plotting maple syrup yield versus temperature showed no visible trend, but... something interesting happened if I grouped the data by sunny and overcast days. Check out the graph and see for yourself. 

• On sunny days, I regularly got about 2 liters more sap compared to overcast days of the same ambient air temperature

Well... that explains a lot! My observation that I got more sap on warm days was only halfway to the truth. Yes, warmth resulted in more sap in the buckets, but only when the rays of sunshine broke through the clouds and warmed the trees themselves. 

Of course, it's likely that other factors at play. The data is still quite noisy, after all. Still, though, considering the extreme variability of environmental data, the trends are explained remarkably well by air temperature and whether it is sunny or overcast outside. 

And so I share this simple yet elegant hack to all home sap tappers out there. Next time you see sun in the forecast, get your drill and bucket ready, there's maple syrup to make. 

Thanks for being here // BC