You can make maple syrup from any tree in the maple family that is 10 inches in diameter at chest height. So, grab a tape measure and some marking tape, and take a moment in the trees. We make maple syrup with mostly red maples.
The sugar content of the sap is lower than with sugar maples. That means it takes a bit more work to boil down to syrup, but the syrup tastes just the same. And reds are what we have near the house. So we use them. Red maples will tolerate a wider range of conditions than the sugar maple, including variations in the climate.
Science suggests they will fare well despite our warming climate. The leaves of a red maple are from 2 to 6 inches wide. They tend to look 3 lobed rather than 5 lobed lobes are the sections of the leaf , although technical definitions allow for both.
Our sugarbush is very dense. Most of the leaves are far enough up in the air that I have to squint to see them. I was able to find leaves around the base of my reds as proof that I had squinted effectively. Nonetheless, it clogs up the works in commercial operations, making silver maple the 4th choice, well behind the three listed above. The sap of Norway maples is not quite as sweet as sugar maples, but the tree is quite common in some areas.
The taste is quite similar to sugar maple syrup. Boxelders are a small scrubby form of maple that is heavily used in northern Canada where land is marginal and prime trees are less available. While it takes roughly 40 gallons of sugar maple sap to make a gallon of maple syrup, box elder sap takes 60 or more gallons to boil into a gallon of syrup due to its lower sugar content. Bigleaf maple is a maple species used for syrup in the pacific northwest, all the way from Alaska down through California.
Native to the interior of the United States, mostly out west, bigtooth maple is very similar to sugar maple. Though technically tappable, spring temperatures are not often right for a sap run. Gorosoe is a species of maple tapped in Korea. This tree has been tapped for its sap for millennia, though the sap is not generally cooked down into syrup.
The people of South Korea drink the sap for its health benefits. According to the New York Times , Korean people are said to go on sap drinking binges, consuming literally gallons in a day in a hot room. The theory is to sweat out the bad stuff and replace it with health-giving maple sap. That actually works out to be much more expensive than sap cooked into syrup in the states. In North America, tree sap is becoming a popular spring beverage, and a few producers are even canning it up as fresh maple seltzer just sap and carbonation.
One of my blogger friends writes about the benefits of consuming fresh sap here: Tree Sap: Natures Spring Tonic. Birch syrup has been used by traditional peoples in what is now Norway and Sweden since long before the discovery of the new world. Birch syrup requires more energy to produce, as it takes gallons of cooked down sap to make a single gallon of birch syrup, as compared to 40 gallons of sap for traditional maple syrup.
These days, some maple syrup producers are adding birch syrup on as a sideline. Birch trees produce a bit later than maple trees. Birch trees only produce for about 2 weeks, so it can be a quick way to get a last little bit of syrup made before you put away your tapping gear for the year. Still, its high price tag along with its delicious distinctive flavor are good reasons to try producing your own at home. Traditionally, birch syrup was used as a sweetener, made into vinegar, fermented into liquors, wines and ales, as well as having uses in traditional medicine.
Birch sap is more acidic than maple sap, and it has a tendency to eat away at traditional maple sap buckets. These days, producers use plastic tubing and spouts, and historically it would have been collected using sumac or elderberry taps, into bark or wood buckets.
Finished birch syrup. Paper birch has the highest sugar content of all the birches and is considered the best for commercial tapping. Studies have shown that yellow birch contains the highest levels of antioxidants, making it desirable for syrup production. Some Canadian producers are selling specially made yellow birch syrup for this reason. It has a lower sugar content than paper birch, and it breaks bud early, meaning a very short season less than 2 weeks. This makes yellow birch syrup hard to come by, but the finished syrup has a pronounced caramel flavor.
Black birch is a variety that is traditionally used and is often fermented into beer. This birch species is common in the Southeastern United States, and it has been planted as an ornamental tree in other regions. Though production is marginal, river birch will make syrup.
Likewise, gray birch can make syrup, but only in a pinch. A cousin to the American White Birch, European white birch can be used successfully for making birch syrup. I finally found a reference from Mother Earth News to tapping alder , alongside birch and bigleaf maple.
Nut trees in the walnut family all produce high sugar sap that can be boiled into excellent syrup. The sugar content and timing are similar to that of maples. Trees in the walnut family grow wild in many parts of the country, especially areas where maples are not common. That makes them especially valuable for tapping. A friend of mine taps black walnut trees in Missouri each year. Just like with maple trees, the season varies dramatically with the weather. Butternuts are said to produce a smooth, light syrup.
Around these parts, we may never know. The canker weakens the wood and eventually kills the whole tree. If you find a true butternut, do it a favor and cherish it. Just like all trees in the Juglans family, they can be tapped for syrup. Buartnuts are a cross between butternuts and heartnuts that seems to be resistant to the butternut canker! They produce a delicious buttery nut, from hearty trees that can be grown as far north as zone 4.
Tap away my friends, and save a butternut. There are a few hearty varieties being developed for the northeast, so perhaps soon there will be a thriving English walnut and walnut syrup market for us here in Vermont.
Even if you only have a few, the sap can be mixed in with the sap of other tappable trees. Outdoor life writes about making sycamore syrup but they state that the yield is the same as maple. The sap of linden trees basswood is said to have a very low sugar content. The trees tend to grow where water is abundant, and as a result, have very watery sap. This spring I intend to find out. This is one of our linden trees tapped for syrup.
Ironwood trees are considered a weed tree by foresters since they readily grow in the understory and can outcompete more marketable species in low light. They produce sap much later than maples and start running about a week after birch trees. We found boiling 2 gallons of sap yielded about 4 ounces of syrup, which is not quite as good as maples, but much better than birches. The syrup was quite bitter and had a slight tannin taste. An ironwood tree producing sap.
Look at that beautiful drip of delicious…. A producer called Wildwoods Syrup is selling hickory syrup commercially and produces more than 30, bottles annually. You can find a recipe for shagbark hickory syrup here , no tapping required.
If you have shagbark hickories to tap, give it a try and let me know how it goes. Though supposedly tappable, and listed as a syrup tree even by county extension agents, Elms have their own problems. Dutch elm disease is destroying elm trees by the millions, and adding to that stress by puncturing the bark and potentially contaminating healthy trees, is just irresponsible. The Asian sugar palm, for example, not only contains more sap than a typical maple tree, its sap contains up to five times as much sugar sucrose.
Some Asian palms are capable of delivering 20 or more liters of their super-sugary sap in a single day. Compare that to even the highest producing maple tree, which can at best yield eight.
Other sugar-producing tropical trees include oil palms, date palms, sago palms and coconut palms. All produce more sugar and in greater quantities than maple trees.
Where can you find these syrups? Rather than a single product, this is a whole class of sugars; different regions use different palms, extraction methods, and local terroir to create distinct and unique products. In theory, just about any deciduous tree can be tapped in the spring.
They all should produce some amount of sap as the freeze-thaw cycle brings sap up to the buds in spring. The above list is based on credible references or my own experience. Poplar Trees — One reference mentions tapping poplar trees, but there are a number of other factual errors in the post that leave me skeptical. Poplar trees are used to make Balm of Gilead , which leads me to believe their sap is gummy and resinous.
If you have experience, leave it in the comments below. Wild Burlington , an outdoor education group based in Vermont, mentions tapping the following trees as an experiment in one of their classes.
They followed up to say that they were not very successful, but they believe they just tapped too late in the season. They also note that the sap of black locust, smoke tree, staghorn sumac and buckthorn are toxic and should not be tapped for syrup.
They tapped them as part of an experiment to see how much sap would flow:. Stick to deciduous trees, those that lose their leaves in winter. Post links or stories in the comments below to add it to this repository of knowledge.
Please check to see what oak diseases are present in your area. Out here in the Midwest, you could tap a mature red oak in the spring and it will be dead by winter of oak wilt disease.
Not worth it. At all. You fail to show a correlation between tapping a red oak and the same tree dying of oak wilt that same year. WHY is it important to not wound oak trees in the spring?
Yes I am from McBride B. C Canada I was wonder I g about the spruce tree and the Douglas for tree there is a abundance of those types here a very little has been commented on for those spieces. As far as I know, only deciduous trees trees that lose their leaves in winter are tapable for syrup. Evergreens produce pitch, which has other uses, but it wont make syrup.
To my knowledge the buckeye was used by natives to catch fish by grinding up the nut and throwing it in a pond or river. The nut acted as a neurotoxin and temporarily stuned the fish long enough to just pick them out of the water. Now the nut and sap are two completely different parts of the tree but it could suggest that the sap may have the same neurotoxin.
Might not be good for consumption but also could be used for something else? It is a large very thorny tree that is kind of taking over the timbers around here. The seed pod has a sweet edible pulp which makes me think it might have a sweet sap, but the Black Locust, a near relative, is somewhat toxic. Know anything about it? I did a good bit of research trying to answer your question and I came up empty. Do not tap any locusts. My understanding is all but: black locust fliowers that are great in fritters and honey locust pod sap are edible.
I would want to tap some locust trees then test the syrup for. The reports of toxicity are sketchy at best There are too many assumptions here, I believe. Oh maaan, this is exciting! Even just knowing tapping alders and walnuts is exciting, in my book. Great article by the way. Thanks Chris. Tulip poplars are not really poplar trees.
Maybe that is why they produced no sap for you. The over-cooking of sugary substances has given the world some tasty treats like toffee, for example. Watch your sap like a hawk as you near the end of the boiling process. This is potent enough to really taste the sweetness in each drop of sap. Each tap into a productive tree can yield one gallon of sap per day at the height of the sap run. Regardless of the species used, once the sap is reduced to syrup, it has about calories per ounce.
Commercial syrup production has many standards and one of those is the percentage of water left in real maple syrup and other tree syrups. This is nearly impossible to measure in a home sugaring operation, and we tend to leave too much water in homemade syrup.
That water can allow your hard-won syrup to mold. One quick fix to prevent molding syrup is to store it cold. An even better approach is to use a water bath canning technique to store the syrup in jelly jars. Ordinary water bath canning is all you need. Process the syrup filled jars just as you would when making jam or jelly, and your sweet syrup will last for years.
One of my all-time favorite home brewed beverages is something I call maple wine. Having been a home brewer for about a decade now, I really enjoy new discoveries. On a whim several years ago, I put these two concepts together when I took some of my red maple sap out of the syrup boiling process and turned it into wine using my standard mead-making process. Reduce 10 gallons of maple sap into one gallon of sugary fluid. Check the sugar content with a triple hydrometer if you have one.
The specific gravity should read 1. Allow the sappy syrup water to cool to room temperature. While this is happening, sanitize a one-gallon glass jug with vodka or home brew sanitizer. Also sanitize a stopper and wine lock that fit the jug. These are available where homebrew supplies are sold. Pour the syrup water into the clean jug and add a small packet of red wine yeast.
This is available where the other supplies came from. Plug the jug with the stopper and a water-filled wine lock. Keep the jug in a dark place, with a steady temperature between 60 to 70 degrees for the next two months.
It should bubble for weeks and finally start to settle down after a month and a half.
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