Tapping trees other than maples

[upmep]

I was wondering if anyone on this site had tried tapping and boiling the sap of anything other than maples. I did boxelder and some silver maples on some land we have this year. I don't have any black or sugar maples. It just seems like it would be interesting to see what it would be like to experiment with other trees. I know it can be done with birch. I have river birch, shagbark hickory, sycamore, cottonwood, black walnut on our property and would like to here from anyone on their results from tapping these trees. What does the syrup taste like etc.

[TF Maple]

Most trees actually don't have sap runs like maples do. Boxelder works because it is in the maple family. Like maples they need a freeze to make the pressure for the sap to come out. Birch trees make pressure from the roots that makes the sap run. Most other trees don't have sap that comes pouring out if you try to tap them.
There is some kind of syrup made from hickory but it is made from the bark. If you check on the Internet you will be able to read about this information.:)

[BC Birch Tapper]

There are 12 commercial birch tappers in Canada. I think a similar amount in Alaska.
We have produced a Birch syrup production manual which we have on the classified ads part on this website.
It's much different than making maple syrup but a nice syrup itself and has other uses as compared to a pancake syrup. More in cooking applications, we put it on meats & fish as a glaze or over ice cream.
You're looking at 100 to 120 to 1 for sap to syrup ratios and it is also a different kind of sugar, primarilay fructose & glucose which has a lower boiling temp that he sucrose in maple.

Also check out the Canadian Birch Syrup producers on Facebook

:)

[mklarenbeek]

upmep - After playing with maple for a couple of years and then reading about the birch I had the same question. My internet research revealed Black Walnut syrup and poplar syrup. Put the following in an internet search for more info on the black walnut.

Making syrup from black walnut sap. Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science Fall , 2006

I tapped one this year just to test the sap and mine came at 1.5% but this spring has been weird so I'm not sure if I could get higher. My yellow birch this year were reading at 0 and I didn't get around to testing a poplar until after bud break. It didn't run.

As for the syrups made from bark - with the 200 year old native American recipe that utilizes a formula blend of sugars that looks suspiciously like table sugar - I have my doubts. I've collected some bark and will play with it after I get my greenhouse caught up but since the shagbark and walnut are from the same family and I know the walnut can be tapped I think it more likely that the bark was cooked in sap. Unfortunately I don't have any frozen sap to play with so will try the sugar and maybe some honey.

[wanting to get into it]

I don't think I would try cottonwood. Ever smell that wood? The ones around here stink, and I wouldn't want to put that in my mouth.:lol: Mainly the smell comes from these trees growing in wet conditions with stagnant water being sucked up through the root system. So i have been told. Not sure if it is true, I have never researched it. Although it would make sense.

[mklarenbeek]

wanting to get into it - I personally think coffee smells revolting but I'm not going to argue with its popularity. And there are lots of folks who can't abide the smell of any of the braccias and just as many who find them tasty. :D

Ours is a small farm that sells a variety of weird stuff - www.gaeasgate.ca - Any potential crop is going to be explored. As far as the trembling aspen goes it will not be explored this year. As I mentioned they've already budded out. But if you want to smirk at a truly weird syrup idea there is always honeylocust pod syrup.

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Gleditsia+triacanthos

and quite a few others

http://www.pfaf.org/database/search_use.php?K[]=sweetener

I'm planning on trying the honeylocust because I have a dozen or so lining my driveway. Only problem is that when we bought the farm 5 years back one of the first things we did was prune the trees up so the kids wouldn't have to dodge the lower branches on their way to the bus. Now I have to figure out how to harvest all of those pods before the seeds get over developed. I'm thinking of the back of a wagon. It would have been too much to hope for that the syrup could be made with the mature fallen pods. :rolleyes:

[KenWP]

If it made syrup I would try it.I don't have a lot of different trees here to work with. I have a few paper birch lots of yellows and I think I found a sweet birch finally. They are hard to find here. I pick almost every kind of berry plus some nobodys ever heard of or used also.

[upmep]

All of this sounds interesting. I saw the video of the guy in Indiana who was making syrup out of the hickory bark, but he was adding sugar. We went to a county conservation board demonstration and they said you could make syrup from the black walnut but I have yet to find anyone to get it to work yet. Does the birch syrup have to be boiled differently or just longer since it doesn't have the sugar content? If the walnut had 1.5% sugar that's probably as good as my box elders. I just thought it would be interesting to try some of these other trees.

[BC Birch Tapper]

The main thing with making birch syrup is due to the lower sugar content one needs to heat it for longer time periods. ( sugar contents vary from 80 to 1 to 140 to 1 depending on location. It is a different kind of sugar as well ( fructose & glucose) with lower boiling temps so it shouldn't be heated over 100 deg C. Otherwise it will scrch & make tar which is great if you're making a canoe but not a food product.
Using an Reverse Osomois works well as whenever you can remove water without heating results in a lighter coloured syrup. A special membrane is necessary for the RO.
We do sell a manual on the process.The only one in Print. Check out the classified ads on this website. ( Birch Syrup Production Manual):)

[TF Maple]

Does anyone know if ironwood sap would make syrup? I was in the sugar bush making wood for next year and noticed the sapsuckers had tapped some of the ironwood trees and sap was running. I went back with my refractometer and it was tough to get a good sample but it looked like maybe 2% reading. I haven't tried to Google it yet. Just thought I would check on here first.

[KenWP]

You can also do sycamore trees. They have leaves like a maple anyways. I found some to try some day.

[S Culver]

I tried tapping a few Hickory trees this year but it was to late in the season to get enough to try anything with it. The sap had a sweetness to it. Has anyone tried to go with the sap not just the bark?

[upmep]

It sounds like people have thought about tapping other trees but not much has been tried. I was wondering what the syrup tasted like also.

[red maples]

hickory bark syrup ...not very good (I made it last fall)and you have to add ALL the sugar I let a few people taste not 1 person liked it. SO I poured it over cracked corn for the deer...they liked it. it might be good for marinades but thats it!!! I like hickory nuts(although alot of work) and the wood excellent for smoking foods that and apple wood my 2 favorites.

[mklarenbeek]

TF Maple - Regarding Ironwood sap. There are a couple of different trees that are known by the common name of Ironwood. Once you identify your trees with a latin name you might be able to get some information from the following website; http://www.pfaf.org/index.php

S. Culver - Hickory belongs to the same family as Walnuts and so the sap is both sweet and edible. Regarding the American Gentleman and his 200 year old native recipe utilizing processed sugar:rolleyes: I think it more likely that Native Americans boiled the hickory bark in hickory sap.

Red Maples - I'm currently playing with the Shagbark Hickory Syrup. I have enough bark to make 7 different batches each of which will be boiled down using three different starting sugar levels. So far I've made 2 batches for a total of 6 different samples and so far I'm not impressed either although I can already see improvement. It's nice that there is no time pressure with the bark syrups. When I finish experimenting I'll post my results.

[upmep]

So it sounds like nobody has made a worthwhile syrup from just the sap of the hickory tree. It seems like all are somehow using the bark and sugar to make it which kind of defeats the purpose. Walnut trees seem to have the sugar content in the sap according to the Kansas study. Also birch. What kind of sugar content do you think you would want to have to even consider boiling it down. As a starting point I mean. Thanks for all the input.

[mklarenbeek]

Here's what I've done so far. After watching the video, I determined that just covering the bark with water would result in a too high ratio of bark to water. I think the guy is filling the filter holder rather than the urn with bark. I used to work at a hospital coffee shop when I was a kid. Those filter holders were the size of dinner plates and easily 6" deep for urns that were not nearly as large as the one he is using. Changing those coffee filters is the reason I still haven't ever managed to get a cup of coffee close enough to my mouth to actually taste it. The smell was overwhelming. Twenty five years later and I can still get grossed out just thinking about it. :lol:

I dug our company's coming coffee maker out of the closet and filled the basket with 3" pieces of bark. I then weighed the bark on our produce scale and filled my maslin pan to a comfortable level with water. After a little math I came up with the constant ratio for my experiments. 25 cups of water to 1/2 lb of shagbark.

I will use a large salad spinner to clean the bark.

I'll try a method of flavour extraction and then divide the resulting liquid into three batches before evaporating down to syrup.

[mklarenbeek]

After reading through the posts of others on this site who have tried to make this type of syrup I decided to begin with a method that would limit the amount of tannin released from the bark.

I brought the pot of water and bark to a boil and then turned the stove off leaving the pot on the cooling burner to steep for ~ 1 hour.

I let my son fill up the maslin pan and I don't think he measured the water very carefully because I don't think this method should have resulted in the fluid loss I experienced.

Batch #1 - 4 1/2 cups
Batch #2 - 7 cups
Batch #3 - 10 1/2 cups - which was significantly less than the ideal 13 1/2 cups

The gentleman in the video declared that he was lazy and I decided to take him at his word and begin evaporating "sap" that was higher in sugar content than maple would be.

Batch #1 - 4 1/2 cups extract sweetened with 3/4 sugar for ~15% brix
Batch #2 - 7 cups extract sweetened with 3/4 sugar for ~ 10% brix
Batch #3 - 10 1/2 cups extract sweetened to ~5% brix - I didn't accurately measure the sugar.

Each batch was then separately boiled to syrup as if it were maple.

As the resulting syrup amounts were so small 1/2 - 3/4 cup I didn't bother with filtering.

Results
- Colour - As expected the higher the initial sugar content the lighter the resulting syrup
- Taste - I think they are all boring. Just sweetened water with very degrees (all slight) of caramel flavour. I don't detect anything that I would describe as "hickory"

[mklarenbeek]

After the first batch proved to be so dull I thought to increase the hickory flavour by bringing the water to a full roiling boil for 20 minutes and then steeping overnight - 10 hours. I did add 3 extra cups of water to help compensate for evaporation

Batch 1 - 4 1/2 cups sweetened to ~10 1/2% brix
Batch 2 - 7 cups sweetened to ~7 1/2% brix
Batch 3 - 9 1/2 cups sweetened to ~ 5% brix

Results
- Colour - All batches are uniformly darker than those from experiment #1 but within this experiment the variation in colour is much as was expected.
- Flavour - I can ...just begin to taste something other than caramelized sugar.

Next Step - I'm going to get out my pressure canner and put this bark through some serious extraction. I'm actually hoping to get too much hickory flavour so that I can use the rest of my bark to find the right balance. I'll keep you posted.

[red maples]

when I did mine I did uh have to remember...

3 pounds bark to 5 gallons water bring to a boil and then let steep for 1 hour and then added a bunch of sugar and corn syrup to help it not crystalize.

[mklarenbeek]

I got the pressure cooker out and learned that it's not recommended that I use it on my glass cook top.:(

I processed one batch anyway but will hold off on the others until I can get an electric range with coil burners. I've got one coming in the next couple of months. I'm going to be setting up a summer canning kitchen in basement. I expect I'll really appreciate it come August.

On to the syrup. I used 1/2 lb of bark in the pressure cooker with 25 cups of water and let the steam escape for 15 minutes before closing the petcock. I let the pressure rise to 240 and kept it there for 30 minutes before removing the cooker from the stove to normalize the pressure. After an hour I opened up the petcock to release any remaining pressure. There wasn't any. I left the cooker closed overnight to cool and steep.

I removed the bark after 24 hours and then things got crazy around here and I didn't get to it for another day. After dividing the fluid into my customary 3 batches I sweetened them each to 8% as follows;
Batch A 8% sugar
Batch B 5% sugar +3% corn syrup
Batch C 5% sugar +3% honey

Cooked down to syrup as normal and voila. I have something that requires some consideration before I figure out where to go from here.

Next step was ordering some Shagbark Hickory Syrup for comparison. Hickoryworks doesn't ship to Canada but they sell there syrup through Leaman's and I was able to get some from them. After tasting I am very close.

[upmep]

I asked my wife to get me some of the hickory and birch syrups for my birthday. She did and we sampled them. I thought the birch tasted like molasses to me. We got it from kahiltna in Alaska. The hickory kind of had a taste of its own. It was okay. I still like the maple stuff the best. I would still like to try tapping the trees and try boiling it down and see how it comes out. The black walnut sounded interesting.

[Ausable]

I was wondering if anyone on this site had tried tapping and boiling the sap of anything other than maples. I did boxelder and some silver maples on some land we have this year. I don't have any black or sugar maples. It just seems like it would be interesting to see what it would be like to experiment with other trees. I know it can be done with birch. I have river birch, shagbark hickory, sycamore, cottonwood, black walnut on our property and would like to here from anyone on their results from tapping these trees. What does the syrup taste like etc.

Making Maple Syrup from Sugar Maples is kinda on the same order as making wine from grapes -- Both Sugar Maples and Grapes are used because they have a high sugar content. In our ancestors times - sugar or any sort was pricey and hard to come by and they were practical people. But today, with sugar and other syrups being fairly cheap and available - You could probably make syrups and wines from just about anything and spike it with a sweetner like corn syrup or cane sugar - as long as your flavor source for the syrup or wine will not make you ill or kill you - experiment away. Years ago - I made potato wine and I'm still recovering..........LOL

[maple flats]

I'd study Black Walnut syrup before trying it. Black walnut are a tree that put out toxens to kill off the competition. (some others do too). They will kill tomatoes real fast (I know the hard way)

[TF Maple]

Is there such a thing as walnut syrup made from just the walnut tree? When I Google it I only come up with recipes for taking maple syrup and adding walnuts, cook it and can it.

[maple flats]

Yes, the nuts are safe, I am not sure which part is toxic but it somehow puts out toxins to kill any competing vegetation. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that the toxin would be in the sap.

[TF Maple]

Post from a WVU website on walnut toxicity.
"Plants adversely affected by being grown near black walnut trees exhibit symptoms such as foliar yellowing, wilting, and eventual death. The causal agent is a chemical called "juglone" (5 hydroxy-1, 4-napthoquinone), which occurs naturally in all parts of the black walnut. Juglone has experimentally been shown to be a respiration inhibitor which deprives sensitive plants of needed energy for metabolic activity.
The largest concentrations of juglone and hydrojuglone (converted to juglone by sensitive plants) occur in the walnut's buds, nut hulls, and roots. However, leaves and stems do contain a smaller quantity. Juglone is only poorly soluble in water and thus does not move very far in the soil."

[mklarenbeek]

If you do a google search on "Making Syrup from Black Walnut Sap" you will find a number of websites featuring "part" of an article from 2006 in the "Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science." Most of these websites will allow you to have a free trial period which will give you full access to the rest of the article. That's annoying I know but it is the only way I've found to view the whole thing.

[mklarenbeek]

I found where I saved the full article on my computer and can send it to anyone via e-mail who is interested. I don't check the site very often at this time of year so could take me a couple of days.

[Revi]

I have tapped Norway Maples and it seems to be very similar to what you get from sugars and reds. It has a little different schedule and starts earlier and quits earlier, like the reds.

I think if I didn't have access to a woodlot and I wanted to do some sugaring I would get a half pint and tap Box elder, silvers and Norways along with sugars and reds. They are plentiful and make a nice tasting syrup that you may have to boil a little longer, but there is no shortage of them within easy reach of everyone's house even in town.

[BryanEx]

I remembered this discussion when I ran across some info while researched something completely unrelated. Apparently palm trees are also regularly "tapped" in Southeast Asia. Palm trees produce about 2 1/2 gallons of sap per day and the season lasts for 5 months or longer but you can only tap once every five years and... you must climb to the top of each one to collect the sap. :o

More info is available HERE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_syrup)

[DrTimPerkins]

I remembered this discussion when I ran across some info while researched something completely unrelated. Apparently palm trees are also regularly "tapped" in Southeast Asia.

We had some visitors at the UVM Proctor Center a couple of years ago from SE Asia. Apparently they cut the top off the inforescence (flower), and that weeps sap. They need to collect fairly regularly, otherwise the sap ferments quickly in the hot temperatures. The sap is very sweet, something like 10-15 brix, so doesn't take a lot of boiling. The palm syrup tasted OK....not at all like maple, and definitely had a hint of ferment in it.

[collinsmapleman2012]

i made syrup from boxelders a couple years ago and it sure was different i dont have a hydrometer i just go by sight and taste for syrup but the stuff i made was incredibly sweet and liquidy but takes forever to boil... it also smells funny and has this wierd white powder but i am going to try it again this year

[upmep]

I thought I would revive this post from last year to see if anyone has tried tapping walnut trees or any other odd trees and boiling the sap down to make syrup? If someone got a tasty product let me know.