Tapping trees other than maples

[KenWP]

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

[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.

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.