Sweet sap drips from trees other than sugar maples

Sweet sap drips from trees other than sugar maples

Consider making your own “maple syrup” or other tree “syrup” this coming winter season (or later since it does take time).  The Hemlocks (where I live) has two old pasture type “hard” maple trees I use, as an example. One of them is pretty big, and also makes nifty wood for things like gun stocks, and firewood at times, too. It is a big and old tree I also maintain (mostly by bush hogging) in the forest around here.

Bush hogging is half-way between yard mowing and brown tree cutter work in the forest and growing up areas. Mostly to me it means how thick a tree or bush can you cut. I stick to around trees that are about 2 inches in diameter.

A USA low country tradition ( I first learned in South Carolina)  is to save old liquor and wine bottles and use them for containing the syrup and making gifts out of it.  Really any old containers will work OK. Just sterilize them, for sure.

It is also fun to make your own labels for the syrup, too. Local labels can be nifty.

And local honey will be pretty nifty as a gift, also. Honey lasts forever. Maple syrup (homemade and refrigerated) is good for about 2 months. Frozen lasts a lot longer, but I have not tested that to my satisfaction.

Here’s a blog post on the subject.

 

Sweet sap drips from trees other than sugar maples

By MARTHA ELLEN in the Watertown Daily News
TIMES STAFF WRITER ( http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20140413/NEWS05/704139878 )

Using trees other than sugar maples for syrup production has untapped possibilities.

“It’s been well-known for a long time but nobody has been doing it,” said Michael L. Farrell, the maple program coordinator for Northern New York and director of Cornell University’s Uihlein Forest in Lake Placid. “We’ve had great feedback and interest. We’re looking at the market potential.”

Other than sugar maples, the primary trees that have sap sweet enough to make it worthwhile to boil down to a syrup are birch, black walnut and butternut. The two nut trees are related, Mr. Farrell said. He is the author of “The Sugarmaker’s Companion: An Integrated Approach to Producing Syrup from Maple, Birch and Walnut Trees”.

A sweet-sap silver maple available from St. Lawrence Nurseries, Potsdam, is also a contender for an alternate to the sugar maple.

The sap from black walnut and butternut trees run at the same time as maple.

“They taste similar to maple, with a nutty flavor,” Mr. Farrell said.

Stephen M. Hunt II, Chaumont, is tapping the black walnuts in his yard for the first time this year as a science experiment with his children.

“I just so happen to have about 20 of them,” Mr. Hunt said. “There are black walnut trees everywhere in this village.”

Mr. Hunt tapped the trees in the traditional manner using buckets and is boiling the sap down in a turkey fryer and finishing it on the stove.

“It takes about eight hours to boil down about 7 gallons,” he said. “It’s more of a hobby. I think we’re going to do it every year. We love it.”

So far, he has made a half gallon of syrup from 25 gallons of sap.

“I wish there was more because I’d like to share it,” he said.

And the flavor?

“I think it tastes great,” Mr. Hunt said. “It has a smoother taste than maple syrup. Strangely, it kind of reminds me of a marshmallowy kind of taste.”

Mr. Hunt’s experiment seems to be catching on.

“Our neighbor tapped theirs this year,” he said.

The birch sap run comes after the maple syrup season is over, making birch a potential way to extend the season and offer a specialty product, Mr. Farrell said.

William L. MacKentley, proprietor of St. Lawrence Nurseries, which specializes in plants for northern climates, is acquainted with syrup made from birch sap.

“I made about a gallon when I was a kid, but that was enough,” Mr. MacKentley said. “It made a good syrup, don’t get me wrong, but it has a little bit of an after-taste.”

Butternuts make a tasty syrup, but the trees have been hard hit in recent years by a blight that is wiping them out, Mr. MacKentley said.

“I wouldn’t want to stress them out any more than they are,” he said.

St. Lawrence Nurseries grows sweet-sap silver maples. The sweet-sap silver maple has twice the sugar content as the sugar maple, which is usually between 2 percent and 2.5 percent, Mr. MacKentley said.

“You can tap any kind of maple, but most of them have a sugar content of 1 percent or less,” he said.

The sweet-sap silver maple was discovered by H. Cedric Larsson, a retired Ontario research forester who gave root cuttings to Fred L. Ashworth, the founder of St. Lawrence Nurseries. Propagated by tissue culture, the sweet-sap silver maple grows quickly, can be tapped within 10 years, and is good for wet lowlands, Mr. MacKentley said.

“You can make a wonderful syrup,” he said. “People are getting to know them. A lot of maple sugar producers in Vermont have been buying them.”

Poster’s comment:  Ask around where you live to find out about other local trees that make sugary sap.  This article comes across to me as more maple tree oriented. And in the South Eastern USA sycamore and sweet gum trees are known to work OK, too. I suspect around the world there are many other trees that do much the same. The key point is the amount of sugar in the sap, so do expect to have to boil it off to concentrate the sugar and syrup in most cases, which can be a fun experience and hobby, to some.