My friend is trying it this year. She is tapping 8 smaller (15" trunk) trees. Since she only has a few trees she is freezing her sap every day and will bring it out and boil when she has over 60 gallons. She says that what she has read is that our maples have about half the sugar as a sugar maple and so you have to boil down twice the sap to get the same amount of syrup. We will know in a couple months how this works out.
OK. Experiment over. My friend got only about 15-16 gallons of sap out of 10 small maple trees. She boiled it down and got about two pints of syrup. She says it tastes VERY good and promised to give me a taste tomorrow when I see her. She said she will definitely do it again. She learned that it goes much quicker to boil only a couple gallons at a time as boiling large quantities at a time takes a LONG time.
When did she tap the trees, and for how long? I have a lot of big leaf maples on our property and may try this. I love maple syrup, although I don't use it often.
I want to live in a world where the chicken can cross the road without its motives being questioned.
Name: Mary Lake Stevens, WA (Zone 8a) Near Seattle
Deb- my sister Ali has a really big propane burner for outside for canning in hot weather, you might be able to borrow that so you do not turn the house into an oven.
What a great idea!
