Tapping Your Maple Trees
A Brief
History of Maple Syrup |
What You Need to Make Maple Syrup |
Tapping Your Maple Trees
Collecting the Maple Sap |
Turning Maple Sap into
Maple Syrup | The Joy of Maple
Syrup
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Tapping Your TreesIf you have several maple trees at your disposal, it will help to survey the trees to make sure they're the best fit for your syrup plans. Ideally, you want to only tap trees that are at least 10 inches in diameter at about 54 inches high from the ground. This will allow for gravity to help you collect the sap, while also helping you extract the most sap possible.
If a tree is up to 20 inches in diameter, it should only have one tap in its side. Trees between 20 inches and 25 inches can have two spouts, while anything over 25 inches in diameter can have three spouts.
In order to tap your tree, you will need to drill into the side of the
maple tree about 2 inches deep, depending on how small your taps or
spouts might be. Try to find a section of bark that is not damaged in
any way and if there are previous tap holes in the tree, try to stay as
far away from those as you can.The newer the drill bit the better so as to avoid wood backing up into the sap hole and slowing down the flow of sap to your bucket.
Once the hole is drilled into the tree, install the tap by pushing it into the hole. The tap should feel secure in the hole.
It can be helpful to tap your trees on slightly warmer days so as to prevent any possible wood warping or splitting near the tap place.