Mastodawn

It's time! Today we tap for #BackYardSugarBush2026. It's warm (+3C) and sunny, and the trees are calling to me. Here's my little sugar bush: 4 sugar maples in a line along the side of my back yard. Time to tap!
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Stephen Heard Mar 3

I'm not sure if it will run today - it's been cold (-20 at night, -10 during the day) the last couple of days. It may take more than one warmer day to get things going. Only one way to find out...

The gear is ready. Eight buckets, and a spile for each. Time to go drill some holes!
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Here goes.

First hole drilled! The new hole is the one at upper right. At centre left is last year's hole, still looking pretty fresh. Bottom is an older hole, hard to spot now.

We move the tapping spot around from year to year, so we aren't trying to pull sap from recently repaired tissue.

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Stephen Heard Mar 3

A good spot is at convenient height, but not underneath anything like a damaged spot, a split or crook in the tree, or a dead limb.

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Stephen Heard Mar 3

First bucket in place. But no sap dripping! At least, not yet - time to tap the rest.

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Stephen Heard Mar 3

All buckets in place. I have 8 taps total - how many can you spot? Three on the nearest tree (one is out of sight behind the trunk); one on the next tree, which is small; and two each on the two in the background.

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Stephen Heard Mar 3

But: not a single drop of sap today. The last couple of days have been very cold; perhaps it will take more than a single day above freezing to wake up the trees! Tonight, -3 C; tomorrow +7. Promising! #BackYardSugarBush2026

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Stephen Heard Mar 4

Too early today to know if the sap will run - but a light dusting of snow overnight has the sugar bush looking lovely!

FIRST SAP!!!!

Not much accumulated today - a couple of cm in each bucket. And it will be cold tomorrow. But it's a start, and the weekend looks promising! #BackYardSugarBush2026

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Stephen Heard Mar 5

Big sugarbushes use tubing and vacuum pumps to bring sap back to be boiled. For #BackYardSugarbush2026, I have a bucket of pop bottles. Very sophisticated!

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Stephen Heard Mar 5

Just four litres of sap, collected and nestled into my SASSS (Snowbank-Assisted Sap Storage System - I'm a scientist, I have to sound very fancy). Probably won't run again until the weekend, as temps are low today and tomorrow.

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Stephen Heard Mar 6

No sign of sap today, as expected. Meanwhile, a note on the trees. I'm tapping sugar maple (Acer saccharum), which is the canonical tree for syrup. You can tap other species, though: pretty much any maple (Acer), birch, walnut, and I'm told hickory, butternut, and pecan.

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Stephen Heard Mar 6

I've tasted syrup from Norway maple (very similar) but not the others. Anyone want to give flavour notes? But all other trees have much less sweetness to the sap - so you need to boil much more sap to make syrup. #BackYardSugarBush2026 will stick to sugar maple!

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Stephen Heard Mar 8

Rather unsatisfying update: just 4 L of sap stashed away this morning - nearly all of it ran overnight. It's running now, but slowly; and forecast doesn't have it freezing overnight until at least Tues/Weds. We need cold nights, not just warm days! #BackYardSugarBush2026

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Stephen Heard Mar 8

Also had to discard two buckets due to stemflow from yesterday's rain. I can never predict when the geometry of the trunk and the spile will conspire to direct stemflow into the bucket, argh...

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Stephen Heard Mar 8

(You can tell because "sap" in buckets is yellowish. We call it 'squirrel pee' when we're being 12.)

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Stephen Heard Mar 10

First boil today. Not because I have very much sap - only ten litres so far! But it will eventually spoil, even sitting in my high-tech SASSS (snowbank-assisted sap storage system). Especially as it will reach +17 C today...

I won't finish any syrup, of course - this would make only about 300 mL. But I'll boil it down to a litre or so and then store that in the fridge. Fingers crossed for better sap weather this weekend! #BackYardSugarBush2026

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Stephen Heard Mar 10

The first pic, by the way, shows pre-filtration through a jelly bag. That takes out any twigs or insects that have wound up in the sap. Not much of that, this early in the season, but later on this is more necessary!

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Stephen Heard Mar 11

Just a little more sap yesterday, so reboiled; this is now 14 L of sap boiled down to a little under 1 L of pre-syrup. (That amount of sap should make ~0.5 L syrup.) It's noticeably more viscous than sap and it smells heavenly. If only there were more of it!

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Stephen Heard Mar 14

No sap for a couple of days now. First too warm, then too cold... but at least there's some lovely snow right now to help me relax about that. Here's your moment of #BackYardSugarBush2026 zen.

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Stephen Heard Mar 15

First time I've done THIS: in hopes of maintaining a snowbank to store sap in, I SHOVELED MY LAWN.

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Stephen Heard Mar 15

Expanded #BackYardSugarBush2026! A neighbour has a tree that is the champion of all trees. She's not planning to make syrup this year - but she's allowing me to tap it. This is just a moment after drilling - look at that sap run!

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Stephen Heard Mar 17

Finally! #BackYardSugarBush is producing sap by the bucketful. Two warm days and low atmospheric pressure; the sap ran all day yesterday, all through the night, and is only just now stopping.

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Stephen Heard Mar 18

I now have 11 taps total (with the 3 I added at the neighbour's). And so far since yesterday morning, about 75 litres of sap. The only problem? My snowbank is melting!!

Cold last night and today (-10 overnight, high -5 today) so it won't run at all until Thursday. Just as well, I need to do some boiling!

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Stephen Heard Mar 18

Two pots going today! I'd like to work through all the sap I have on hand, which will take a while. I can boil off about 2 L water per hour per pot - so it will be an all-day project.

By the way, if you're interested in trying this yourself: you can ONLY boil inside the house if you have a strong range hood fan that vents OUTSIDE. You're producing a very large amount of steam and it has to escape.

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Stephen Heard Mar 19

This is 57 litres of sap, now boiled down to about 3.5 litres. It's getting close to being syrup - you can see it's boiling with substantial froth, and with sound on, there's kind of a fragile bubble-popping sound to it.

I'll let this cool, and hold it until I'm ready to do a finishing boil for the first syrup batch of #BackYardSugarBush2026. It's easier to make around 4 litres of syrup at once - I'm not there yet!

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Stephen Heard Mar 22

I'm up to 128 litres of sap boiled down (or possibly 138 litres, due to a lapse in recordkeeping). I'm holding it in this cooler until I have time to do the finishing boil. About 7 litres here; it should make about 4-5 litres of syrup.

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Stephen Heard

I'm curious about the amount, actually. While people usually say sap:syrup is 40:1, open-grown trees like mine often run sweeter, and I get ~29:1. But that varies a bit year to year - and we've had drought. Is the sap sweeter this year (less water, better ratio)? Stay tuned as I find out...

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

Time to finish some syrup! Here's what I have: the 128 L of sap, boiled down in a few different batches to about 7 L. The bottles vary a bit in colour because I boiled some down farther than others.

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

Into the pot - now to bring to a boil and check density.

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

This is the key device! A hydrometer, for measuring liquid density. As the syrup boils down, its %sugar and thus density increase. At about 66% sugar, the syrup is done. The "Brix" scale is roughly % sugar, but with a correction for temperature - hence the "hot" and "cold" test lines.

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

OK, I did NOT expect this. I thought my 7+ litres were a fairly long way from being syrup (based on expected sap:syrup ratio). But on left, the hydrometer floating at about 57 - on the right, lifting it to see the target 59.

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

So #BackYardSugarBush2026 is a lot closer than I thought to its first batch... and maybe the drought made my sap much sweeter than usual? Will find out before long!

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

Meanwhile, I need to get my filter setup ready, and scrounge up my motley assortment of fancy jars!

Into the filter!

I love everything about the process EXCEPT this step: waiting for the last of the syrup to go through the filter. As the filter clogs with sediment, it gets slower and slower...I am not a patient man!

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

Here's my workaround - the last cup or so just won't go through on a timeline my brain will accept. So I ladle it out - sediment and all. I call this "dirty syrup". In the fridge, it will gradually settle, and I can decant off the top for use in cooking.

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

The sediment, by the way, is mostly "sugar sand": precipitated calcium malate. Harmless but aesthetically undesirable (hey, Aesthetically Undesirable would be a good band name!)

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

After filtering, back onto the stove for a very short final boil - and here, this is done. The hot test line is floating at the surface - this is syrup! (OK, I took the shot as it bobbed slightly above the surface, for a better photo)

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

Bottled! And it's a lot. This is 5.6 litres, and the "dirty syrup" I pulled from the filter was another 0.25 litres. This from either (curse my recordkeeping skills) 128 or 138 litres of sap. If 138 is correct: 139 ÷ 5.85 is a 23.6-to-1 ratio!

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

That's the lowest ratio I've ever had - #BackYardSugarBush2026 is running VERY sweet. I assume that's a result of our ongoing drought...

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Stephen Heard Mar 24

And this doesn't account for a bit of syrup lost in a boil-over (oops), and a bit remaining in the filter that I'll wash out and recover with the next collection of sap. So 23.6-to-1 is conservative, it was probably a bit lower. (Large sugarbushes figure on ~40:1, but open-grown city trees often run sweeter)

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Stephen Heard Mar 25

Looks like the floodgates have opened for #BackYardSugarBush2026. After a *terrible* start to the season, the sap is really gushing now. Since yesterday morning, I've collected ~85 litres of sap (from 10 taps) - and today's run is just starting!

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Stephen Heard Mar 25

To give you a feel for this: with my stovetop setup I can boil off about 2 litres per hour, per pot. And I can really only manage 2 pots at once. So 85 L of sap is about 20 hours of boiling... by which time I'll likely have another 60 L!

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Stephen Heard 6d ago

Epic boil today for #BackYardSugarBush2026: 54 litres of sap have gone into these two pots since 6 a.m. (The little one is supper.) By bedtime I'll have it down to ~7 litres.

But: collected 55 litres of sap today (including some from yesterday). So guess what my plans are for tomorrow🤣

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Stephen Heard 3d ago

And we're ready for another finishing boil. This is 142 litres of sap, boiled down over the last 5 days or so to about 8 litres of almost-syrup. If I get the same ~23:1 as the first batch, this will be about 6 litres of syrup. We'll see!

Here it goes.

At this stage I have to watch it very carefully, otherwise THIS happens. And a few moments later, it froths over and there's burnt sticky syrup all over the stovetop.

Happens once every year no matter how much I promise myself I won't let it happen again!