Making homemade syrup from your own trees .

[Yvonne Smith]

I was just watching a video about this, and there are quite a few trees that can be used for syrup making, not just maple syrup, which is the most common one produced commercially. However, this video names several other trees which have sap that can be used for syrup, and even one where you just boil the bark and make syrup from it.
We have a maple tree in our front yard, but I have never even considered that we could get syrup from it, and when we lived in Idaho, we had a lot of birch trees on the property, which is another tree used for syrup making. I guess I will have to read more about this and see if we can make our own syrup from our maple tree.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

I'm not so sure about those other trees, or even other maples.

I had relatives on farms that had stands of Sugar Maples and operated what they called the "sugar bush" which was more of a clearing for the processing. They had stone-lined firepits with boilers hung above, and a firewood pile and a shack where equipment was stored most of the year and it had a big tank for drawn sap plus a smaller one for final syrup.

I believe that Sugar Maple is used because it is prolific, imparts a pleasant flavor, requires little or no skimming or straining, and produces on a predictable schedule based on climate conditions.

I have heard of birch syrup but I don't think it was ever talked about much.

I believe the season is still called "sugaring" around here, though most places stop the process at syrup today.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

Since watching the video, I have been researching, and thee are a bunch of trees that people tap for syrup, including fruit trees, like peach, apple and cherry trees. It is just not done as a big business like maple syrup is, so it is more something that a person would do with their backyard trees , either to make their own syrup, or to sell in small amounts.
It looks like you do it late winter to early spring, when the sap starts rising, and it is above freezing in the daytime and colder at night. This gives me several months to do more research. We have 2 peach trees, an apple, and a pear tree that we can try, as well as some kind of maple out in the front yard, and some other tree (yet to be determined) out by the back fence.
Unless you had an orchard, you would not get much from fruit trees, but at least enough to try making your own syrup from.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

My grandparents on one side had a small orchard out back, mostly apples and pears but there was still a struggling peach tree left when I was a kid.

Some sort of "peach borer" did a lot of damage. That remaining tree always ended up with globs of sticky sap. I can't remember anyone trying to taste it, but being kids we did grab globs on the ends of sticks and mess around with the sticky stuff.

The entire orchard was in its senescence though. Very few peaches and few that ripened. The apples were small and the pears even smaller and hard. I'm sure it produced well for the family in its day, but as the children grew up and moved trees were not cared for or replaced any more. By the time my Grandfather had died nothing edible came from it aside from a small number of decent pears each season. Maybe 3 or 4 bushels.

 

[Don Alaska]

We have a few apples trees, but I would never dream of trying to tap them for syrup. It does compromise the tree a bit, and I would rather have the fruit. We do have an abundance of birch trees here, though, and for many years while we had children at home to help with the labor, we tapped our trees and mostly sold the sap to commercial folks who made birch syrup[ from it. Birch has a lot less sugar in it than does maple, so it take s a longer time to boil it down to syrup. Straight birch syrup tastes a bit like molasses, so it is usually mixed with fruit syrups or juices when marketed commercially. The commercial folks run the sap through an RO setup to reduce the time and energy used to concentrate the syrup. We did for years after collect enough sap to make syrup for our own use. We sometimes use the sap to make coffee or tea with, and when we had goats, we would water the goats with it and send them to post-winter heaven.

 

[Nancy Hart]

That's interesting. From the pictures It looks like you may need a shagbark hickory. We have plenty of sweet gums and a few black walnuts here. It would be fun to try this for personal use.

 

[Mary Stetler]

We have been making syrup from silver maples. The taste is different than sugar maples which we have since put in. But it is kind of fun. We hang gallon plastic milk jugs from the spigots. They come with handy handle to hang with and a cap to keep bugs and things out (mostly). I actually leave a pot on the stove to boil it down to make a few pints . Not advisable if you do a lot of syrup as the humidity it makes in the kitchen would be bad.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

I had mentioned peach tree sap above. Today I found this:

 

[Mary Stetler]

I had mentioned peach tree sap above. Today I found this:

Looks yummy but I prefer my fruit trees keep their sap on the inside.

 

[Marie Mallory]

I was just watching a video about this, and there are quite a few trees that can be used for syrup making, not just maple syrup, which is the most common one produced commercially. However, this video names several other trees which have sap that can be used for syrup, and even one where you just boil the bark and make syrup from it.
We have a maple tree in our front yard, but I have never even considered that we could get syrup from it, and when we lived in Idaho, we had a lot of birch trees on the property, which is another tree used for syrup making. I guess I will have to read more about this and see if we can make our own syrup from our maple tree.

I use maple syrup on my coffee, since we're out of sugar now, so does Jake.

 

[Marie Mallory]

Since watching the video, I have been researching, and thee are a bunch of trees that people tap for syrup, including fruit trees, like peach, apple and cherry trees. It is just not done as a big business like maple syrup is, so it is more something that a person would do with their backyard trees , either to make their own syrup, or to sell in small amounts.
It looks like you do it late winter to early spring, when the sap starts rising, and it is above freezing in the daytime and colder at night. This gives me several months to do more research. We have 2 peach trees, an apple, and a pear tree that we can try, as well as some kind of maple out in the front yard, and some other tree (yet to be determined) out by the back fence.
Unless you had an orchard, you would not get much from fruit trees, but at least enough to try making your own syrup from.

I didn't know other trees made syrup too. Thats interesting.

 

[Marie Mallory]

I had mentioned peach tree sap above. Today I found this:

Who would have known. Of course our peach trees died so only have fig, pear,lemon left.
We have mulberry tree but the squirrel's get all those berries. It id huge and we don't climb or harvest it.