Making Bigleaf Maple Syrup
Eliza Nelson and Diana Rose, members of the Oregon Maple Project, with Kevin Foster looking for suitable bigleaf maples for tapping. Photo L. Foster.
By Laura O. Foster, NW McNamee Road
Thirteen maple species grow in North America, with nearly all commercial maple syrup coming from one species, the sugar maple. Native Americans on the East Coast were the first peoples known to have harvested maple sap for food; in the 1600s, they shared their tree-tapping knowledge with European settlers. Four hundred years later, the Pacific Northwest is experiencing an emerging maple sugar movement, using one of our local species, bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum). Of the 125 maple species worldwide, bigleaf maple is the tallest, has the largest leaves, and is quite capable of producing delicious syrup. The flavor is complex, with tones of bourbon, the woods, and vanilla. Oregon State University notes that it’s also high in minerals: potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, iron, and zinc. Like wine, the terroir (and time of year) can influence flavor.
Both Oregon State and Washington State universities are encouraging landowners to explore this unexploited natural and renewable resource. University-based researchers, emerging commercial producers, and hobbyists are building a growing knowledge base for new sapsuckers to tap into. WSU notes, “We are learning all the time while working with these admirable trees.” In the Skyline neighborhood several landowners are in their first or second year of tapping their trees. Last year, Ben Malbin tapped 30 maples on his family’s 80 acres; this year he has a network of 500 feet of line with 222 taps, roughly aligned along an old logging road. He is using a combination of gravity and a vacuum pump to pull sap into his evaporation tank and will boil the sap down using wood (for the initial evaporation) and then propane (when nearing the necessary 66 percent sugar level requires a more precise heat source). Others, like me and my husband, are tapping just a few dozen trees using gallon milk jugs.
Some maple syrup facts:
Locally, the Oregon Maple Project (OMP), founded in 2020 by former Arbor School educator Eliza Nelson, provides a community open to anyone who wants to tap their maples. Members of this year’s sugaring collective cohort own or manage from 3 to 800 acres of land, ranging from hobbyists to those intending commercial production. For a small fee, collective members gain access to the growing knowledge base of a community of sapsuckers, a site analysis by Eliza, and most of the supplies needed to tap 10 to 25 trees. In early March, members bring their frozen sap to OMP’s sugar shack, in the deep woods of Camp Colton (near Molalla). There, it’s combined with the sap from other members’ trees, and boiled off in OMP’s evaporator.
This is the first of a two-part article on bigleaf maple sap harvesting. In the next issue, we’ll talk with local folks and Oregon Maple Project collective members about how their tapping and harvesting went this winter.
Resources
Note: Live links for the following are here: https://www.srnpdx.org/jan2023.pdf
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Thirteen maple species grow in North America, with nearly all commercial maple syrup coming from one species, the sugar maple. Native Americans on the East Coast were the first peoples known to have harvested maple sap for food; in the 1600s, they shared their tree-tapping knowledge with European settlers. Four hundred years later, the Pacific Northwest is experiencing an emerging maple sugar movement, using one of our local species, bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum). Of the 125 maple species worldwide, bigleaf maple is the tallest, has the largest leaves, and is quite capable of producing delicious syrup. The flavor is complex, with tones of bourbon, the woods, and vanilla. Oregon State University notes that it’s also high in minerals: potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, iron, and zinc. Like wine, the terroir (and time of year) can influence flavor.
Both Oregon State and Washington State universities are encouraging landowners to explore this unexploited natural and renewable resource. University-based researchers, emerging commercial producers, and hobbyists are building a growing knowledge base for new sapsuckers to tap into. WSU notes, “We are learning all the time while working with these admirable trees.” In the Skyline neighborhood several landowners are in their first or second year of tapping their trees. Last year, Ben Malbin tapped 30 maples on his family’s 80 acres; this year he has a network of 500 feet of line with 222 taps, roughly aligned along an old logging road. He is using a combination of gravity and a vacuum pump to pull sap into his evaporation tank and will boil the sap down using wood (for the initial evaporation) and then propane (when nearing the necessary 66 percent sugar level requires a more precise heat source). Others, like me and my husband, are tapping just a few dozen trees using gallon milk jugs.
Some maple syrup facts:
- Sugar maple sap ranges from 2 to 5 percent sugar; for sap with a 2 percent sugar content, you must boil 43 gallons of sap to obtain one gallon of syrup (66 percent sugar). Bigleaf maple sap is less sweet: at about 1 percent sugar, it requires 86 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Sugar percent varies from tree to tree, and time of year.
- Sugar maples back East are tapped in late winter, as temperatures rise. But in the Pacific Northwest, bigleaf maple sap is tapped from late November to late February. Frosty or freezing nights followed by warm days offer best tapping potential, and 30- to 50-year-old trees are more productive than very young or old trees.
- Coppiced trees (in which multiple shoots grow after a maple has been cut---a typical growth habit in our logged forests) offer an efficient resource to tap: the bark is smooth and root systems are expansive. Each shoot can be tapped and lines fed to one central 5-gallon bucket. OSU notes that a trunk diameter (of each shoot) between 4 and 18 inches is best.
- Trees growing in ground with a high moisture content, near streams or in creek valleys, offer more sap than those in drier areas.
- Sap should be collected daily and stored at 38 degrees Fahrenheit or frozen if not immediately boiled off, to prevent bacterial growth.
- Some people boil off the sap only partially, to drink so-called maple water (up to about 20 percent sugar), a cold, mineral-rich beverage.
Locally, the Oregon Maple Project (OMP), founded in 2020 by former Arbor School educator Eliza Nelson, provides a community open to anyone who wants to tap their maples. Members of this year’s sugaring collective cohort own or manage from 3 to 800 acres of land, ranging from hobbyists to those intending commercial production. For a small fee, collective members gain access to the growing knowledge base of a community of sapsuckers, a site analysis by Eliza, and most of the supplies needed to tap 10 to 25 trees. In early March, members bring their frozen sap to OMP’s sugar shack, in the deep woods of Camp Colton (near Molalla). There, it’s combined with the sap from other members’ trees, and boiled off in OMP’s evaporator.
This is the first of a two-part article on bigleaf maple sap harvesting. In the next issue, we’ll talk with local folks and Oregon Maple Project collective members about how their tapping and harvesting went this winter.
Resources
Note: Live links for the following are here: https://www.srnpdx.org/jan2023.pdf
- Bigleaf Sugaring: Tapping the Western Maple by Gary and Katherine Backlund (available at the Washington County Cooperative Library system: wccls.org)
- Oregon Maple Project
- Oregon Tree Tappers, a project of Oregon State University’s Department of Forestry, provides resources on commercial and tax deferral aspects of managing bigleaf maples for agricultural purposes.
- BLM Syrup net is a useful listserv populated by sap harvesters in Oregon and Washington.
- Bigleaf Maple Syrup Resources is curated by Washington State University’s Extension Forestry service, as is Sapsuckers, a citizen science group devoted to bigleaf maple syrup production.
- The only online source to purchase bigleaf maple syrup: Neil’s Bigleaf Maple Syrup in Acme, Washington.
- Facebook group: Bigleaf Maple Tapping in the Pacific Northwest
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