Is it practical to tap a tree for syrup on an overnight stop?
We have a couple of questions about the legality of and how to tap trees to get sap. Tree sap is the source of sugary syrups like Maple or Sycamore. The sap can then be evaporated over a fire to leave a high sugar syrup (i.e. Maple Syrup).
While the process is not complex, it takes a lot of time and a lot of sap. If you want a cup (8 fluid ounces, 0.25 liters) you would need 40+ cups of sap (2.5 US gallons, 10 Liters). Additionally for Maple and maybe other trees as well, the sap is best for making syrup during certain times of the year, where particular weather patterns are occurring.
Assuming you have packed all the required implements with you, if you stop to camp for the night, could you tap a tree (or three) as you are setting up camp, and produce syrup for breakfast, before hitting the trail again?
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Using some numbers from Cornell's Extension program: 10 gallons of sap per tap in a season is reasonable. The length of a season varies- Let's say it's 90 days. The sugar concentration, which influences how much syrup you get from a given volume of sap, varies. Let's assume 2%, which means you need 43 gallons of sap to get 1 gallon of syrup.
So three taps would get you 30 gallons of sap in a season. But you're there for a night, or 1/180th of a season, so you get .167 gallons of sap. After a day or so of processing, you could get .00388 gallons of syrup, or 1/2 of a fluid ounce. That's a tablespoon, which is the recommended serving size by the USDA.
Carrying a bottle of syrup would take up less space than the taps and processing equipment, so it is not practical.
If sap only flows from taps during the daylight hours when temperatures are high (which is supported by point 14 in the Cornell link), then you will get no syrup at all by tapping trees overnight.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/14103. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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