Whether you want to drink the nutritious sap or boil it down to make syrup, you can tap maple trees in your own yard, using a drill and a spout from the hardware store.
Syrup manufacture can be done at home, but large-scale production is complicated. Drinking sap is a simple, age-old spring cleansing method, and setting a tap is pretty easy. In the Northeast, the tapping season straddles February and March, when daytime temperatures go above 40 degrees, while the nights are still below freezing.
Sugar maple ID
You probably know which trees in your yard are sugar maples. In the summer you enjoyed the shade of the beautiful five-lobed leaves with large upper lobes and only a few blunt teeth. Now, in their leafless state, you may still be able to identify your sugar maples by their bark and buds. The trunks are a light grey-brown, with shallow vertical furrows and ridges that feel more bumpy than scratchy. Often the trunk has patches of whitish-grey lichen that look like part of the bark. The narrow, delicate buds have many overlapping scales and are paired on opposite sides of the slender twigs, hugging the twigs with a sort of Art Deco look. A tree to be tapped should be at least five inches in diameter.
Materials
You will need a brace (hand-powered drill) or a battery-operated drill, unless the tree is close enough to your house to be reached with an extension cord and electric drill. At an Agway or hardware store, you can get spiles, or spouts, for about $2.00 each, and you will need a 7/16" drill bit to make the right size hole for a spile. Find yourself a plastic bottle with a cap, and cut a hole just below the neck of the bottle that will enable it to fit over the spile and hang there.
Procedure
Pick a spot on the trunk about chest-high, below a large branch or above a large root. Don’t use the same spot next year. Drill a hole 1-1/2 to 2 inches deep. If the sap is running, moisture will accumulate along the edges of the hole. Insert the spile, hook on the bottle, and let it run. When you bring your sap indoors, keep it refrigerated, and drink it within a few days, or it will spoil. You can also use it in place of water when making hot cereal, tea, or coffee. As the weather gets warmer, the sap will eventually develop an unpleasant taste and then stop running. At that point, remove the spile, so the tree can heal over.
