Making Maple Syrup, theres gold in them thar hills

[Don Dump]

I was outside shroomin yesterday. I realized how stupid it is not to take advantage of all these maple trees surrounding my house.







anyone else making syrup? if not I highly recommend it, its fun, and soooo much better than the shit you buy.

 

[Endo]

cool, you just drive a tap into the tree and hang a bucket and its bombs away? i know you have to process it first, maybe a tutorial for us would be in order.

 

[Don Dump]

Its hella easy, last time I seen it done was 1994, I was just a kid

basically you do the following:

drill a hole in tree aboot 1/2 inch in diameter, aboot 2 in deep

lightly hammer a spile into hole. (spile at hardware store, aboot 2 bucks each)

hang bucket from hook on spile

collect sap, sap is aboot 2% sugar

strain sap thru cheese cloth (gets tree bark, or whatever particulate that may be in it)

boil sap on stove. keep adding sap as you collect it

reduce to a syrup

enjoy

 

[Endo]

how much sap do i need for a decent amt of syrup?

 

[Crazy Composer]

Maple Syrup is also great for adding to your flushing water at the end of flowering. it provides sugars that are readily available to your pot plants, WITHOUT adding any more minerals/nutrients. I've never told my little secret online, but I guess this is the perfect place to mention it. The maple sugar is sugar created and stored by a plant, adding 1/2 to 1 tsp/gallon of your flush water will give your plants energy even though they are being neglected nutrients. This means they can continue to ripen and get more potent and create terpenes as they flush. Same idea as molasses, but without the nutrients that you find in molasses additives. Pure plant energy.

Enjoy maple season.

 

[bagseed77]

yes , the process is just boiling out the water to as thick as you like, enjoy, maybe i should try some pine syrup, just picin, all we have here are pines and scrubboaks and such

 

[Sheriff Bart]

maple syrup has no nutrients?
wtf?
the phloem sap is full of nutrients....

and as i realize maple sap is tapped from xylems, they still transport nutrients, although to a much lesser extent..

 

[bounty29]

I made syrup with my dad when I was a kid, I remember it was a good time. We had a ton of lines set up behind our house and at a few spots in our town, and a homemade boiler setup in a shed out back. I just had some pancakes yesterday and used syrup my dad and I made about 10 years ago on them. Delicious

Definitely something I'll be doing when I get my own property/house.

 

[Crazy Composer]

SB, you're right, there are nutrients in maple syrup. I was wrong about that, I just looked it up and found it has calcium, potassium, manganese, magnesium, phosphorus and Iron.

I would still argue that it can be added to great effect during the flush process. The amounts of these nutrients is so low compared to the glucose and sucrose molecules in the syrup, that you will be adding these nutrients in trace amounts.

We've used maple syrup here several times during late flower/flush and had truly amazing results in taste. Didn't taste like maple syrup, or sweeter. The benefit of using a carbohydrate during late flowering is the energy the plant receives despite not getting fed any further nutrient. The plant will have leftover nutrients in it's flesh, no matter how thoroughly the medium is flushed. It takes time and energy to use up these nutrients.

Maple syrup is the stored food source of the maple tree as it goes through the stresses and famine times of winter. I propose it is also great food for pot plants. Plant food, by plants, for plants. With SOME nutrient value, but not enough to stuff the plant with unburnable nutrient salts before harvest.

My experiements with MS over the past few months have been very positive/tasty.

 

[JJScorpio]

Do not boil the sap down inside your house unless you have a very good exhast fan and hood. If you do your walls, ceilings and everything else will be sticky and it will be a real bitch to clean everything. I used to have a gas stove that run off LP that I kept in an outside shed......

 

[Don Dump]

how much sap do i need for a decent amt of syrup?

40 litres of sap = 1 litre of syrup

my goal is 1 litre.

 

[RussCargill]

Not that it would be used for eating. But is there any reason you couldnt use another type of hard wood as a way to harvest plants natural sugars to feed to your cannabis?

 

[burning_red]

do the tap holes need to be resealed after you've filled a bucket or how many?

remember seeing Ray Mears tap a tree for some pine tar and he resealed the hole with a cylinder of wood to protect the tree!

I'm liking the idea of adding syrup or molasses to water to finish things off--very interesting

 

[Richard Head]

edited by the editor

 

[Mountain]

Thought I'd bring it back since it's that time of the year in some parts.

I grew up in Connecticut and would see peeps tap trees while it seemed it was still winter. Took lots of trips up to Vermont throughout the year too.

Couldn't believe it some years back when I'd go into a restaurant on the west coast and had to pay extra for 'real' maple syrup. I was like WTF? A lot of places don't even have 'real' maple syrup...that just ain't right!

 

[chefro420]

you gotta try maple that has been aged in old oak whiskey barrels for a few months!! Best MS I have ever had!!!

 

[longearedfriend]

I was at a sugar shack/maple "farm" recently

apparently we learned this process from the natives

approximatively 58% of the world's maple syrup comes from Québec

you usually don't tap a tree that is less than 20 cm in diameter, so a maple tree that is at least 45 years old

 

[Don Dump]

cool, I remember this thread. I just finished making my syrup for this year. made about 7 Litres. next year I hope I can step it up a bit more.

check out www.mapletrader.com awesome maple syrup forum. lots of cool ideas

maple syrup on vanilla ice cream FTW

also read this interesting article. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110330131316.htm

 

[Crazy Composer]

Don!!! You're a Stern listener!? I can tell by the Yoko Ono quote. ;-) Fellow Stern fan here.

 

[Him]

Im making pancakes