How to Tap a Maple Tree

Sugaring season begins in late winter or early spring when the days get above freezing, but the nights are still cold and the buds have yet to appear. Here in Southern Vermont that usually means we’re tapping during the last week of February or the first week of March. Before we will tap a healthy Maple tree (Acer Saccharum), it needs to be at least 12 inches in diameter. To reach this size, a tree needs to grow for about forty years. When we go into the woods to tap trees in season, we carry a drill (either manual or power), a hammer, buckets, covers, and pockets full of spouts. After selecting an appropriate maple tree, we drill a hole about [10] inches into the tree at waist height. While older spouts require a 7/16" diameter hole, the new health spouts we use need only a 19/64" hole. After firmly inserting a spout into the hole, we tap it lightly with a hammer. On a warm spring day, sap will immediately start to drip after tapping.

As the sap begins to run, we hang a bucket on the spout and place a cover on the bucket. Larger trees may get more than one bucket and each bucket can hold four gallons of sap. To make the best syrup, we go to each bucket every day that the sap runs (drips) to gather it. Some days, there may only be only a few ounces. Other times, when Mother Nature has been kind to us, it’s full! For each bucket we hang on a tree we will get about ten gallons of sap for the whole season. That’s enough to make 32 ounces of syrup. Once the sap is gathered, we take it to the sugarhouse to boil it and make it into syrup.