Sugar Maple

Acer saccharum · also: hard maple, érable à sucre

note for next yearSap & syrup🗓 Tap late Feb–early Apr📍 128 on map (0 confirmed)

How to ID it

Opposite branching; classic 5-lobed leaf with smooth-edged (not toothed) sinuses
Mature bark grey, furrowed into long vertical plates
Tap in leaf-off late winter, but ID the tree the previous summer/fall while in leaf
Black maple (Acer nigrum) looks similar and taps identically

Safety

The sap is harmless; the only risk is to the tree — one tap per mature, healthy trunk, drilled just ~5 cm deep.
Know your tree before drilling: don't tap boxelder near roads, or any tree of unknown health.

Harvest

Tap in late winter, when daytime highs climb above 0°C but nights still drop below freezing — that freeze/thaw pump is what moves the sap. Drill a hole ~5cm deep at a slight upward angle, seat a spile, and hang a covered bucket. Collect the clear, faintly sweet sap daily and keep it cold. Any maple can be tapped, but sugar maple runs the highest sugar, so it’s the least work to boil down. Identify the tree the prior season while it’s in leaf; the trunk is anonymous in February.

Prep

Sap is basically sweet water — boil it down hard, roughly 40:1, to reach syrup. Do the bulk boil outdoors (it throws off enormous steam) and finish gently indoors, watching the temperature so it doesn’t scorch. Filter before bottling.

Notes

Stop tapping once buds swell — sap turns off-flavoured. Black maple taps identically. A single tap won’t hurt a healthy mature tree.