Amanda Glensky

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Last month Erdenheim resident Joe Slapinsky decided he would tap into the natural sugar in his backyard for the first time rather than buying his sweetener at the supermarket.

He passed on modern power drills in favor of an old brace drill, which he got for a dollar at an antique shop, and bought a set of metal drill bits for $10 on eBay.

“I thought, if you’re going to do it, do it the way your great-grandparents did,” he said.

His grandmother, who is 90 and grew up canning preserves and working in her garden, asked why he was voluntarily doing such labor-intensive projects when he could buy sugar at the store, or at least use a modern drill.

“Knowing how to do it is fulfilling as well,” Slapinsky said. “It’s those old skills that nobody is doing anymore.”
He also likes to show his children, Karina, 9, and J.T., 5.

Three weeks ago, with his new-old tools, a red maple tree and a silver maple tree in his backyard, and the help of the book “Backyard Sugarin’” by Rink Mann, Slapinsky invited over some neighbors and fellow members of the groups Sustainable Springfield and Wissahickon Growing Greener, drilled two-inch holes in the trees and hung stainless steel bucket sprouts to capture the clear sap drip by drip.“Here’s the cool thing about this — you can drill it and just forget about it,” Slapinsky said.

Then they went inside and enjoyed some Tommy Knockers Maple Nut Brown Ale.

The “backyard sugarin’ project,” as Slapinsky calls it, partially began because Slapinsky wanted to make beer with the sap just as he did in his college days at Temple University.

“I’m a DIY [do it yourself] kind of person. I’m a tinkerer,” he said, adding that people who live around him on Harston Lane have also shown an interest in projects like this one.

Slapinsky was also inspired by the book “Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers,” by Stephen Harrod Buhner, where he read about the medicinal uses of maple beer, which requires boiling the sap, adding yeast and fermenting, he said.

The sap he draws from the trees is mostly sucrose, basically table sugar with extra vitamins and minerals, he said. He boils it down halfway to three-quarters, a concentration American Indians called “maple water.” He uses this as a sugar substitute in his green tea and in his bread recipes. He has made some quantities of syrup for pancakes and waffles.

The boiling point of sap is slightly above that of water, around 218 to 219 degrees, he said.

He likened the process of sugaring to tending to a fireplace, which is not necessarily a labor-intensive.

Slapinsky got a little bit of help from Lehmans.com, an Amish business that sold him his spouts, to determine when sugaring season had begun.

The best time for sugaring is about a two- to three-month window in which the atmosphere is below freezing at night and above freezing during the day, he said.

During the warmer months, the tree gets its sugar from its leaves and sends it down to the roots. When temperatures drop below freezing, the tree draws the sugar up again.

Slapinsky inserted his taps on the side of the trees closest to the sun because the warmth makes the sap thaw and flow more quickly through the tap.

When the sun is shining, he gets about a quart of sap per day.
Slapinsky, a multimedia consultant for pharmaceutical companies, works from home and can check his taps or boil sap during the day.

For those interesting in tapping into their own trees, Slapinsky recommends reading “Backyard Sugarin’” and looking into the instructional Wissahickon Valley Watershed seminars.

“The best part about it for me was sitting in front of the fire and drinking herbal green tea with my own sugar sweetener,” he said.
Next year he will probably make his own taps, he added.