how to tap a maple tree with Arnold Coombs from Coombs family farms to tap a maple you'll need a spout a hammer a bucket a drill and your parents permission then find a sugar maple so if you want to make some maple syrup at your house you want to find a sugar maple like this one what we're looking for is the sugar maple which has kind of a shaggy bark and you can look at a book you can see how the leaf is and such but the sugar maple gives us the best sap you can get sap from other trees but it doesn't make a very good sir not nearly as good as a maple syrup so to make people syrup we need to get the SAP out of the maple tree in a SAP is coming up from the root a lot people think that is coming down from the top of the tree into the ground but what's happening is that the roots of the tree store starch over the winter and it gets converted into sugars and that's going to be the food for the maple tree and so that's what's going to help go up the tree and generate the new growth the the buds that will turn into leaves so the SAP is going up through like water we're going to take a little bit of it out but there's literally thousands of gallons going up through a tree over the course of a year and we're taking 10 gallons it doesn't hurt the tree this is a typical sugar maple this one's probably 130 to 150 years old and tapping this we'd walk up to it makes try to get maybe on the self side you can see the sun's down this direction look for a big root there's a couple of good ones on this tree find a spot like here nice and clean what you'll do is take a bit and you'll tap the tree you're going about inch and a half up size my little finger and I'll do that right now just pick a spot like that slightly uphill so SAP runs down you can see the SAP dripping there come right out of the tree take a metal spout like that with a hook you put it right in the hole you just tap it in with a hammer good and snug not too far and a SAP will bit dam up behind that spout and eventually we'll be running out there here it comes catch it with a bucket hang the bucket on the hook or if you had a milk jug put that there and then slide the cover on collect a little bit boil it down you can have pancakes