I had tried to save the inner bark of a mockernut hickory tree that I cut for cordage or strips for weaving, but the bark was stuck tight. It would not cooperate and had to be shaved off in pieces. I had heard about making syrup from exfoliated shagbark hickory outer bark, so I thought I would try with mockernut inner bark pieces since 8 to 10 inch inner bark chunks won't make a basket;)
The recipe is modified from a shagbark recipe I found online.
I took 1 pound of inner bark pieces, broke/cut them into 3 to 6 inch pieces. I weighed it with a kitchen scale to get 1 pound. Place these on a cookie sheet and toasted in the oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, being sure to watch regularly to keep from burning the ends... don't want burnt hickory ash syrup...
After 15 minutes in the oven, put the bark in a stock pot and cover with water. I used 5 quarts of water. Bring to a boil and turn down the heat to simmer. I simmered for about 45 minutes.
Pull out the bark chunks and strain with a mesh strainer to get out the dust and small bits. The I put coffee filters in the strainer basket and poured the tea through the coffee filters to strain it more.
I put the strained tea back in the pot and boiled it down some more. I then measured how much tea I had, which was 7 1/2 cups. So according to the recipe I found, I added 2 cups sugar for every cup of tea, so 15 cups sugar. Bring to a boil to dissolve the sugar, and I continued to boil until a candy thermometer read about 219 or 220 degrees, which is the temperature I found for maple syrup.
Let it cool some and bottled while still somewhat hot. It is fantastic! You can taste the cane flavor from the sugar and definitely the hickory. It is not like maple syrup in taste, but very good none the less. I will definitely do this again.
So, when life hands you tight bark on your hickory stave, make hickory syrup!
