yellow sap: keep or discard?

[moscowmule]

i would like people to clear up a debate my mom and i are having. she used to sugar with my dad in the 70s and 80s, and according to her, "when we would find a bucket of yellow sap, we would always toss it out."

i am of the opinion that as long as the trees are not budding out and you are sure it's not rain water that has run down the tree into your bucket, sap is sap whatever color and if the sap tastes good i'll boil it.

does anyone know what it means when sap comes out yellow? i've heard it has to do with changing metabolism in the tree, but like someone else posted here, sometimes two taps on the same tree will be drastically different in color, one clear and one neon yellow. also it has seemed this season like some taps would randomly run yellow earlier in the season, and then clear up. now that its march 22nd i'd say 1 in 20 of my buckets has a yellow tinge, but we are having freezing nights and days in the 40s with no budding in sight.

[PapaSmiff]

I usually get yellow sap after a rainy day. I was told it was from water running down the sides of the trees and washing junk into the sap bucket. I always toss it.

[PerryW]

I agree, yellow sap is not buddy sap. Not sure what causes it. One clear bucket and one yellow bucket sometimes on the same tree!

I do dump out any yellow sap (unless I'm really hurting for sap.) Some of the sap I dumped out of the buckets during the rainy stretch I had was so dark, it was darker than the syrup I was making, so I was afraid it would seriously lower my grade.

[Asthepotthickens]

Toss it, if you are a non believer boil down about 5 gallons on a propane burner you will end up with a cup of molasses

[Jayenelee]

I always tend to get yellow when the trees dry up on account of there being no frost. It makes a lot of black foam on the evaporator, and diligent skimming seems to prevent it from affecting the quality of the finished syrup. Bark tea is also yellow and I throw it out if I suspect it makes up the bulk of a pail of sap. A pail of off colored sap due to a little bark tee does not adversely affect a batch of syrup as far as I can tell.

[ash10383]

just thought I'd bring this thread back to life a bit by saying...we got some sap from our trees a 5 or so days ago and it was mostly very clear yet (after it had been very warm for 10 or so days)... but then had another couple of warm days followed by a 18ish hour freeze...the sap we got from like 80% of our trees after was quite yellow, which was quite surprising that it went yellow so fast, but the couple times I tasted it, it tasted ok...no idea what any of it means or caused from just putting it out there

[Sugarmaker]

One year when my Uncle Jack was driving sap truck for me we had every other bucket yellow to orange and back to clear.
I would dump a few and keep a few. Finally just gathered it all and made syrup. I don't remember any problem with flavor.
Regards,
Chris

[Russell Lampron]

When I used buckets I used to make my decision based on how dark the yellow was. Slightly yellow keep and boil, deep yellow toss. I have had trees give yellow sap with no rain and normally toss those. Trees on vacuum don't give yellow sap for some reason.

[KV Sappers]

I do the same as Russ did when he was on buckets. I base whether I keep the sap by the color of the yellow. Light yellow I keep but when it looks like a dark amber I toss it.