tapping red maples?

[Baker]

How many of you tap red maples?what's your opinion about it?woth it?reason I ask is because I have bin curious bout this last couple seasons.i have a few I Tapped mixed in with the sugars.but I'm reluctant to tap the other 25 or more. Do to sum articles I read bout very low sugar content. I could increase my taps by 25 or more if it was worth it?i personal have not noticed any nagative results with the few I tapped last yr and mixed in.

[WESTMAPLES]

half of the almost 400 I tap are red maples and its hard for me to tell sugar content tree to tree, because all the sap get sucked thur the same lines to a tank where its all mixed together. others may think different of it, but to me it all makes great syrup !!!

[maineboiler]

About 1/2 of my taps are Red Maples. If they get a lot of sun the production is good and the sugar content not bad. Got to make do with what you got

[TreeTapper2]

I tap mostly silver maples. 2 sugar and one red. Cumulative sugar content last year was 2.1%.
The only maple suggested not to mix with the others is the box elder.

[Worcester]

I was getting 2.25 to nearly 3 percent out of reds last season, the sugars were 2.5 and up to almost three in central MA

They did not produce as well on buckets as the sugars. although it was a bad season in my area and my first doing more than one tap.

I have read that they will produce almost as much sap as sugar maples with some vacuum. Excited to try 75 taps on 3/16 this season. Almost all reds.

[buckeye gold]

I use all buckets and bags. I avoid the reds for the most part. If they are in the open sun they will do ok, but inner woods reds vary a lot. Sugar content is usually lower than sugars. I have carried a sap Hydrometer with me and checked. The biggest thing is they will go buddy way before the sugars, so you need to watch carefully.

[Biz]

I tried red maples last year for the first time, all buckets, and overall they didn't do well, much worse than the sugars. 1 or 2 good runners, bunch of below average, a few non runners. This year I'm going to do a run of 20 reds on 3/16" gravity tubing and another run on a small vacuum pump, all reds. It will be a good test, having them isolated like that, all natural or pump vacuum, and comparing to the sugars.

Dave

[markct]

I tap around 800 red maples of my 1200 taps, maybe more. They run great on vacuum. On gravity its finicky, I had an area of about 30 taps with nice sun exposure, all planted in a row with huge crowns, perfect ideal trees but red maples. Ran tubing to a 55 gal drum, got hardly enough to bother pumping the first year, often tipped the barrel into a 5 gal pail and carried it to the truck. This was in a year that my other taps, sugars on gravity as well as a mixture or reds and sugars on vac did great so it wasn't the season. I woulda never bothered to tap the 30 taps again if I didn't already have tubing in place, but the next year I did and nearly every day sap ran I got over a gal of sap per tap and on numerous days overflowed the barrel! Realy surprised me, but on vac they have always been reliable producers

[bowtie]

I tap a lot of "wood" reds and some run good, a few great and a lot below what most sugars do but I tap them anyway they all make good syrup. I have not had a problem with going buddy much quicker than my sugars, most of my taps are high elevation so they are all late to bud comparatively. I would tap all I could unless you already have enough for what you need, then you can select the best ones.

[lyford]

If I didn't tap reds I wouldn't be making syrup. I tapped 51 trees last year 48 of which were reds. I got an average of .26 gals per tap last year for a total of ~13 gallons of finished syrup. All my reds are woods trees and its true that some would overflow a 3 gal bucket and others would yield a few tablespoons on the same day. I would tap those reds, but its not up to me.

[Russell Lampron]

I tap mostly reds and most of those are on vacuum. On buckets some run better than others and some not at all. I don't tap the ones that don't run anymore. On vacuum they all run and they make great tasting syrup. If I didn't tap reds I wouldn't have very many taps. If you've got the trees tap them and see what you get.

[Sandersyrup]

I prefer the taste of Red and Norway syrups. A tad more complex in the flavors, some say nutty or earthy in a desirable way. But yes harder to produce because of variable "attitudes" of each tree.


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[Baker]

Thank you for the advice.I think I'm going to go ahead and Tapp them.like you say it should all make good syrup.plus that would put me at about 100 taps this yr.wife just suprised me with a 2x4 evapoator.well the fire box.I had 2x4 pan from last yr.so I'm super excited to get it this weekend.my wife is the best!!

[40to1]

I agree with John....
The best tasting syrup I made was the year I made it all with Red Maples.
I know it sounds "Robert Parkeresque", but the syrup was curiously complex and the maple flavor unfolded slowly on the tongue. Really interesting.
After that year, the Reds (all on gravity), never gave me any more sap.

[Maple Ridge]

I tap them. I have more reds than sugar. I have seen some reds at 3.5% and as low as 1%. I would tap them. The only thing is that they bud earlier than sugar, but if you are on buckets no problem.

[Jebediah]

Absolutely tap them. We have nothing but reds, and they make tasty syrup.

[Greenthumb]

98% of our taps are reds and silvers have only a couple sugar maples. If it looks like sap, smells like sap taste like sap its maple syrup