Maple orcherd

[tonka]

I will soon have 16 acres that I am planning on planting into maples. I will be planting sugar maples for the long term sugar bush but want to plant a faster growing maple in between the sugar's. I am leaning towards red's, who here taps red maples? I know they are a faster growing maple but the big thing I want to know is what reds average out on sugar content. If there is anyone who taps yard red maples and have an idea on sugar content please do share!!! Thanks!!

[blissville maples]

sugar content can be ok, sometimes oiver 2, have seen 3.5 on a 200 y/o 5' footer(yes its a red). however, they are very finicky, some run good some not much at all, different kind of internal structure of wood cells i believe. i just heard of these sweet silvers, maybe for you

[tonka]

My mindset is once the reds are 5-7 inches tap them year after year until the sugars are tapable size then thin out the reds to cut down competition for the sugar maples. Just trying to not make it a 20 year wait before getting anything in return, now if I can cut it down to say 10 years of waiting to tap (in comes the reds) then I have 10 years worth of syrup sold by the time I get tapping the trees that could be the sweetest trees I will ever find with the sugar maples. I have heard of those supper sweet silvers and feel it would be a shame and I am assuming expensive firewood. Thanks for the info!!

[Cedar Eater]

I tap exclusively reds and not many, but the full sun trees produced way more sap than the taller woods trees last year. I didn't measure the sugar content, but from the production level, I got at least 2% sugar. Silvers have a reputation for getting larger in diameter much faster, but also going buddy sooner. If it were me, I would play it safe and do a mix of red and silver, but I don't think I would buy really expensive trees. I planted red maple seeds in full sun inside tree tubes last year and some got up 18" during their first season. With the warm winter we are having, I expect them to do well again this year. I used 5' tubes and won't take them off until the trees start out the top. Then I'll have to cage them to keep the critters off.

[Russell Lampron]

I tap mostly reds and average out around 2% sugar. Some of my trees are large with big crowns while others are smaller with small crowns. They are all on vacuum which is the best way to get sap out of them. When I have tapped them with buckets I have found that some will run good others will run some and others not at all. When they are on vacuum you can see sap coming out of every tree. I have no experience with silvers but if you are planning to use buckets you may not want to plant reds.

[blissville maples]

makes me wonder if the reds make different internal pressure than the sugars

[tonka]

I personally wont waste time on silvers, I have noticed when I did tap silvers there was about a week average when the trees would start running and sap turning buddy or drying up compared to the sugars and due to the (in my opinion) have a poor quality of syrup compared to straight sugar maple syrup which leads me to another question, what is the quality of red maple syrup compared to sugar maple syrup if anyone has had the opportunity to compare the two? I do plan on running vacuum, will not go back to buckets unless its only a couple dozen. The orchard will be a mix of sugars and reds. Thanks everyone for sharing your experience.

[TreeTapper2]

I have mostly silvers and they have served me well. They bud out on the warmer weather which at that point the sugars aren't moving sap anyways. I guess the advantage to sugers is if it warms for a period of time ( silvers bud out) and then drops down below freezing at night. We haven't seen many days like that here so I don't feel I lost much.
Last year we had a run of two weeks perfect weather then it started warming with two days in the 70's. I saw buds popping on the silvers and figured it was all over but the temps dropped. Collected sap from the silvers and could tell it was a little off. I have cooked sap like this before and was able to cook out the bad flavor. So I cooked what I collected each day and noticed the flavor greatly improved. We ended up with another 300 gallons of sap on a season that I thought was done because of the silvers budding out. The syrup tasted like it should. It was an interesting lesson to learn.

[Russell Lampron]

I personally wont waste time on silvers, I have noticed when I did tap silvers there was about a week average when the trees would start running and sap turning buddy or drying up compared to the sugars and due to the (in my opinion) have a poor quality of syrup compared to straight sugar maple syrup which leads me to another question, what is the quality of red maple syrup compared to sugar maple syrup if anyone has had the opportunity to compare the two? I do plan on running vacuum, will not go back to buckets unless its only a couple dozen. The orchard will be a mix of sugars and reds. Thanks everyone for sharing your experience.

Through comments from my customers and visitors on maple weekend I have gotten many comments on how good my syrup tastes. About 50 to 75 of my 725 taps are sugars and the rest are reds. I don't feel that I am the only one that thinks that red maple syrup tastes better than sugar maple syrup.

[pennslytucky]

It's nice to see other red maple fans here. I am sure red syrup tastes better. I have 2 hard maple on my whole property. Everything else is red. My uncle doesn't have 1 red, all sugars. Mine tastes like something more than sweet maple. Almost praline. There's plenty of of variables but even he admits the taste is better. I think it because of the lower sugar. All the other flavors get more concentrated when you bring 1.5% up to 66% compared to 2.5% to 66%. There's almost twice as much water there, with almost twice as much of the tree's influence of taste (once concentrated).

Am I just dreaming?

[DrTimPerkins]

It's nice to see other red maple fans here. I am sure red syrup tastes better.....Am I just dreaming?

You might not be dreaming, but it isn't surprising that producers tend to like the taste of their own syrup best. First of all, all the work involved makes you relish it, and secondly, it is a taste you've become quite accustomed to. People tend to like flavors they become used to (more on that below).

There have been a couple of studies on species differences. One was in Ontario in the mid-1960s. They compared sap and syrup of five maple species (silver, red, Manitoba, Norway and sugar). A large number of factors affected sugar content, including species, although there was a huge amount of variation. Sometimes the softer maples could be higher than the sugars....all depended upon the circumstances. The important factors associated with high sap sugar content were tree dominance and faster growing trees on good soils with good soil moisture. Thinning was definitely associated with higher sap sugar content.

In terms of taste, they prepared syrup from sap of each of these species and did flavor comparisons with 50 judges. They also included artificial (table) syrup. Interestingly, many of the judges preferred the table syrup (so it is clear that the judges were probably not maple producers, and many probably were used to, and thus preferred the table syrup taste). None of the maple syrup produced from any species was deemed objectionable. Norway maple came out just slightly ahead of the others followed by sugar maple. Silver maple came in last. Red maple syrup was in the middle of the pack.

[pennslytucky]

Thanks dr tim! I wondered about bias too. Also, I bet the methods make huge difference. Simmering sap in a pot on the woodstove for days makes syrup that doesn't even resemble maple.