Very different flavor from silver leaf maple

[berkshires]

We have a very large silver-leaf maple in the back yard, and so just for fun I put a couple taps in it. Nice sugar level, and it's been running well. I kept the sap separate, and have boiled down the first batch into a quart of light syrup.

I tried it, and... Well I hope I'm not offending anyone, but it tasted weird.

Some background on me - the only light syrup I've ever had before was my own, from sugar maples at my sugar bush. It has always tasted mostly like vanilla and marshmallow.

So I got a little of those flavors, but the overwhelming flavor of this syrup is, I guess you'd call it butterscotch? Closest thing I can come up with is that flavor of artificial butter you get on popcorn sometimes. Definitely not to my taste.

Is it normal that silver-leaf maple syrup would taste very different from sugar maple?

Gabe

[maple flats]

Professional taste testers describe secondary tastes as butterscotch, vanilla, and a few others. When you call that tree a silver leaf maple, I assume you mean silver maple, is that correct? I'm not familiar with a silver leaf maple.

[Cedar Eater]

Could be a sign that your silver maple is getting close to making buddy sap. I've read where that happens and silvers supposedly are known to bud earlier than sugars.

[raptorfan85]

I tap mainly reds with a couple sugars mixed in. Early in the season the main flavors I get are butterscotch and a buttery taste. I've even had people ask if I put butter in the syrup. As the season goes on those flavors become less noticable and it tastes more like traditional Maple syrup. I've had a lot of great comments about how my syrup tastes, and only a one old timer that I can remember that said he wasn't to fond of it.

[Ed R]

I'm kind of a syrup snob and I segregate some of my early red/silver maple syrup for personal use and write ice cream topping syrup right on the jug. Can't beat that butterscotch/Carmel/maple taste on any vanilla ice cream. I like the syrup made at the family farm from all sugars for French toast and making confections. I switch up syrups on pancakes depending on what I'm feeling that day.

[berkshires]

When you call that tree a silver leaf maple, I assume you mean silver maple, is that correct? I'm not familiar with a silver leaf maple.

Sorry, yeah, that's what I meant.

[berkshires]

Could be a sign that your silver maple is getting close to making buddy sap. I've read where that happens and silvers supposedly are known to bud earlier than sugars.

That's odd - sounds like some other folks are saying that it's early-season that they get the most butterscotch flavor. It's running again now, I hope to get one more batch out of it, I'll see if that buttery flavor is more or less (assuming it's not buddy yet).

[berkshires]

I tap mainly reds with a couple sugars mixed in. Early in the season the main flavors I get are butterscotch and a buttery taste. I've even had people ask if I put butter in the syrup. As the season goes on those flavors become less noticable and it tastes more like traditional Maple syrup. I've had a lot of great comments about how my syrup tastes, and only a one old timer that I can remember that said he wasn't to fond of it.

That's really interesting! Sounds like what I'm getting is perfectly normal. It just caught me by surprise. I'm sure a lot of people would love it. And maybe I could grow to like it too. I'll try, LOL.

I do really like variety, which is why I keep my batches separate. It's fun after I finish a jug to decide what I'm in the mood for next. And also to give friends and family a choice of what they like. So in that sense, this just adds to the variety to choose from!

[littleTapper]

I tap mostly silvers (until this year I picked up 30 sugars). They definitely produce a more butterscotchy, buttery, vanilla-y syrup (depending on time of year and age of sap). I prefer it over straight sugar maple syrup and anyone who's had our syrup is amazed by the flavor and rave about it. So, it must be somewhat desirable :)

Over ice cream, the stuff from silvers, especially the lighter batches, are flat out amazing. Maple cream made with it, that's something special...

[berkshires]

I'm kind of a syrup snob and I segregate some of my early red/silver maple syrup for personal use and write ice cream topping syrup right on the jug. Can't beat that butterscotch/Carmel/maple taste on any vanilla ice cream.

Interesting, I might have to try that. I put some of this in my yogurt the other day and liked it better than I expected.

Gabe

[Cedar Eater]

That's odd - sounds like some other folks are saying that it's early-season that they get the most butterscotch flavor. It's running again now, I hope to get one more batch out of it, I'll see if that buttery flavor is more or less (assuming it's not buddy yet).

Well, you specifically mentioned an odd popcorn butter flavor and that's what I meant was the precursor of buddy sap. Sorry that I wasn't clear about that. I get the good butterscotch flavor from my early season red maple syrup, but I tasted the popcorn butter flavor once when I added a silver onto a sapline and it went away when I cut the silver out.

[leppell]

I tap only silver maples in the yard, and the syrup definately has a different taste than what I can buy in the store. So much so that I bought a bottle of the "good stuff" last season (my first year) for comparison to make sure I wasn't doing something very wrong.