Red maple trees

[bpmorris]

I have some nice big red maples scattered all through my Sugarbush(around 400-500 trees) and have heard so many opinions on tapping them or not. I personally am leaning towards tapping them and just keeping an eye open for bud break. Any advice or information on this would be great. Thank You!!!!!

[forester1]

There was a good article on this in Farming magazine just this month by Tim Wilmot I think of Proctor. The short answer is yes, tap them. Very little down side to it. Earlier budding and less sugar content usually.

[bpmorris]

thank you for the information I will have to check out that article in the farming magazine. I will tap them for sure I plan on running tubing this next year. now all I use are buckets and that gets old fast!!!

[Russell Lampron]

Tapping reds with buckets and gravity tubing is a hit or miss type of thing. Some of them will run and some of them won't. They run real good on vacuum though.

[bpmorris]

unfortunately all I can do this next year is gravity tubing. I will try to set up my tubing so I can use vacuum on it some day( hopefully soon). the only thing stopping me is the good old money factor!!! (not enough of it) but I think everyone has that problem nowadays!!!!!! Also why will some reds run and others wont on gravity tubing-- Just curious?? Thanks

[3rdgen.maple]

First year tapping reds for me and boy am I glad I did. I run just buckets currently and they outproduced my sugars easily. If I didnt' tap them It would have been a waste of a year. Next year Im going for alot more and I will bet that half of them are gonna be reds. I seen no difference in the final product so tap them if you got them.

[bpmorris]

hey --3rdgen.maple did you have to watch close for bud break or did both the reds and sugar stop flowing near the same time. just wondering if you did anything special for the reds near the end of the season so the syrup wont taste buddy!!! Thanks

[Russell Lampron]

I put buckets on 6 reds this year, 3 of them didn't run a drop and the other 3 didn't produce enough sap to fill a 5 gallon pail. My sugars on buckets produced 1 gallon per tap per day 6 times and came close to it a couple of other times.

My reds on vacuum outproduced the buckets by 5 gallons per tap on the season so far. The reds on vacuum ran good late in the season and I haven't had a problem with buds yet even though they are getting pretty swollen.

[3rdgen.maple]

What russ is explaining is probably the norm. This year has been so strange here. The reds bud sooner for sure. Just look up and you will see them budding. Never really had to keep a close eye on them cause like I said I ran all buckets. Just look in the bucket and if it was getting cloudy I would know. Plan was to keep the reds sap separate from the sugars when they budded and boil it later. Well everything shut down like somebody turned the faucet off. Weather is still prime here so I don't really have a good answer for you.

[bpmorris]

Thanks Everyone for all the great information!!!! I never been on a forum where I can get a question answered so fast and by so many people. This Site is great!!!!!

Thanks Again

[yarg]

I think its just a myth...they generally stop flowing first anyway. If your sap is turning buddy its your sugars too. I have a friend that every year says in early feb..."the trees are starting to bud" cause he is looking at those softs.

[bpmorris]

I have been making maple syrup on and off for over 20 years and I never tried tapping red maple. I have so many reds mixed in with my sugar maples that I thought it would be great if I could use them other than firewwod. I will definately give it a shot tapping them. I will use the syrup up either way even if it doesn't turn out that good. Thanks for all the info!!!!!!

[Revi]

Red maples do better in the wetter places. I have noticed that sugars will try to grow in the wet areas and then die off. I've started to plant reds in all the wetter spots in our woodlot.

[Buckrub4]

My sugarbush is mainly all reds, they run good for a few weeks and then it seems like they just dry up. never really got cloudy sap from them this year they just stopped running. I notices the few sugar maples I have ran about 2 weeks longer before they started to slow and cloud up. I did notice the sugar is slightly lower in the reds. but I say if you got them tap them.

[Russell Lampron]

Revi you are planting Red Maples in wet areas! They grow like weeds over here. They are in the wet areas and like to hide behind pines and hemlocks too. I have so many that I can't tap them all. I am trying though.

[KenWP]

Another name for a Red is a swamp maple. I have them growing like cypress trees in Florida. They even have the same raised up root system. But for some reason those trees do not give me any sap. I have a red maple that has given me a cup of sap a run. Hardley worth being tapped. Course its in the middle of my lawn so it's safe from a chain saw.

[timbers]

About 40% of our taps are reds. Here they run about the time as the sugars but with a lower sugar %, this year they averaged 1.8 compared to 2.2 for the sugars. The only thing with the reds is we never make extra light anymore mostly medium to amber. This has been the same for the past 3 years that we have been tapping the reds. Maybe this grade issue is just us(only our 6th season) and really its not a problem our customers just like our local syrup..tap them. Ian

[sapsucker]

About 60% of the maples I tap are Reds. Other than boiling longer, the only downside is more precipitates in the syrup because the sap has to be boiled down further than with sugar maples.

Some of my best produces of sap are Reds. There is a very large Red in my yard that I put three taps into. Last year it would often overflow the 5 gallon collection bucket each day when the weather was right. It is my best sap producing tree. Funny thing is...it's located in our septic's drain field!!! My family often gets a chuckle every time they see me collect sap from it.

[adk1]

I ahve always wanted to make my own syrup, I ahve the setup for it but 90% of my trees are reds. would be all gravity fed. My guess is that I have 100 reds that I could tap easily..Should I go for it/ I assist a 100% sugar maple saphouse right now and have never considered tapping reds? I would love to find some more info on this

[BarrelBoiler]

adk1,
tap what you got, learn how they run, and make syrup

folks on here tap every type of maple availible i think at least from box elder to rock/sugar maples

boil time is dependent on sugar content so you might get some fancy at the begining with reds my reds tend toward the dark end but my boiling times may influance that

it seems alot of folks think red/white/swamp maples are a poor second cousin to sugar maples but if that's what you got, that's what you got, it is not going to change quickly.

next year, tap and boil away

[adk1]

Ok I agree, I might start to get serious about it. the firs thing I need to do though is mark the trees. truthfully, and I am somewhat ashamed to say this, I dont actually know what kind of maples they are, I do know that the majority are not sugars cuase those are easy to identify.. They might be Blacks and reds... then I need to thin out the area cause its congested with smaller trees and pines/hemlocks but hey, if there is a goal at the end then I am gonna do it!

[Russell Lampron]

Reds are finicky when it comes to how they will run on gravity. The only way to find out which ones will run and which ones won't is to tap them. I have mine on vacuum and they give sap. 19.2 gallons per tap last season. I hung buckets on 6 of them last season and got less than 10 gallons out of them the entire season. Three of them never ran a drop.

[Brian Ledoux]

I tapped mostly red maples. Aprox. 75% reds. The first couple batches of syrup we made was very light and tasted phenomenal. I definitely noticed that the sap did not run well from the reds toward the end of the season. I thought it was because the reds were all in heavily wooded areas and not getting a lot of sunlight. But I am now thinking it is just the way reds run. There were many days at the end of the season where I got nothing from the red maples but the silver maples and norway maples I had tapped were giving me 10-20 gallons. The reds did run ok at the beginning of the year though. I can't speak to the sugar content though. Don't have a sap hydrometer yet.