Quote Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins View Post
Good to hear that your season is going well.

Buds don't really affect flavor....until they do....meaning that when it turns buddy, the season is basically done. Almost like a switch, although sometimes there is a little "pre-bud" and sometimes (rarely) a real cold snap can cause the a slight buddy off-flavor to recede temporarily. This is caused by a change in the amino acid composition in the sap due to bud development. Active buds release a suite of amino acids into the sap.....which make the sap taste terrible. They do this only at and after budbreak. Any "pre-bud" flavor is due to some trees in the system having started to bud, but most have not. Usually it's just a short time period before they all pop.

Regular flavor development in syrup is fairly complex, however it is the microbes in the system converting sucrose to invert sugar, and the combination with various amino and organic acids in sap that results in darker color/stronger flavor (one of the most common organic acids is malic acid....the compound which also gives apples their tartness....malic acid is a major constituent of niter -- calcium malate). More microbes when it is warm, thus darker syrup. When you have a cold snap, you kill off some of the microbes, therefore less sucrose inversion so the grade comes back up. In rare circumstances, near the very end, the sap pH can get so low that the color can lighten due to reduced "alkaline degradation" during boiling. That'll make light syrup with a not so great flavor.
Just wanted to say thanks again for that awesome info Dr. Tim
Based on your response we ran around in the woods and took about 230 red maple taps off our system. That's about 10% of our total taps. We got rid of our buddy flavor all together. We made about 200 gal. With a strong flavor (before we took off the Reds). Thought we were definitely done. Many operations around us have stopped. Since the flavor came back for us we've made 60 more gallons of really tasty table syrup.
I guess my follow up question would be has anyone else had this experience (this year or in the past)? Pulling reds and select sugars that are on field edges...? Just curious if we should attribute our bounce back in flavor to pulling buddy trees?
Mike Euphrat
The Bunker Farm
Dummerston, VT