Maple Syrup Calculator
Bookmark this handy online calculator that tells you the final amount of Maple Syrup that you will get after boiling down your Maple Sap!
Maple Syrup Calculator
This calculator uses the Jone’s Rule of 86 to calculate the resultant amount of Maple Syrup that you will achieve after boiling down a given amount of Maple Sap.
Sugar Content of Different Types of Maple Trees
The good news is that any tree in the maple family can be tapped for syrup, the sap they produce just tends to have different concentrations of sugar ranging usually from about 1-5%.
The higher the sugar concentration in the sap, the less time will be required to boil the sap down into syrup.
The following table lists the average sugar concentration from the sap of various types of maples trees based on a study that examined the maple trees located on the St. John’s University campus in Minnesota (reference). As stated by the author, these values are slightly higher than reported in other areas.
It also gives the ratio of gallons of sap that you need to boil down to get one gallon of syrup.
Type of Maple Tree | Sugar Conc. of Sap (%) | Ratio Sap/Syrup |
---|---|---|
Sugar Maple | 4.5 | 19:1 |
Red Maple | 4.1 | 21:1 |
Amur Maple | 3.9 | 22:1 |
Silver Maple | 3.4 | 26:1 |
Box Elder | 2.5 | 35:1 |
Another study (Taylor, 1956) out of Vermont included 4500 maple trees measured over the course of 12 years and found some interesting results:
The sugar concentration of sap produced by any given tree generally varies from year to year by about 1%.
Over the course of one season, the sugar content of the sap from a single tree varies by about 1%, usually starting the season higher and ending lower, though there is some evidence that suggests there is a peak in sugar content at about 1/3 of the way through the season.
There can be great variety even in maple trees of the same type and located in the same bush, which can vary from each other in sugar content by as much as 2-3%.
Regardless of the year, “sweet trees’ tend to always have higher sugar concentrations than trees that generally produce lower sugar content. In other words, if you find a good tree, it will always be good! And if you find a dud, it will always be a dud!
References:
Conger, Andrew (2007) “A Comparative Analysis of Sugar Concentrations
in Various Maple Species on the St. Johns Campus.”
Taylor, Fred (1956) “Variation in Sugar Content of Maple Sap.” Bulletin 587, Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, Burlington, VT.