Can you tap a red maple for syrup?

Yes. A solid second choice — good syrup, just a shorter and usually less sweet season. Its sap sugar is usually about 1.5–2%; some trees match or beat nearby sugar maples.

How much red maple sap makes a gallon of syrup?

About 43 to 58 gallons of sap make one gallon of syrup at its usual 1.5–2% sap sugar, by the updated Rule of 86. Good, high-quality syrup is absolutely possible: in comparisons, red maple sap and syrup matched sugar maple for sweetness, flavor and quality. Some trees throw extra sugar sand (niter) in the pan.

When do you tap a red maple?

Red maple starts growing well before sugar maple, so its season ends sooner — once the buds swell the sap turns “buddy” and off-flavored. Tap early, pull taps at the first bud swell, and don't run it on the same tubing as your sugar maples.

Acer rubrum · also Soft maple, Swamp maple

Can you tap a red maple?

Short answer

Good to tap

Yes. A solid second choice — good syrup, just a shorter and usually less sweet season.

Sap sugar: 1.5–2%
Sap : syrup: 43–58 : 1

Mature red maple trunk in March with gray bark broken into long, narrow, scaly plates — Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0

Red maple twigs in early March crowded with clusters of round, bright red buds — Photo: Tgalos90, CC BY-SA 4.0

Red maple branch in midsummer with three-lobed, sharply toothed leaves on reddish stems — Photo: Bmerva, CC BY-SA 3.0

Open-grown red maple on a golf course with a rounded crown in scarlet fall color — Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0

Leaf-off ID

Identify it in winter

01Opposite branching with slender, shiny, reddish twigs.
02Buds are short, blunt, rounded and red, with a few loose scales; extra buds sometimes sit side by side.
03Scrape a twig and sniff — red maple has no odor (silver maple smells foul).
04Young bark is smooth and light gray; older trunks break into long, scaly plates that often loosen while staying attached at the top.
05Grows almost anywhere, from swamps to dry ridges — often the only maple on wet ground.

In summer

Leaves 2–6 inches wide, usually 3-lobed with sharp V-shaped notches and small sharp teeth along the edges; undersides look whitish.
Clusters of small red flowers appear in very early spring, weeks before the leaves.
Small V-shaped winged seeds ripen in late spring.

Easily confused with

Silver maple →

Silver maple twigs smell foul when scraped and its bark is shaggier; in summer its leaves are deeply cut with silvery-white undersides.

Sugar maple →

Sugar maple buds are long, sharp and brown — not short, blunt and red.

Freeman maple (red × silver hybrid)

A natural cross (Acer × freemanii) that can lean toward either parent. Treat it like red maple: sap sugar is thought to run about 1.5–2%.

Sap sugar: Usually about 1.5–2%; some trees match or beat nearby sugar maples
Season: Red maple starts growing well before sugar maple, so its season ends sooner — once the buds swell the sap turns “buddy” and off-flavored. Tap early, pull taps at the first bud swell, and don't run it on the same tubing as your sugar maples.
Syrup: Good, high-quality syrup is absolutely possible: in comparisons, red maple sap and syrup matched sugar maple for sweetness, flavor and quality. Some trees throw extra sugar sand (niter) in the pan.
Range: Nearly all of eastern North America: southern Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and southern Quebec west to Minnesota, south to Florida and eastern Texas.

How many are out there?

about1.55 billion

red maples 10 inches and up on US forest land, by the Forest Service’s count.

About 1.18 billion of them in the 17 atlas states
About 157 million are 18 inches and up, big enough for a second tap

±0.9% sampling error. All 50 states’ latest inventories, plots measured 2013–2025. FIA counts trees on forest land only. Yard, street and farm trees are not counted, so true numbers are higher. How FIA counts →

County counts in the maple atlas →

Tapping it?

Sources · 5

1.Red Maple (Acer rubrum) — Walters & Yawney · USDA Forest Service — Silvics of North America (Agriculture Handbook 654, 1990)
2.North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual, 2nd ed. (Bulletin 856) — Ch. 3 “The Maple Resource” and Ch. 7 “Rule of 86” · Ohio State University Extension with the North American Maple Syrup Council
3.Identifying Maple Trees (Maple Toolkit) · Ohio State University Extension — Ohio Woodland Stewards
4.Red maple (Acer rubrum) — Virginia Tech Dendrology Fact Sheet · Virginia Tech Dendrology (Dept. of Forest Resources & Environmental Conservation)
5.Forest Inventory and Analysis: live trees on forest land by species and diameter (FIADB 1.9.5, EVALIDator / FIADB-API), accessed 2026-10-07 · USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis Program

FAQ

Red maple questions

Can you tap a red maple for syrup?: Yes. A solid second choice — good syrup, just a shorter and usually less sweet season. Its sap sugar is usually about 1.5–2%; some trees match or beat nearby sugar maples.
How much red maple sap makes a gallon of syrup?: About 43 to 58 gallons of sap make one gallon of syrup at its usual 1.5–2% sap sugar, by the updated Rule of 86. Good, high-quality syrup is absolutely possible: in comparisons, red maple sap and syrup matched sugar maple for sweetness, flavor and quality. Some trees throw extra sugar sand (niter) in the pan.
When do you tap a red maple?: Red maple starts growing well before sugar maple, so its season ends sooner — once the buds swell the sap turns “buddy” and off-flavored. Tap early, pull taps at the first bud swell, and don't run it on the same tubing as your sugar maples.

Tree ID