Tap That Sap

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Look at the difference between the sap from my western maple tree on the right and the eastern maple tree on the left.  The east tree sap is almost as clear as water and the other tree sap looks like apple juice.  I'm curious if one has a different sugar content than the other one.  Back in the early 1970's I worked with senior citizens in a nursing home.  One of my duties was to check the sugar content in urine samples of several people with diabetes.  I would dip a test strip into the urine sample and record the results.  If the strip turned orange, that was labelled +4 and that was not a good result.  That meant lots of sugar was thrown into the urine.  Green wasn't as bad and depending on the color it could be +3 or +2.  Blue was the best result and that meant no sugar in the urine.  Now they don't use those test strips anymore.  People have glucometers and test the sugar in the blood, not the urine.  I wish I had one of those test strips now.  I would dip it into the sap and see which one was sweeter.  Both are sticky with sweetness but neither one tastes very sweet.  I guess there is one advantage to having a slow start to spring and that is getting more sap.  Last year spring was so short that the sap was unusable.  The trees budded right away in 2012.  This year I am collecting quite a bit of sap.  The top shelf of my refrigerator is almost full of sap containers.  I had better set aside some time on Sunday to stay home and boil it down into syrup.