Are you ready to start making maple syrup, but overwhelmed by the potential costs and equipment needed? People have been tapping maple trees and collecting sap long before any of these new tools came to be, and you can too! Let’s dig into ways that you can start with small batch maple syrup making.
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As most things are in the homesteading world, you learn as you go. One of the first things we started doing as new homesteaders was to harvest maple syrup from the land. It is truly one of my favorite times of the year for so many reasons. If you’re looking to start your own small batch maple syrup making operation, let me encourage you and help you out so you can get started for a relatively low upfront cost and without making all of the mistakes we did our first years.
When working on starting your own small batch maple syrup operation, consider starting with these:
- Purchase or prepare your equipment
- Learn the process of making maple syrup
- Get hands-on experience, either on your own or by watching others
- Perfect your practice by learning from your mistakes
This post will cover all of these topics, but just in case you’re not quite sure about making maple syrup in the first place, let’s start out with why you should start.
Table of Contents
- Why start a small batch maple syrup operation?
- Maple Syrup Process
- Learn From Our Mistakes
- Are you ready?
- Make sure you save this for maple syrup season!
- Are you ready to start your own homestead?
- Looking for more on maple syrup?
Why start a small batch maple syrup operation?
Like I mentioned before, maple syrup season is one of my favorite times of the year. It’s a time of hope and renewal. Let’s dive into why you should be starting a small batch maple syrup operation on your own homestead this year.
Small batch maple syrup making forces you outside
Late winter can be a hard time to find the energy to be outside. You’re used to the dark evenings and being indoors, and you feel like a hermit crab leaving its shell every time you step outside. But, one thing that small batch maple syrup making forces you to do is get outside. When the evening comes and it’s time to go out and check sap buckets, you might sigh at first, but once you’re outside, let me tell you how grateful you will be to experience it. Early spring/late winter is beautiful and full of smells and changes. You’ll notice the birds starting to return. The change in the air temperature will become noticeable. You’ll build a relationship with the Earth. Trust me on this one- you won’t regret your time outside and how good it feels to breathe in that fresh and wonderful air.
Small batch maple syrup making is transformative- both in mind and in product
You begin the season in the deep snow of winter, but even so, you are outside and you can sense the change. Notice how the seasons are transforming and the winter is slowly letting go of her grip to make way for spring. You begin the season by trudging through the deep snow, struggling to make it from tree to tree. The darkness of evening continues to set in early, and you are discouraged by the small amounts of sap you might get in those early cold days. By the middle of the season, most of the snow is gone, and the hardest part of the winter is over. You can walk easily to collect the sap, and most of the time, the buckets are full or even overflowing. You find gratitude in the gifts from the Earth and you come out renewed and ready to take on the new season that is now beginning.
In so many ways, maple syrup represents hope in knowing that something exciting is coming, even though things are messy. And messy they are… As the frost leaves the ground and snow melts, there is mud and slush everywhere. It’s not a beautiful transition; but it doesn’t have to be. Change isn’t always beautiful. Sometimes, we have to go through the mud and the slush in order to get to the wonderful and exciting new springtime ahead. Change can be messy and even ugly at times. But, if the result is a beautiful spring, then that change is worth it and welcome.
Making maple syrup allows you to provide wholesome food for your homestead and family
Maple syrup is a natural sugar packed full of rich antioxidants. Additionally, it also has other wonderful nutrients such as riboflavin (Vitamin B2), which helps the body break down carbohydrates, proteins, and fats to help produce energy. In maple syrup you’ll also find other vitamins and minerals like zinc (which can help your immune system), magnesium and potassium (which can promote better heart health), and calcium (better bone health).
You can substitute maple syrup in many recipes as the sweetener, adjusting the other liquid levels as necessary. Or, if you don’t want to worry about making any adjustments, you can also transform maple syrup into maple sugar- a completely natural product that can be used in the same way you’d use cane sugar in recipes!
Small batch maple syrup making doesn’t require a lot of equipment
Making maple syrup doesn’t need to be expensive. You won’t need to purchase an evaporator or any of the other extremely expensive products that commercialized syrup producers have. Remember, maple syrup has been made for a long time without everything the store tells us that we need. There are a few basic items that you’ll need to get, but we can keep it simple. Below is a list of items you’ll need to be successful:
Making Small Batch Maple Syrup Equipment
- Containers to collect the sap (we’ve used ice cream buckets….it doesn’t have to be anything special!)
- Taps– remember, you’ll use these year after year, so this is a one time investment
- Filters (in a pinch, you can use coffee filters, but it takes a loooonngggggg time to filter through those, so I don’t recommend it)
- Hydrometer (again, a one time investment)
- A large pan to cook the sap (long and shallow is best)
- A heat source to cook on (we use a fire)
- Jars (or maple syrup jars) to store the syrup
Our first year, we were lucky enough that our neighbors had a maple syrup pan and a hydrometer that they let us use, and that was a huge blessing. It allowed us to try out the process of making maple syrup, see if we enjoyed it, and then prompted us to purchase a pan for ourselves. If you have friends or family that can loan you items, it’s always better (to me) to share than to purchase, especially when you’re trying something new!
Maple Syrup Process
Making maple syrup really has just a few simple steps to follow to transform a water-looking sap into a beautiful and delicious nectar of spring.
Find the maple tree
It is best to do this part in the fall when the leaves are still on if you can. But, if you are looking to try it out and there aren’t any leaves on the trees, never fear! Ferrin Brook Farm has created an entire post dedicated to just this topic! You can check it out here.
Tap your trees
You’ve found your trees, now let’s get tapping. To tap the trees, angle a drill at a 45 degree angle upwards and drill in 1-2 inches. Hammer in your tap, place the bucket on it, and that’s it! On a warm day, you might see sap start dripping right away. That’s always encouraging!
We always tap on the south side of the trees, as that is the side that usually gets the most sun. Tapping large, mature trees is the best way to go; they have more sap to give and aren’t as dependent on all of their sap for leaf growth. A really large tree can have 2 (or more) taps in it.
You’ll want to start tapping trees when you notice that the nights are below freezing and the days are above freezing (the warmer the days, the colder the nights, the better!). You can collect sap then for as long as it takes before the trees start to bud out. Once the buds form, the sap gets bitter and can’t be used for syrup anymore.
Collecting and storing sap
To prevent any wasted sap, it’s best to collect sap every night. When it really starts to flow well, you may even need to collect sap from your pails twice per day.
If you are getting more maple sap than you can cook at a time, you’ll need to figure out a way to store it. We just picked up a large plastic garbage barrel to use as a holder for the sap, which has worked just fine. I suggest finding one that is food grade to make sure you are keeping your family safe from any harmful chemicals.
Sap can be stored for up to a week before cooking when the temperature is at or below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Sap can spoil, so do watch for that if you’re storing it for a longer period of time. We generally don’t store our sap for longer than 2 days before we cook, mainly because we don’t have any room left in the barrel!
Another thing to note is that if the sap freezes, that can cause some challenges as well. You’ll need to somehow thaw the sap before you can transfer it to your pan to cook it, and many gallons of frozen sap is not light! If you can avoid it, try not to allow your sap to freeze.
Cook the sap
Cooking the sap is the part that requires some patience! In order to make syrup out of sap, you’ll need to evaporate the water from the sap to leave the sugar behind. On average, maple sap is 95-99% water and only 1-5% sugar! That’s a lot of water to evaporate. Generally speaking, it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. That’s a lot of sap collecting!
You’ll want to cook your syrup until you see it transform into a brownish/amber color . As it gets close to finishing, you’ll need to watch it very closely.
Finishing the sap
Sap becomes syrup at 219 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a crucial step in the process! Cooking it too long can result in a thick and crystalized syrup and cooking it too little can cause for a watery syrup. You’d rather cook it too little than too long and risk burning on a sticky and awful mess.
You’ll want to finish your syrup indoors, as finishing it over a fire in a huge pan can be really challenging. Using your hydrometer, monitor the sugar levels until the hydrometer levels indicate it is ready to be removed from the heat.
For more information on finishing your maple syrup, check out this post here.
Place in jars and seal
Place your maple syrup into a sterilized jar. Because the syrup is already at such a high temperature, no water bath processing is required unless the jars don’t seal. A great way to get the jars to seal is to tip the hot syrup filled jars onto their sides or upside down. If you do get a jar that doesn’t seal, simply waterbath the jar for 7 minutes (this will continue the cooking process for the syrup, so do remember that) or keep it in your refrigerator and use it up. If sealed correctly, maple syrup will store for a really long time. I just used a jar from my grandparent’s farm that was over 10 years old and it was just fine!
Learn From Our Mistakes
We’ve been making maple syrup for quite a few years now, but in the beginning we made a lot of mistakes that have helped us along the way.
Year One: Overambitious
The first year was a complete fail. We were so excited and eager to begin harvesting something off of the land that we didn’t really think things through. We tapped about 10 trees and were excited to see how much sap we got right away. And that’s about when things got out of control. We got so much sap and had not thought it through about how we would cook it down. Without any equipment, we did our best to boil down the sap on the grill and then on the stove, waiting alllllllllll day for the syrup to finally be ready. We also didn’t have a hydrometer, so we weren’t exactly sure when that would be. So we just kept watching it and waiting, trying to figure it out. Finally it was getting close- it tasted sweet but it was still watery. We continued to cook it and ended up burning the entire batch. Talk about disappointment!
Year Two: Improving already
Year 2 was much better. We were able to borrow a neighbor’s maple syrup pan and filter and we cooked the sap outside in the pan over a fire. We were grateful that we had a successful harvest, but many late midnight runs to check the sap. There was still some learning to do.
Year Three: Better yet
Year Three was even more refined, and we had improved even more. We tapped more trees (actually, on the day we tapped our trees this year we finished up our last jar of syrup from the last year!), invested in a bigger pan, and my dad created a more efficient fire cooker for us by re-purposing an old oil barrel. This go around we were able to cook more at a time, meaning we only had to cook when we had the whole day to do it, so no more midnight syrup runs this year! We were able to harvest 5 gallons of syrup this year, each drop a sweet reminder of the labor of collecting the sap each night (while being 9 months pregnant!).
Years 4, 5, 6 +
Now we have a rhythm and understand what works and doesn’t work for our small batch maple syrup production. We continue to learn as we go, finding out new things each year. We’re now confident sugar makers and proud of the products we produce.
Are you ready?
So, are you ready to start small batch maple syrup making on your homestead? With time and experience comes knowledge, so if you make mistakes in the beginning, remember that they are teaching you lessons that will only help in the future. You can do this!
Make sure you save this for maple syrup season!
Are you ready to start your own homestead?
Start your own homestead today by getting your mindset in the right place.
This is so encouraging! I can’t wait to do this at some point! Thank you so much for all your tips and wisdom. I will definitely be coming back to this article when the time comes. I also really love how you explained the muddy shift from winter to spring; that “change isn’t always beautiful”. So insightful to put it that way. I love it. Thank you again!
I am so excited to try this! I think I have about another 5 years before I can tap my few trees, and they’ll definitely be small batches, but I will be soooo ready!
That’s awesome! And hey- small batches are some batches! That’s all that matters!
I can not wait to try this one out homestead!! We want to wait until we move their so the timing will be easier to handle! Knowing us, we’ll be over ambitious too! Thank you for this!
You’ll have to come back and let me know how it turns out! We love our maple syrup and look forward to making it every year!