Nothing tastes better than real maple syrup drizzled over hot buttermilk pancakes. But pure maple syrup has gotten pretty expensive over the years. In my area a 32 oz bottle costs $17.50. With the way food prices have been rising, there may not be room for real maple syrup in your grocery budget anymore.
Luckily you don’t have to settle for maple flavored pancake syrups that are mostly high fructose corn syrup. If you have sugar maple trees in your backyard, you can tap them and turn the sap into syrup for less than half the price of buying it at the store. Here’s how I save money by sugaring every spring.
Keep Your Startup Costs Low
You don’t need a fancy sugar shack or syrup evaporator to tap the sugar maples in your backyard. All you need are some taps, buckets, and a way to boil the sap and reduce it down into syrup.
My setup consists of some cheap plastic taps and buckets I got on Amazon for $40, a turkey fryer I bought for $85, and a small 20-pound propane tank I had on hand. So in total, my startup costs were only $125. However, with this setup I have an ongoing cost: propane. I spent about $80 on propane last year so I could boil the sap I collected. I ended up with about 2.75 gallons of maple syrup at the end of the sugaring season.
That amount of pure maple syrup costs $200 at the store, so I still saved a significant sum of money. But I’m definitely planning to upgrade my setup in the future so I can use wood heat to boil the sap instead and eliminate any ongoing cost.
Upgrading My Setup
If you have a lot of wood on your property like I do and want to use it for sugaring, you’ll have to invest in a maple syrup evaporator (or make a DIY version). You can purchase a basic maple syrup evaporator meant for hobbyists for about $1,200.
It takes a few years of sugaring to break even on a premade evaporator. But luckily you can make your own evaporator out of a barrel for a fraction of the price to save money. This YouTube video shows you how to make a barrel stove evaporator for just $250, which is what I’m planning to do. I estimate it will take me about a year to break even on my DIY evaporator, and after that I’ll get to enjoy free maple syrup from my trees.
Don’t Be Afraid
At first I was afraid to tap the trees in my backyard and make my own syrup. I was worried I would damage the trees by tapping them or mess things up and end up with no sap. Even though I had no experience tapping trees, I was able to produce over a gallon of syrup my first year and 2.75 gallons my second year.
The key is to wait until weather conditions are right for sugaring. Sap flows best when temperatures are above freezing during the day (around 40 degrees) and below freezing at night (around 25 to 30 degrees). Here in northern Michigan I can usually start collecting sap in late March or early April.
If it’s your first time tapping trees, I recommend that you watch a few demonstrations on YouTube before you try it. All you have to do is drill a hole in the trunk of the tree and gently hammer in the tap. Position the tap so the flow will end up in your bucket and check on your taps every couple days. It should only take about two or three weeks to collect enough sap to start boiling it into maple syrup.
Boiling Your Sap
It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of maple syrup, so make sure you boil and reduce your sap enough. You can purchase a hydrometer to measure the amount of sugar in the syrup, which makes it easier to tell when it’s done. When the sap reaches about 66.9% sugar, it’s ready to be taken off the heat.
Storing Your Maple Syrup
The great thing about maple syrup is that it has a long shelf life of several years and can be stored at room temperature if you can it. If you don’t have a water bath canner, you can pour your finished syrup into jars and store it in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.
Again, you don’t need any fancy industrial packaging. Your maple syrup will store just fine in a tupperware in the fridge, so don’t waste your money on specialized syrup jugs.
Have you ever tried tapping sugar maple trees (or another type of tree like birch) and turning it into syrup to save money? Let me know in the comments section below!
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Vicky Monroe is a freelance personal finance and lifestyle writer. When she’s not busy writing about her favorite money saving hacks or tinkering with her budget spreadsheets, she likes to travel, garden, and cook healthy vegetarian meals.
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