Worried About Tariffs? – Make Your Own Maple Syrup in Illinois

With people fretting on the cost of Canadian things if/when tariffs kick in here in the USA, there are things you can do to work around it, as Illinois imported more Canadian maple syrup than any other state in 2023. Who knows you may never go back to buying Canadian.

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Primarily I’m talking about one of the most Canadian things, maple syrup. Most of the maple syrup around the world is made in Quebec. Canada has strict regulations that require the maple syrup to be exclusively from maple sap. American regulations are far less stringent so you end up with extra salt, or even corn syrup with maple extract if it’s labeled “Pancake syrup”.

But nothing is stopping you from making your own maple syrup. Do you have a sugar maple tree in your yard? Does it have those seeds that helicopter down and cover your yard? Yes? That’s the one. You can tap that tree for sap in the spring.

The process isn’t particularly difficult. Collect the sap and boil it down to a concentrated syrup. That’s it. Maple sap is 98% water and 2% sugar so you’ll need to boil down lots of buckets of sap to get your pure syrup. The sugar concentration of your tree’s sap will affect how much sap you’ll need, but it will be anywhere from 10/1 sap to syrup, to 40/1 sap to syrup.

Can you find enough sugar maples to tap to reduce the sap down to enough syrup to sell? Depends on you. Could you collect and boil down enough to use at your house? I bet you could. My neighbor is doing this right now. Collecting and boiling, collecting and boiling. No tariffs to worry about. Just pure maple syrup.