From Sap to Syrup Our Process
How We Make Our Maple Syrup
Follow us through each step of our time-honored sugaring tradition, from tapping the trees in winter to bottling pure New Hampshire liquid gold.
Every year, the sugaring season begins in mid-February, when the weather brings the perfect rhythm of cold nights below freezing and warmer days. This temperature swing creates natural pressure inside the maple trees, causing sap to flow upward. When the time is right, we begin tapping the trees and setting our lines to capture this crystal-clear sap.
As the sap begins to run, we gather it and transport it to the sugar house, where it’s pumped into a 2,100-gallon stainless steel holding tank. At Dodge’s Sugar Shack, we use only stainless steel stands and food-grade plastic gathering tanks to ensure the sap never comes into contact with lead or unsafe materials.
From there, the sap moves through our reverse osmosis machine, which removes a portion of the water and increases the sugar content from about 2% to 13%. This step saves significant time and fuel, allowing us to boil efficiently while preserving the pure maple flavor.
The concentrated sap is then fed into our 3′ x 8′ evaporator, where it’s boiled down into maple syrup. At peak boil, we produce roughly 12 gallons of syrup per hour. Once the syrup reaches the perfect density, it’s drawn off and run through a filter press to remove any natural impurities, resulting in a clear, clean, high-quality syrup.
Finally, the finished syrup is hot-packed into plastic jugs or glass bottles, sealed, and ready to be enjoyed. From tree to table, every step of our process is built on care, cleanliness, and the tradition of making pure New Hampshire maple syrup the right way.
Planning a trip to New Hampshire?
Visit Dodge’s Sugar Shack in Landaff to learn how real New Hampshire maple syrup is made.
View our process in the Gallery. Click an image to enlarge:
Vintage maple syrup buckets from the early days of Jeff’s maple sugarmaking. Retired now, but still a charming reminder of where Dodge’s Sugar Shack began.
From Buckets to Stainless Steel
When Jeff first started sugaring as a teenager, his setup was simple: a handful of metal sap buckets, a few borrowed spouts, and a brick fireplace that he and his father built in the backyard. It wasn’t fancy, but it was enough to spark a lifelong passion for sugaring.
Those early buckets like the ones pictured here represent the humble beginnings of Dodge’s Sugar Shack. Today, the operation has grown to 2,900 taps, modern food-grade plastic gathering tanks, stainless steel holding tanks, and a reverse osmosis system that makes the process faster, cleaner, and more efficient.
But even with the upgrade from buckets to stainless steel, the heart of the work hasn’t changed. Jeff still follows the same traditions and values he learned decades ago: respect the trees, keep the process pure, and make every gallon with care.