Birch syrup
Are you pulling out your maple taps and plugging the holes? Maybe it's time to tap a birch!
Birch trees begin running around when sugar maples let up, making them a
good second crop for people who have already invested in the equipment
for the former and want to extend their syruping season. But birch syrup
isn't the same as maple syrup, of course. For one thing, the former
sells for a lot more --- maple syrup tends to go for thirty-something
dollars per gallon, while birch syrup sells for (by some estimates) ten
times that much.
What's with the excessively high price? I think some of the appeal is
simply that birch syrup is a niche product, added to which you have to
boil down about three times as much birch sap as maple sap to make
syrup. Birch syrup is also reputed to be a bit trickier to produce since
you have to be more careful to keep the sap from scorching, which
likely adds to the price tag. On the plus side, birch syrup is supposed
to have a lower glycemic index than maple syrup and table sugar, being
closer to the value of honey and sorghum molasses. In addition, birch
syrup is often treated as a healthful tonic, perhaps because the extra
boiling means that you're concentrating more minerals in each spoonful
of syrup.
Mark and I aren't
interested in selling birch syrup, but since our maples stopped running
last week, we figured we might as well tap a birch tree and see what all
the fuss is about. I have to admit that I've only boiled down the
barest smidgen of syrup (made from about three pints of sap), but I can
tell that birch syrup is very different from maple syrup. For one thing,
the former is much darker, even in the sap stage. The photo above shows
condensed sap that began life as one gallon of liquid and will still
need to be boiled down considerably before it becomes true syrup. As you
can see, the condensed sap is already much darker than the box-elder syrup beside it.
Another difference
between maple and birch syrup is flavor, although this factor will vary
depending on which species of birch you're tapping. Most birch syrup
sold in the U.S. is made from Paper Birch or Alaska Birch grown in (you
guessed it) Alaska, but our much more southern clime means that Black
Birch is our common species. Although Black Birch twigs taste strongly
of wintergreen, I didn't notice any wintergreen flavor in the syrup we
sampled. Instead, the dark liquid reminded me of sorghum molasses, and
I'd likely use my birch syrup in the same recipes I use with that
southern staple sweetener.
I'd be curious to hear
from folks who have tapped birch trees and made their own syrup. What
did you think of the flavor and how did you use it in the kitchen?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Wow, it is much cheaper in your neck of the woods! A gallon of maple syrup here is around $65-70.... our sugar season is still going on... we maybe have another week and a half, but I am intrigued at tapping birch. We do have some paper birch here.
i remember birch beer from when I was a kid also.. as I recall it was similar to root beer, with a hint of wintergreen.