Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Birch Syrup Experiment


Last week when we got home from 
our road trip, Mark started to tap some 
birch trees not too far from home. 


Tapping the spile into the hole he just drilled.


The birch sap was running, drip, drip, drip...


buckets almost overflowing with sap


this is the third time we have made 
birch syrup, but the first time we boiled
 it away from home in the birch woods


it was wonderful being outside for so 
many hours a day. we have read online 
that you shouldn't use galvanized or
 aluminum for sap gathering. we have these 
buckets leftover from when we lived near 
Bruce Mines and made maple syrup. I will have to do more 
research to see if this is true.


we started to boil the sap in my dads
 big cast iron pot over an open fire. 
after 2 days of this I had a major reaction
 to the smoke and sap fumes, my face swelled 
up like a balloon. scared us both.


Mark rigged up his old tin camping 
stove to boil sap on. it worked but
 was not as quick as the open fire.
slow laborious procedure boiling birch sap,
 140 litres of sap to 1 litre of syrup,
 lots of boiling down.


near the end, boiling hard
we brought it home to finish it off 
on the stove in the house. I didn't want
 to scorch it over the fire. we made over 2 litres, 
maybe 3, I haven't measured it yet. It reminds
 us of molasses, and does not taste anything
 like maple syrup, it isn't even similar,
 as it is a different tree.
it was a fun experiment!

3 comments:

Megs Benedict said...

That looks so fun!

Alice @ LAX TO YVR said...

Very cool! Hope all that hard work paid off.

carol said...

So much sap!!! I had no idea that the birch tree was such a giving tree. :)