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!
