I’ve mentioned about tapping birch trees to a few folks and you would think I was making things up… Not one person has heard of birch syrup. So just in case you fall into that camp: Yes, birch syrup is thing.
It’s bigger on the west coast – Think Alaska west coast – where maple trees do not exist, but birch is in abundance.
Birch syrup is also very expensive due to the birch tree’s sugar content being so low. Instead of Maples 40:1 ratio (40 gallons of sap to 1 gallon of syrup), Birch finds itself at 100:1 – ouch! To top that off with the fact that birch sugars and easily be burned so you need to have a slower boil than say you would maple sap. Can’t confirm via personal experience, but what I’ve been reading on it.
So I’ve come across 10 to 15 large birch trees near the maples I’ve tapped and as luck would have it, the birch sap run starts up just as the maple run ends. No idea if birch syrup is even any good so a trial run will let me know if I should bother or not. I mean, all my gear is still out and hasn’t been put away for the season. The RO system is set up so I can process the sap into something I can boil down easily. I have some extra bottles kicking around. Why not right?
Snapped some photos of the trees on the property:
