Birch Tapping

[PCFarms]

Hello All,

We are trying to make some birch syrup this year. With the disappointment in the Maple crop, we quickly turned our attention to some birch trees we have been eying for the last few years. There are several hundred right by the low areas around one of our pump house. We pulled all the maple taps, ran new laterals to the birch, and just like that we had a birch operation!

We tapped using the strategy of using a few test trees and waiting until they started running to tap the rest. The first taps started flowing last Tuesday, and by Thursday we had all laterals run and trees tapped. The first couple days were slow running, but we collected a gallon per tap on Saturday, and Sunday was about 1.5 gallons per tap. We first boiled on Saturday - made some light coloured birch syrup, about 30L. Its a challenge running a 8 post RO and a 6x16 evaporator for several hundred taps! We are boiling a lot of water on the pans, using only 1 front pan for birch, but it goes very quick - 30 mins from concentrate to syrup on lowest heat.

[Ghs57]

What are the rules about which trees to tap, diameter wise? Just wondering if it's the same as maple. I have several black birches, which do run like crazy about now if I clip a branch. I probably don't have access to enough birches to make it worthwhile though.

[NhShaun]

I've been wanting to give this a try for a few years but always seemed to be overwhelmed with maple clean up, work and all the other chores that come with spring. Planning to get it all figured out and ready for next season to tap 30 or 40 trees. I was under the impression you needed some type of double boiler pan system for boiling the last 25%ish of the birch sap to prevent scorching. Perhaps that only applies to wood fired evaporators as they are difficult to regulate heat in the firebox. Curious if there are any other members here who have done so with wood fired arches.

[Sugar Bear]

Hello All,

We are trying to make some birch syrup this year. With the disappointment in the Maple crop, we quickly turned our attention to some birch trees we have been eying for the last few years. There are several hundred right by the low areas around one of our pump house. We pulled all the maple taps, ran new laterals to the birch, and just like that we had a birch operation!

We tapped using the strategy of using a few test trees and waiting until they started running to tap the rest. The first taps started flowing last Tuesday, and by Thursday we had all laterals run and trees tapped. The first couple days were slow running, but we collected a gallon per tap on Saturday, and Sunday was about 1.5 gallons per tap. We first boiled on Saturday - made some light coloured birch syrup, about 30L. Its a challenge running a 8 post RO and a 6x16 evaporator for several hundred taps! We are boiling a lot of water on the pans, using only 1 front pan for birch, but it goes very quick - 30 mins from concentrate to syrup on lowest heat.

This sounds cool but the "KEY" information is left out. How does it taste? I have heard people say that they feel Birch syrup is unfit for human consumption.

[NhShaun]

This sounds cool but the "KEY" information is left out. How does it taste? I have heard people say that they feel Birch syrup is unfit for human consumption. From what I've heard it should not be compared to maple syrup or any table syrup for that matter. It's mostly used to add flavor to sauces, marinades and such, not to be liberally poured on your pancakes or French toast.

[DrTimPerkins]

I have heard people say that they feel Birch syrup is unfit for human consumption.

Much like maple syrup, some birch syrup tastes good....some tastes bad. It largely depends upon how it is processed into syrup. The market is also quite different. Birch syrup is often used more as a flavor enhancement tool in dishes needing a kick, and less for table use. There is really no good way to compare it to maple syrup....it is a different product altogether. The commonalities are that it comes from a tree in the spring and is processed with similar equipment, but the comparison largely ends there.

[GeneralStark]

Hello All,

We are trying to make some birch syrup this year. With the disappointment in the Maple crop, we quickly turned our attention to some birch trees we have been eying for the last few years. There are several hundred right by the low areas around one of our pump house. We pulled all the maple taps, ran new laterals to the birch, and just like that we had a birch operation!

We tapped using the strategy of using a few test trees and waiting until they started running to tap the rest. The first taps started flowing last Tuesday, and by Thursday we had all laterals run and trees tapped. The first couple days were slow running, but we collected a gallon per tap on Saturday, and Sunday was about 1.5 gallons per tap. We first boiled on Saturday - made some light coloured birch syrup, about 30L. Its a challenge running a 8 post RO and a 6x16 evaporator for several hundred taps! We are boiling a lot of water on the pans, using only 1 front pan for birch, but it goes very quick - 30 mins from concentrate to syrup on lowest heat.

I'm curious to hear more specifics of how you are processing. I'm considering getting into birch and am trying to wrap my head around how I may process with my equipment.

-What brix are you bringing the birch sap to with the RO?
-You're boiling the concentrate right to syrup on your evaporator?
-What brix are you shooting for with the finished syrup?
-What are the color and flavor of the syrup like?

[PCFarms]

One interesting difference is that once the trees start to flow, they don't stop - they just decide to start one day and then continue until the sap goes bad - we are about 1.5 weeks in, and the flow is very consistent at about 1.2 to 1.5 gallons per tap per day, everyday. I figure we have about 1000 taps going, TBC once we pull them and count the spiles. Sugar started low around 0.6 and has come up to 0.9. We have made about .05 gallons of syrup per tap, I am not sure what the target is, but Alaska Birch company gets around 0.1 gallons per tap (based on their blog). I have heard 0.25 is possible, but I cant see it based on what are are getting. If the season lasts another 3 weeks (for a total of 4.5 weeks), maybe, but I hear a 2-3 week season is typical.

Specifically, to answer your questions:

-What brix are you bringing the birch sap to with the RO?
We take the birch to 16 brix. Any higher and the concentrate flow is so slow that we risk gumming up the membranes. Because of the super low sugar content, it doesn't work as well as maple, where we can take it to 20 brix one pass and still get a decent flow of concentrate. We have start to re-circulate to keep concentrate flow up, but them the total volume drops too much relative to our RO size to be able to manage. We have been boiling every 2-3 days with about 4,000 gallons of raw sap per boil. This makes about 20-25 gallons of syrup (Basically 200 to 1!)

-You're boiling the concentrate right to syrup on your evaporator?
Yes, and it works - we do a batch process where we fill the front pans with concentrate and the back pan with water. We tried a water-jacketed bottling unit, but that burnt the syrup. I think it is both time and temperature dependent, either too much time or too much heat can burn it. I have found using defoamer to keep the foam down and to dissipate the heat quickly, and boiling for as short a duration as possible are key to not burning the syrup. Without defoamer, we were burning the syrup at 55 brix, even though the syrup wasn't jumping out of the pan.

-What brix are you shooting for with the finished syrup?
66.7. I know you are allowed to go as low as 60, but at that consistency, the taste is compromised. I dislike the taste of Birch sweet from the pans, but the syrup is delicious. The flavour is really improved as you go from 60 to 67

-What are the color and flavor of the syrup like?
We have only made early season syrup, it has an amazing taste - a mix between raspberry, caramel and herbs (like a Unicum or Jagermeister). I know it goes bad quickly because the sap temperature is so high coming from the tree. We have a ultra filtration machine for our maple operations, so we UF the sap everyday we don't boil to prevent it from spoiling. I suppose chilling concentrate would also be acceptable. The first couple days had a amber colour and the last few days have had a dark colour.

I was wondering if anyone else out there has some thoughts/experience? What is a typical yield?

[Sugar Bear]

Is there any difference in the quality of syrup made from different birch species? I have noticed that Black Birch and Yellow Birch have a very sweet smell when you break a twig VS a White Birch as not so much.

I have quite a few Black Birch and have thought about a tap or two in them.

[PCFarms]

Is there any difference in the quality of syrup made from different birch species? I have noticed that Black Birch and Yellow Birch have a very sweet smell when you break a twig VS a White Birch as not so much.

I have quite a few Black Birch and have thought about a tap or two in them.

I don't know if anyone has an answer to this questions - its equivalent to what is the difference between red maple and sugar maple syrup, you can make syrup from all birch as I understand. We have a mix of half and half between yellow and white birch - no black birch in our climate region.

[GeneralStark]

Thanks PC Farms for the detailed explanations. That's impressive that you can get to that high a brix on your evap. without burning the syrup. I assume you're using oil and the low fire setting? Any idea what the temp. under the pans and the stack temp is? And when you say you are using a batch process, are you just adding concentrate to the syrup pans until it is all the desired brix for syrup? Then you filter and pack it?

And when you say you used a water jacketed canner, you were just batching in that while adding concentrate?

I follow a couple birch forums and there seems to be a wide range of techniques people are using to boil birch. It seems there is a fine line between the slow boil/simmering camp and the fast boiling camp. I would like to figure out a method using my wood fired rig to boil 10-12% concentrate to syrup. Your idea of using just the syrup pans is pretty intriguing.

This is a whole different scale and concept but I have found this video pretty interesting... They are also using ultra filtration but boil with steam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXMXAphs6vM

[DrTimPerkins]

Dr. Abby van den Berg has done a good deal of work on birch syrup production. Some of that work can be found here.

https://nsrcforest.org/researcher/abby-van-den-berg

https://nsrcforest.org/sites/default/files/uploads/vandenberg14fullfinal.pdf

https://mapleresearch.org/search/?_sf_s=birch

[PCFarms]

On the evaporator, we put all the concentrate on at once, and boil it altogether. We mix it around a bit as we are finding some areas are boiling off faster than other areas (I suppose adding concentrate to lower the brix in the high brix areas of the pan would work as well). For the water jacketed canner, I would not recommend using it, it didnt work - we didnt add anything, we took concentrate and boiled it to about 35 brix and then it started to burn, which I find amazing - that we can burn the concentrate at 35 brix...

The last batch we made we boiled on the highest heat - no problem, it was super quick (less than 20 mins) and there was no burning whatsoever. Need to watch it like a hawk though (2 person job - 1 person fully dedicated to watching the sugar content and level in the pan) - we put it to low once we were over 50 brix.

I don't have a thermometer on the stack... but I would say low heat is colder than a wood evaporator, and high heat is much higher. In my very limited experience, I would say only go for steam if it is cheaper or you already have it...

We havn't boiled in a while with all the cold temperatures, but we are going to this afternoon.

[billschi]

Last season we expanded our birch operation to around 700 trees. We hung clear plastic bags. We hauled about 8000 gallons to make about 65 gallons of birch syrup. Our last batch turned out close to the same as the first batch, a nice red color. I wish we could run a big RO but we are off grid in northern Minnesota. We use a 3 post 4"x40" homemade RO. We were able to get the concentrate to an average 7% sugar. We use a Murphys cup to get to 67-70 brix.

[NhShaun]

Bringing it up to 7% is still a nice improvement, What was the sugar content measuring at when you hauled the sap in?

[NhShaun]

Anyone out here doing birch again or for the first time? They should be running in this area right about now.

[Drew Pond Maple]

I tried tapping birch this year after failing miserably 5 years ago. I’ve had good luck so far and made about 2 quarts on 6 trees. Tapped on April 3 and still getting sap today, although it’s starting to slow down. I don’t know if my optical refractometer is for sucrose only but when I’ve tested the birch sap it’s been at .7% everyday.
Next year I’ll tap 24 trees around my sugar house and see how that goes. My max taps would be around 100

[PCFarms]

Hello All,

We tapped our birch trees again this year. The start of the birch season was a few days before the end of the Maple Season according to the test tree we had in the forest. Due to the fact that the birch shares the pumpline with the Maple, we have to wait for Maple to end before we can start the birch. All our birch were tapped by April 13th. Last Maple boil was on April 13th as well. We are still going with the birch, the cold nights have kept the sap quality really good and the taste is still desirable. We have not started making the "Tangy birch" yet. We call it quits at that point - I suspect we will get there in the next few days. At 100 bucks a litre, we dont feel right selling anything but the best quality. We just passed 1 lb per tap - slightly more than our total from last year. Sugar content started out low at about 0.4%, rising to 0.7%.

Birch is a funny animal (or tree rather...), it tastes terrible until you get the sugar content above around 60 brix, when it magically becomes quite tasty. We have found that the faster you boil it the better. We put our evaporator on highest heat, after ROing it to about 18 brix. The boil is quick, about 30 mins. We have a 7x20 evaporator, so we just use the flat pans, and go with batch process.