alternate birch taps

[PATheron]

Not sure where to put this but I was just looking at Casey,s sugar shack pics and I saw that there were a lot of birch in his sugarbush with the maples. I wondered if anyone had ever thought about putting in the lats in the same bush for the birches and tapping them in once maple season was over with the same setup? Just wondered. Theron

[chipa]

we have joked about "swapping over to the birches" for years!

[KenWP]

I tried to make birch syrup and its not like maple. It takes 180 gallosn of it to make a gallon of syrup and it burns pretty easy when you get close to 66%. Tastes pretty good. If you tap a lot of them be prepared to have storage also. They really put out the sap. I had one that filled a 2 gallon imperial bucket every 4 hours. They also run all night and don't stop untill it freezes and then away they go once it warms up again.

[BC Birch Tapper]

We've heard from lots of maple producers who are looking at extending their season by tapping birch trees. Other producers are tapping strictly birch.

People are trying different hardwoods including White Birch, Yellow Birch, Sweet Birch, Big Leaf Maple, Manitoba Maple & Douglas Maple.

Birch has dramatically different sugars and the sap typically flows ususally after maples, so if you have enough time & left over firewood it is another way to utilize your investment to make another product.


We find the rarer unique syrups fetch a premium price up to $100/ litre which does make it attractive from a $$ standpoint.

Most of the maples make a similar tasting end product, but birch is significantly different in type of sugars, sugar content & end product.

[red maples]

I did some reading on birch syrup lately and it is had of sucrose where maple is fructose. Succrose has a much lower scorching temp. So there are different tactics than simply boiling it in a rig made for maple because it get too hot. They said something about RO's and steam jacketed kettle type things to boil it at lower temps so it doesnt scorch and turn bitter. but the good thing is that you can used it to clean you maples pans (so they say) because it has a higher acid content and cleans out the niter easy. I haven't tried this yet but it make perfect sense maybe I will try it this year beats chemicals and elbow grease if it works. I want to buy some birch syrup just to try it there are several places in alaska that make it I know birch boy is one of them and way northern canada where there aren't maples tap.

[Gary R]

red maples,

I believe you have the sugars backwards. sucrose for maple, fructose for birch. I did boil birch in my pan after maple. It cleaned it up great. All that stuff was caught in the filter:( . I did order from Birch Boy. Give it a try!

[KenWP]

When you first start to boil birch sap it has a different color even in the pan. It's almost red in color but it does get rather dark towards the end.

[red maples]

yep did get the sugars backwards. but I think I am going to try to use the sap to clean my pans. next season and not filter it and just dump it when its done. or just try finishing on the stove and see what I get just make sure I use a pre-filter.