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I tapped a couple of my birch trees on the 18th of April. I have gotten 3 gallons of sap per tap so far. I am not going to boil the sap but just showing the kids how it works. I have noticed that the sap runs different then maple trees. Somebody told me it's not the cold nights and warm days that make the sap run but the thawing of the ground that makes a birch tree run. Does anyone know for sure? Thanks
Spud
The CO-Op had then for less then $12 dollars this year. And like I said in another post I use a SS thermos which seems to work well. I am cheaper then a kilt wearer most times.Quote:
Originally Posted by 70 Buick
Birch trees seem to run day and night and if it freezes they stop till they thaw out again.They don't need frost to run just warm days. I have some big paper birchs that will run 5 gallons a day and I have the mother of all yellow birchs that will give gallons also. The sweet birchs do well also. Mine is a melange of three or four kinds of birch sap.
I used a 10" stainless steel water bottle. You can buy them almost anywhere for $5 - $8.
Worked great for me.
From the lab work we've had completed 60 % appears to be a food stable product. There's a link between PH water activity & sugar content. The lower PH seems to have an impact.
We use a refractometer. Got thru Ebay, around $100,
much easier than dealing with the cup & hydrometers which I invariabley break.
As far as sap goes, it will run as long as it gets some good daytime temps. If it stays warm overnight, it will continue to flow
Well most of the buckets are cleaned, dried & put away. Still a bit more clean up to do on the sugar shack & plan on putting on a batch of birch wine this weekend.
Pulled in approx 5000 litres of birch sap on 250 taps. Not great flow as the temps were quite cool at both day & night. Had to tap at a lower elevation as there was still loads of snow at our farm & poor access. Could have likely tapped some more trees here & kept things going for a few more days but I'm done. Have to go back to my day job to rest up...I'm bagged.
The season lasted for 2 weeks & individual tree flow was quite variable. Some buckets overflowing & some just a small amount.
Some syrup already made and the rest is in concentrate form in the freezer. I'll make it into syrup at another time. Plan on making some BBQ sauce & salad dressing as they are good sellers. Still need a good BBQ sauce recipie though. Anyone got any favourites??
Getting Ready for 2012
I finished the remainder of the concentrate from last year to make room in my freezer & put in an order to our supplier in Quebec to get a few more items for the upcoming season.
Birch sugaring season here in central BC Canada usually starts in early April. The weather conditions vary from no snow to a fair bit, but hey that's just the weather. It gives us all something to talk about. I'll spend some time over the next few weekends getting the sugar shack ready for "the sleep deprivation exercise".
I do enjoy it so as it connects one back to things before spring planting.
Just talked to some folks in Mnaitoba who are getting into birch in a big way, over 1000 trees with an RO & wood pellet evaporator. Their trees are starting to flow & equiptment is due to arrive in the next couple of days. Oh what fun they are about to have. It is good to learn new things as we age, gives us something to talk about.
Well the geese are flying over and the snow is going day by day. This I'll weekend get things ready to go & tap a few test trees early next week. I would think things will be happening here by the Easter weekend.
Got a call from a fellow who is interested in tapping birch & will see if he wants to come & learn about the whole process first hand. It is always nice to have some extra help to pull buckets & it's good for folks to see all aspects.
The water levels are increasing in the smaller creeks and a few test trees are running. It will be time to tap on Friday, so let the fun begin.
Were about finished our maple season here it seems. Starting to turn towards the birches. Never done it before. But as we have plenty of wood left and arent sucked dry of energy with the aple season I want to give it a try.
It sounds like you have to be careful with the initial evaporating? I thought I read somewhere you may have said boiling an evaporator at full tilt to 20% brix? and then transferring to a stovetop or a finer more controlable heat source?
Whats a ballpark guess of how much volume decrease 20 brix would be down to. We dont have a huge amount of stove space so Im wondering how to manage that. And a double boiler is also what i read. Let it simmer all day?
Thanks for any pointers
Michael
We do sell a Birch Syrup Manual on how to produce Birch syrup. the one of its kind in print...... check out the classifieds under misc which gives pleanty of details. We've sold 300 + all over canada US & Europe
The initial evaporating is fairly forgiving especially in the first part of the year as there is a bit of sucrose in the sap.
We started on a piece of crap wood stove with a door that didn't quite close, we used flat pans on top & simmered for all day. We combined pans of similar concentrations. You don't want to mix in fresh sap with the partially rendered down concentrate.
Once you get down to 20 deg brix you've removed a great deal of the sap, I'm thinking 80 % ish but you still need to remove the remiander. Finishing can be accomplished on a low heat less than 80 Deg C for many hours. One thing to note this will take all day, & you're not a true syrup maker unitl you've burned some. I'm a syrup maker.
You don't need to finish it to 66 deg brix like maple, 60 is fine
Thanks for that info. I would like to get my hands on a copy of your book one day. At this point we havent invested in the process enough to justify it on our budget at this point, but ill keep it in mind. We just collected t about 11 gallons of sap and brought it down to about a half a gallon. We filtered it and measured the brix and it wasnt at 20 yet. Im boiling it a little more on the stove now and will keep measuring it. Its about the color of medium maple syrup now.
Do you have to filter it again? I thought I read you have to filter it a couple of time?
So we simmered it down to syrup successfuly. We only made 250 ml if it though. Im satisfied and think its wonderful stuff. Reminds me a bit of Mollases but with more flavor. I probably could have kept it on the evaporator a bit longer. We had no way of measuring the sugar content at the time so we just played it safe and did the rest in on the stove. Boiled it till it got to about 35 brix, then turned it down to a simmer of about 80 to 81 degrees C and finnished it like that. We never filtered it again as there was so little we didnt want it to go to waste in the filter material.
We'll see if we get any more sap in the next few days. Out of 22 trees tapped we only got about 11 gallons of sap. Are the Birches affected by the weather like Maples? will they run less on rainy days etc...?
Thanks for your pointers.
good stuff
Once birch start to run as long as the temps don't get really cold they will run as long as the temps are well above 0 deg C. If it remains +5 deg C over night they will continue to run. As far as using the evaporator goes keep it in there as long as you can, but there will be a point at which your evaporation slows down so much in your sap pan & the fire is almost out as the front pan should not be over 100 deg C that you have to pull it off.
The flavours are complex like a good wine or scotch, it has a beginning, middle & end. Enjoy
It's great on good vanilla ice cream, meat or fish or mix it 50/50 with rye......yummy.
Well we tapped 175 trees today & will do a little less tomorrow & likley collect & fire up the evaporator as well. Here we go.
For what it's worth, my experience this year was that they ran right through some freezes as low as 25 F only stopping when the drop tubes froze but as soon as the tubes thawed, they were running again. This was with sunny days in the 50s and no snow on the ground. I was surprised because I thought the freeze would shut them down for a couple days, but never saw that happen. Frankly, I was looking forward to a break!Quote:
Originally Posted by BC Birch Tapper
To Azitizz - if it tastes like molasses, I suspect you may still be overcooking it - I had one small pan that hit 205 F briefly and the tangy, fruity tastes ended up a bit muted, and I'd say there was a bit more caramel flavor. It's still quite tasty, but not quite the same.
If you can find a digital thermometer probe (discount stores have them for under $20) try putting that on the bottom of the pan and never let it get over 190F. It is painfully slow, but it makes a big difference - you should pick up a lot more fruity taste. The closest I can think of would be like a concentrated raisin flavor.
I also find that as it gets to ~55-60 brix, the evaporation rate slows down rapidly and the syrup heats up fast even at the same heat setting you may have run for hours prior. It's really easy to overheat the pan as it approaches syrup and you have to constantly back down the heat input.
Since the maple season was a bust I decided to try some birch syrup. I boiled down about 95 gallons and got about 3 quarts of syrup. I'm not wild about it at all. Kind of bitter and my wife likened it to molasses also. I boiled it really slow, barely ever getting it above a fast steam. Lots of work but something I've wanted to try for awhile. Don't know if there was anything I could have done different to make it better.
Continued tapping now pulling in about 800 litres a day off of 275 taps, & I can't keep up. Raining today. Game is definatley on.
How much cloudiness is tolerable? I notices a slight haziness in some of the buckets. Letting some sit overnight in pales it seemed to get a bit cloudier. I think were approaching the end of our birch fun. Weve made about 2 litres so fat. I have another 80 Gallons on the evaporator now but with some of the cloudy questionable sap in it.
well we finally made syrup today, tapped 86 trees (hoping for 30 more soon) two days ago and they are just starting to break loose, had 50 gallons of sap for the first 2 days, slow but very sweet, tested as high as 1.2% and made close to a gallon out of 50 gals of sap, felt like i was making maple syrup for a bit, anyway finishing te batch on the stove left me with a question, and it is, my hydrometer has a cold test and hot test, with the cold test red line at 66.5 on the scale, leaving the hot test line somewhere around 60, but i believe its on the cold test scale still, so i just brought my syrup almost to the red hot test line figuring it would put it just over 60%, so my question is with birch syrup the hot test line is for 66.5 brix, how can i test for 60 brix with the cold test scale, is there some sort of conversion? i hope im not confusiny everyone here, does anyone use a similar hydrometer for birch syrup? well anyway, hoping to move some taps aound tomarrow, some trees just dont give me a good feeling and with the sap so sweet i cant wait for them, and boy the new rig sure beats the old way,
A bit of cloudyness is ok, but later on you will see pink or orange which are bacteria & yeasts. At that point you are done!
We're coming close to the end of the season. We have an open house & pancake breakfast this weekend. We're pulling in about 800 liters a day but have pulled about 75 pails. It should only last a few more days. I can use the rest.
do you have a tubing system like on maple? and would you be able to put the trees under vacuum?
we use only buckets, sometime in groups of 2 to 5 as they do tend to grow in clumps. Our trees are quite spread out & on flat terrain. I know of a few folks who have a small gravity system for a number of trees on a slope but I don't know of anyone who has a vaccum system.
We've pulled another 50 pails today & will pull the remainder tomorrow. Bring on the sleep! We're having a pancake breakfast & open house on Sunday, Earth Day so should be a good one. We serve maple syryp for the pancakes and some maple birch/blend as pure birch is much to strong for pancakes by itself.
bc tapper,
we are having some crazy weather here, with 50-60 degree days and im afraid these puppies are gonna bud out soon, but sap is still clear and making great syrup, and the season just started maybe a week ago, so im wondering if buds really effect the syrup like with maple, have you ever seen buds on a tree giving good sap? this will be the shortest season ever if this weather keeps up! should have tapped more trees!
Can't say I've seen that occur. Typically the sap gets cloudy, yeasty & the tubes get plugged up as the tree starts to heal the wound & the flow reduces dramatically. This year we tapped extra trees & removed some when we fould we could not keep up with our overall volume. We targetted the low producers and the ones farthest away to pull 1st & then pulled more as they got yeasty. We did tap some additonal trees later on that was still clear & could likley have gone for a few more days but I'm almost out of firewood, bagged & it's time to go back to my day job for a break.
yeah that sound about right, weve had a few cloudy buckets but thankfully good sap still overall but it cant last too much, just curious what you avg sugar cont was this season, i was surprised to just calculate mine at 1.17 which has been my saving grace since i didnt tap enough trees.
Ours is about 0.5 % sugar, I would love to have your ratio. The rates are quite variable as you can see. I assume it is impacted by site productivity, soil moisture aspect, slope position etc but that is just a theory. It sounds like a good research project.
All in for 2012
We tapped 275 trees pulled in a bit over 6000 litres in 12 days with a peak at 1000 litres one day.
We had a great open house on the weekend with over 150 people attending, which included tractor rides, farm tours & pancakes cooked by our local high school Rotary club & did quite well in our on farm store as well.
Also did a little 1 on 1 consulting with a few folks who wanted to learn a bit more about birch which is always nice & helps add a little $$ into the mix as well.
Just made up two batches of birch wine this evening, one is from the sap itself & the other is from some concentrate at about 10 % brix. I find the end of season sap or concentrate is best for value added type products.
The wine I find takes a good year to mature, but is quite yummy.
Well winter is getting shorter here as the days get longer. Will be putting in an order soon for supplies and thinking about getting the sugar shack cleaned up for the upcoming season. The birch wine is still maturing. Hopefully it will be ready in time for sugaring off in April.
Could I use the same pans for birch syrup as Maple syrup? Also what size birch trees can I tap?
We tap white birch trees as that is all that we have & a minimum of 8 " diameter. Some folks are also tapping yellow birch. Much smaller than 8" we find there is very little flow.
chicken123
"Could I use the same pans for birch syrup as Maple syrup? Also what size birch trees can I tap?"
I am planning too. Dr Tim connected me with a colleague who connected me with someone at Cornell who is doing this. He is using the same tubing and equipment to make birch syrup successfully. His suggestion was to untap maple, clean tubing, clean equipment and then tap birches. He said he is tapping yellow and white birches. Getting about 20 gal per tap as apposed to 15 with Maple. He said it was more like 180 gal of sap to 1 gal of syrup. RO seems to be key on a large scale. I plan to put 1-200 on vac and see what happens. Worst case is I have a lot of natural sweetener that I can't sell.
Thank you :)
Well we're about 1 month away from tapping white birch here in western Canada. Just putting an order into our supplier for some last minute tapping items & planning our open house for late April. We keep having inquiries about the Birch Syrup Production Manual & folks wanting to give birch tapping a try. White birch is actually found all across Canada but I can't see it every making a dent in the maple industry. It's more of a niche product, but it is for some like us, the only tree they have to tap.
Tapped In
We've got about 300 birch trees tapped yesterday and just heading out to collect this am. Still cool temps freezing overnight so I'm not expecting huge flow just yet. Game on!
We pulled in 600 litres of sap yesterday and 700 today. A bit of snow & rain to make life a little more damp, but all is well so far.
My wife is putting on a birch tapping workshop this evening. It's always nice to introduce folks to something new & different.
I have decieded to try the birch syrup thing this year (been on the back of my mind for the past 4 years but was always to busy!). Looks like we will possibly get one last run from the maples here in Southern Ontario this weekend and then I will put my taps, do a quick clean and setup about 50 buckets in my yellow's and white birch's and see what happens. I moved one test bucket Monday to a decent sized yellow and have had no sap yet but have noticed two of the neighbors stopping on the road and looking in its direction...probably thinking I have lost my mind!!!
You could have some fun with that one! Watch your local creeks and ponds & low spots in fields. When they swell with spring run off which means the ground has thawed, then it's game on. Good luck.
We just pulled in another 600 litres today.
Well we're about 1/2 way through our season as we're pulling in 400-600 litres a day. Lots of firewood left but my knee is giving out. Too many sports as a kid I guess.
Having an open house this weekend to share the experience with others which is always a crowd pleaser.