Birch syrup! Breaking rules but...

[Shirefisher]

I only have tapped 20inch +birch as the small ones really don't produce. I plan to batch boil and finish on an electric pan so I can boil slow to finish. The method worked well for me last year.

[Shirefisher]

I gathered 40 gallons of birch sap, it's happening!KINDLE_CAMERA_1586014717000.jpg

[Maple dabbler]

I made some birch syrup at my university over the past 3 weeks. With everything shut down, I was able to commandeer the sugar house for the experiment by myself. I tapped 31 birch trees, I believe all yellow and paper or river birch. Some of the trees produced only a small amount of sap, and with others, the buckets overflowed every day. I got about 280 gallons of sap and pulled the taps on Tuesday. Without an RO system and a tube collection system, this just wasn't worth the trouble. From my first 100 gallons of sap, I only got about 1.5 quarts of syrup, a dismal yield of only about 0.35% sugar content. Once I finish the remainder of my concentrate into syrup, I'm expecting about 1 gallon total.

All in all I'd do it again, but only with some better planning and equipment.

[Shirefisher]

Cool experiment. Good for you for giving it a go. It retails locally here for 20$ for 8 ounces. My days work could produce 60 or more dollars worth if I'm lucky and this year this hobby has made my time at home go by in a blur... it will be real tasty on some salmon and venison in the smoker...

[Maple dabbler]

Yes, it retails for a pretty penny. I was hoping to get enough to sell, but the sugar content was just too low. Also, I'm not using the double boiler method as others have suggested, so my syrup may be dark and scorched. Hopefully still good for marinades or sauces. My final batch is in the gas finishing pan as we speak.

I was thinking about an evaporator design that would use a vacuum pump to lower the pressure in the boiling chamber, which would lower the boiling point of sap. I wonder if this is possible, and whether it could be used for maple sap as well. I also wonder if anyone has done this before. I suspect this is the secret behind the Maple Guild's "steam crafting" method.

[DuncanFTGC/SS]

I tapped two more birch today, they are just starting. My maples gave me a good spurt of sap today, as well.

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[MillbrookMaple]

We do birch every 2-3 years. Best year we made about 20 gallons off 400 taps on buckets. We have yellow birch mostly all in the stream bed scattered over 4 miles so pipeline isn't an option. It usually runs 2-3 weeks for us after maple season unless it gets 70 degrees, which it has many times. I imagine if we tapped earlier during the end of maple we would get another week or 2 but no way to do both at the same time for us. Some trees will over run a 5 gallon pail some days others will do a half gallon everyday at most. Yeast build up and clogging happens at warmer temps. Sap to syrup ratio for us runs anywhere from 100-200 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup. RO is a must or it will be motor oil by the time you get it to density. Draw it off early and then finish the last few points slow because it scorches easily towards the end. We boil it on my buddy's half pint since there isn't enough sap to run my rig after concentrating. We retail 8oz for $20 shipped. Wholesale $100 a half gallon to restaurants. Every year we do it we say we are never going to do it again and every few years we run out of syrup and have a short maple season and still have energy left and say "Let's do birch this year!" Then we slap each other after the season.

[Shirefisher]

KINDLE_CAMERA_1586111526000.jpg 35 ish gallons of birch sap yielded me 20 ozs of syrup.

[Maple dabbler]

I finished all my birch syrup. 31 trees over 10 days yielded me 280 gallons of sap (would have been more, but I only checked on them every 2-3 days, so some of the buckets overflowed several times over). After boiling it all down, my final yield was 23 half pints, or just under a gallon and a half. That puts my sap at about 200:1, or roughly 0.45 brix.

With the way the weather was this year in Connecticut, I probably could have started earlier and finished later, but this was just an experiment and the tapholes were seeing some major bacterial growth, resulting in slightly cloudy sap. Honestly, it's possible the birch season will actually last longer than Maple this year. Imagine that. With a good setup, based on the market price of birch, it's possible that birch syrup is as profitable as maple right now in this region.

[Shirefisher]

I finished all my birch syrup. 31 trees over 10 days yielded me 280 gallons of sap (would have been more, but I only checked on them every 2-3 days, so some of the buckets overflowed several times over). After boiling it all down, my final yield was 23 half pints, or just under a gallon and a half. That puts my sap at about 200:1, or roughly 0.45 brix.

With the way the weather was this year in Connecticut, I probably could have started earlier and finished later, but this was just an experiment and the tapholes were seeing some major bacterial growth, resulting in slightly cloudy sap. Honestly, it's possible the birch season will actually last longer than Maple this year. Imagine that. With a good setup, based on the market price of birch, it's possible that birch syrup is as profitable as maple right now in this region.

So what was your method and how is the taste? I'm thinking of doing a continuous boil of 200 or so gallons over this coming week and drawing off at maple temp to then finish on an electric controlled temp pot... i was going to batch it but that is pretty time consuming.