Birch Tapping one Month Away

[BC Birch Tapper]

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

[Azitizz]

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?

[Azitizz]

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

[BC Birch Tapper]

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.

[BC Birch Tapper]

Well we tapped 175 trees today & will do a little less tomorrow & likley collect & fire up the evaporator as well. Here we go.

[Snowy Pass Maple]

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.

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!

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.

[fishman]

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.

[BC Birch Tapper]

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.

[Azitizz]

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.

[jake1]

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,