Birch Tapping

[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...4fullfinal.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.

[Mean_Oscar]

When you start dealing with sub 1.0% sap, PRECISE calibration with distilled water is necessary. Vast majority of affordable digitals only resolve to 0.1%. I use a 0 to 10% optical that runs right with my Milwaukee MA871 digital...most of the time. In NE, Tennessee, after 3 years of tapping black birches, I am only fairly confident that they start running at 0.4%, after 2 weeks, they run about 0.7% for a week and then one day just quit for good. This year starting March 22, we tapped about 15 trees for 10 days and got about 120 gallons before it slowed to almost nothing.
On April 10, earlier taps had quit or were running drip down the bark. We did a half hour experiment on vacuum / tubing / late season / fresh tapping: Got 1 cup of 0.8% in 6 min 30 seconds on 3 fresh taps and -23" Hg with 5/16" tubing and homemade threaded HDPE spiles.



Basement cooker using electric skillet and or / brake bleeder vacuum chamber
Concentration of sap via RO (.4 to 3%) and Freeze Thaw (3% to 15%)