In The Field — Birch Syrup

Birch syrup will probably never receive the recognition it deserves.

It’s just too easy to compare it to maple syrup and if you were to try them side by side it’d be easy to taste why. Maple’s explosively sweet sucrose lights up your tongue — and dopamine circuits — in a way with which birch simply can’t compete. Maple is cheaper to make, less prone to being scorched and burned, and — at around $65 per gallon — has a surprisingly strong market value. Maple is iconic too — even someone who’s never had the real thing has at least tasted a knock-off.

But Aunt Jemima doesn’t make an artificial birch syrup.

So, no… Birch syrup isn’t “as good” as maple syrup. Not even close. You won’t find yourself sneaking sips from the bottle or lathering your breakfast in it either.

But, birch syrup, taken on its own merits, is a wild food you shouldn’t overlook.

Like honey, birch’s sugar-profile is composed primarily of the simple, less-sweet monosaccharides glucose and fructose. Comparing the sweetness of the disaccharide sucrose in maple — the same molecule we extract from sugar cane to make white table sugar — to the sweetness of birch is like comparing a sugar cube to a banana. In fact, while birch syrup is a concentrate of the sugars found in its spring sap, I think of it more like a savory food.

It’s got a flavor and aroma reminiscent of molasses, but with the distinct minerality of slate or wet stone, complemented by coppery metallic notes that pair more perfectly with protein than they do with dessert. In my kitchen, you’re more likely to find it basted on fish fillets destined for the smoker or “sweetening” a marinade that’ll infuse a prime cut of venison. 

While 35 gallons of maple sap will usually yield a gallon of finished maple syrup, it’d take a hundred gallons or more of birch-water to accomplish this same feat. And maple sap can only be gathered when the nights dip below freezing, so it can easily be kept cold by utilizing the snowpack and ambient temperatures. Birch, by contrast, is collected after the maple season ends, when the snow has melted away and the early days of spring are rapidly rising temperatures. This means its sap, though less sweet than maple, is more prone to spoilage.

The upside is that birch produces volumes of sap that you’d never see from maple trees, filling, and usually overflowing the two-gallon aluminum buckets we hang on our trees. Since our goal is to make about a quart of birch syrup per season — as opposed to the 8 gallons of maple we’re after — we can usually do this with the sap we collect in 48 hours. So while our maple operation unfolds over the course of weeks, our birch production is measured in days. 

We tap our birches just after pulling our maple spiles. All of the equipment is already out, our buckets, taps, and lids, our evaporator pan and sap-storage vessels. It’s a simple and seamless transition to birch after having collected and cooked maple sap in the weeks preceding. While we’ve been tapping 60 maple’s these last few years, this year’s birch syrup was made from the water of just 10 individual trees. Some golden — or yellow birches — and some white — or paper birches. While the sap of the latter tastes superior to the former, we harvest from both species since mature specimens of each are easily accessible here.

While the cooking equipment is the same, the birch sap is a bit too delicate for the rapid, hard boiling that produces maple syrup. Those temperatures will eventually scorch the simple sugars, so after boiling off some initial water I reduce the heat to a simmer and slowly evaporate the sap down to a syrup. I finish it off in the house to around 67-70 Brix — measured by hydrometer.

While I prefer to bottle maple syrup by the quart, our birch syrup is canned in 4 oz jelly jars. Just the right size for one or two uses.

Once made, we wash, polish, and pack away an entire arsenal of buckets, lids, taps, pans, pails, and other gear we use in the syrup season. It’s a symbolic phenological moment — the end of winter, which is to say, the beginning of spring.