Harvesting Birch Sap & Making Syrup

[Applause] okay oh right here hello everyone we're out in a birch forest this morning and we're going to be tapping birch trees so you may have heard of tapping maple trees but like eric said we are tapping birch trees today birch shop can also be used like maple sap and turned into birch syrup but it also has a whole bunch of other uses and this is like the perfect time right now to get started with this it happens in april usually it can be as late as may as far as temperatures what we're looking for is still freezing weather at night but warmer than 50s during the day and this year has been a little different than the two years past all sudden we just got this heat wave we went from extremely cold temperatures like around zero degrees fahrenheit to like i think the highest we got was about 63 during the day and some of the nights it hasn't even dropped below freezing but we're out here now we got to get our butts in gear we got to start tapping these trees yep that's exactly right it's kind of like a real abrupt season because it usually is gradual but we're just all of a sudden in the middle of birch topping season and i kind of have a feeling it's going to be a short season this year with the warm temperatures so i think we're ready to tap right let's get to it so first off let's talk about tree identification we are out here looking for birch trees there's only one birch tree we're at it's alaska paper birch tree it's actually pretty easy to identify because it has what is that that's the peeling it'll have peeling on it and then there's really beautiful like white peachy color when they're older they're a little yellow when they're thinner and what we want is a really healthy tree like this and we're looking for like 10 inches diameter so we want a nice thick tree to produce some good sap for us yes and you want a healthy tree you don't want a dead tree it needs to be living and this one's probably what about 12 inches so this is a this is a nice good size right a nice healthy looking tree and no there's no mushrooms or anything grown off of him so we feel like he's a healthy one we're just cleaning the area off um we're on the south side of the tree right now so this has been the side of the tree that's getting the most sun and we use our drill i have a 7 16 drill bit on here i'm going to drill in at a slight upward angle about an inch and a half into the tree oh that's it it's wet in there this thing's going to flow good look at it that's a major flow awesome as far as spiles we use metal ones these have a hook on there to hang your bucket you want to sterilize these these have been sterilized in boiling water and we got them in a clean bag we're going to get this pounded into the tree and also dip them in alcohol too just to disinfect them you don't want to bring any sort of infection into the tree you don't want to put them in too tight i've made that mistake before and it's really hard to get them out this thing's flowing awesome look at that that's good we chose the south side of the tree it's the sunny side so usually the flow's a little better the downside to that is that it gets warmer on this side so sometimes this can spoil if you're not checking it quickly enough we're going to be coming out here pretty often to check it so i'm not worried about that that's a that's a decent flow it's a little slow would you say i'd say that's good i think it's a good flow we got we got this thing flowing pretty good we're using a 5 gallon bucket food grade bucket we also have a metal pail we're going to be using like errol said we're gonna be coming here often we usually like to check them every 24 hours collect it all and then just let it keep going again we've made the decision to do three trees so we're gonna get started on the next one okay tree number two we're going about chest height that's where we usually drill them we're cleaning off the area this is a this is a really nice healthy tree right here a little smaller than that one so we'll see how this one does we're on the south side of the tree again and 7 16 drill bit and we're gonna go in an inch and a half slight angle just like that it's about an inch here we go this one doesn't seem as wet let's see if it's going to produce any force oh yeah it's starting to come out there we go we've got our spill again sterilize these we did it in hot water you can do it in alcohol something like that we're gonna go ahead and tap this one in this one's not flowing as good as that one but we're still getting some good dripping i'm gonna put our small bucket on here this is a three gallon should increase with the season as we warm up you know you'll get more of a flow and then it is going to stop so this doesn't go year round so one's on flo is pretty good on this one uh it's every two seconds we're getting to drip so let's go check that first one again see how that one's doing all right these taps are looking pretty good yeah this is exciting this one's getting probably the best flow we're getting a drip every one second last year we did cover these i think we used saran wrap it was kind of a pain i'm not gonna lie so this year we're gonna do a little different we're not gonna cover them we're gonna check them every day and when we go to use this stuff at home we're just gonna run it through a strainer we're gonna head out and we're gonna come back and check these tomorrow it's the next day it's been about 22 hours and we're gonna go check our sap we're at the first tree this was the one that we tapped that had the best flow it was dripping about every one second and we got a good harvest off this one i'd say it's a little under two gallons so that's pretty good we brought one of our water jugs it's a seven gallon jug we got our little funnel so we're gonna collect our sap so tree number two this was the one that was flowing the least amount it's dripping every three seconds and we don't even have a gallon in this one but we still got quite a bit birch sap if you've never seen it or tasted it it pretty much looks like water it's clear it tastes like water almost but it's slightly sweet uh we're gonna try some over on the last tree we're gonna strain these when we get home this one's actually pretty clean though so i'm gonna try this one yeah it's really good it's ice cold it tastes just slightly sweet but other than that it pretty much tastes like water and this stuff is actually good for allergies and it's allergy season here my eyes are starting to itch so i'm going to drink a little more of this mosquito what's that this mosquito oh it's on your head there's a mosquito on your head anyways we got about over a gallon this one so this one's going pretty good this one's dripping every two seconds so a little better flow on this one we're doing good though we've been tapping birch trees this is our third season and all we've done with it is just drink it we've thrown like berries in it and made really good drinks it's it's really good stuff this year we're gonna do things a little bit different we're gonna collect a lot of this stuff we're actually gonna go home right now and we're gonna start making birch syrup out of this stuff sip we're back at the cabin we have our sap here we're ready to start making syrup we're going to be doing this in a two-stage process i've got a big pot here a little bit of a strainer and some cheesecloth and i'm going to add our sap into this pot get the burner lit and then we're going to reduce it and that's going to concentrate all the sugars in the sap to make a lovely syrup i'm just transferring the sap to a bowl because it's very heavy for me to lift i think we got like four gallons or something like that okay that's the last we have to put in there and there's a few different ways to do this i've looked up doing it on the wood stove we are not running our wood stove right now because it's just too warm outside may seem kind of funny but that wasn't an option for us we also could do it outside on our outdoor cook stove but we felt like this was the most appropriate because we can keep a close eye on it you know you really want to make sure that you don't heat it up too fast and it's just easiest for us to be inside and kind of control the heat this way and since we haven't done this before i don't actually know how long it's going to take i imagine it will take several hours we're gonna pick back up tomorrow morning and show you guys how it looks we finished reducing our sap last night we ended up with two full half gallons and you can see it turned from a clear color to this nice like light golden color and the final product the final syrup is going to be a dark brown from what i've read so this is just the first step we still have to do that but since we are not done tapping we have to store this reduced sap somewhere cool in the meantime and that could be a refrigerator you don't want to freeze it for us because we have this snow we have limited cooler space inside we are going to utilize the snow so we have it out in the snow and i've just been covering it up to keep it nice and cool today we've decided we're going to place some more spiles we're going to tap a few more trees we're also going to pick up the sap that we've already been collecting we have to do that the whole season reduce it down and store it somewhere cool until the end when we're finally ready to make our syrup [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] this has been a great tapping season so far we've gotten 20 gallons approximately i think we actually got a little bit over that all season so far including the four we're gonna take today these last four trees that we tapped were extremely productive so this has been awesome we're gonna get this hole back home and we're going to start the second process and we're going to actually start making our birch sap syrup this is definitely spring here and the mosquitoes are gonna lie they're starting off strong so i don't know what that means for this summer but hopefully they're not too bad since the season is not over yet we're going to continue to leave our spiles in place and keep collecting some sap we usually do it for like one to two weeks eventually it's going to get too warm and the buds on the tree will form and it will start to leaf out and you want to pull your spiles before that happens we're not pulling them today but when we do come back we're going to pull them out gently and then you just leave the hole you don't plug it or anything like that that's the most commonly accepted way to help promote good healing for this birch tree and then that way all the sap can go up to the leaves and the top of the tree for its summer growth i'm gonna get this into our bucket we're gonna see if it's gonna fit this is a lot this has actually been our most productive tree i think that we got it's been a little bit over 24 hours and this is over three gallons so that should be perfect because we're making syrup and it takes a lot of birch sap to turn into syrup check one more bucket and then we are gonna see you guys at home once we're starting to boil it down we've got our birch sap reducing down on the stove both of these pots were completely full when we started we're down about two inches on each of them we have a long ways to go we need to get these pots down reduced a lot more doing this inside the house has not been a big deal at all we live in a small cabin we run our wood stove a lot and our humidity is usually around 10 to 20 percent right now it's sitting at 46 so it's actually more ideal for us it's working out pretty good this is probably gonna take at least five or six hours more and it's about eight o'clock at night so we got a long night ahead of us we'll see you guys in the morning i'm out here gathering all of our concentrated birch sap because we are ready to make some syrup look at that we've got our two pots heating up on the stove and this is actually the pot from last night all together i think we estimated we have about eight gallons going right now and the ratio for making birch syrup is actually pretty extreme it takes about 100 to 110 gallons of the sap just to get one gallon of syrup so we're not really expecting to get too much out of this today i think maybe we'll get underneath the court and i'd be pretty excited for that in the meantime we're keeping a close eye on these we want to make sure that they don't really get over 200 degrees fahrenheit and that's just because we don't want it to cook too quickly as soon as these reduce enough we are going to combine them to one pot well it's been about four and a half hours and our pots have reduced quite a bit i think we still have about half of the volume of liquid we started with this takes forever and it's very steamy in here as you can tell it does smell really good that's kind of an upside to it it i mean it has like a really sweet almost nutty i know that sounds strange scent but it's it's really nice actually closest thing that eric and i could really compare it to is chaga which also comes from birch not sure if that's really why we're feeling like it smells the same i'm at the point now where i'm going to combine pots and i'm actually going to put our biggest spot on our back burner and take the liquid from this one and combine it with that one throughout this process the sap has turned from a clear color to yellow orange and now this like deep amber color it's almost brown all right it's probably gonna be another four hours until this is done i'm just gonna check the temperature it's pretty much been right at 200. and so as it condenses down it will start to get hotter we're going to have to really manage it at that point and i think i read we're going to finish it at about 220 that's where we're going to pull it off the heat well it is the next day our syrup did not finish yesterday when we were boiling it down it actually went for over 12 hours it took a really really really long time we shut it off right before we went to bed and we picked back up this morning it's definitely to the point where it's done now we've been kind of monitoring it it's thickened up it has a really nice concentrated flavor you can tell we moved it down to a smaller pot we have about two quarts now because we feel like it's done at this point i'm actually slowly turning up the heat i've got to get it to 220 degrees and i'm going to pull it off and we're going to be straining it and putting it in some jars the syrup reached 220 and we pulled it off it actually finishes a little bit above that but because it's going to continue to heat up that's when we pulled it off we've got it straining through double cheesecloth and i think it's 90 grade 90 so it's really nicely tightly woven you can use like a few different coffee filters too if you need to strain it it gets a little bit of like sediment or buildup in there it's a really nice color i'm going to put it in some half pints and then we're gonna set the lids on top and because it's so hot they should self seal on their own that's awesome that's a really good amount because we can seal these five and then we can use this one for breakfast so this is going to create a seal on its own because they're so hot and from what i've read they are shelf stable like this i mean you could put it in the fridge if you wanted or your freezer but they are okay to stay out at room temperature like this if they have a good seal we ended up with about a quart and a half which is over what i was expecting i've read that the birch when it first runs the sap has a lot more sugar so that could be why we have quite a bit and we did start with over 20 gallons pretty exciting stuff that's a lot more than i was thinking we'd get we're gonna clean up this huge mess in here and put this outside we're gonna make some breakfast eric's gonna make some french toast we've gotta put this outside because it has to cool down to thicken and it'll just be better that way it's eleven in the morning i've been waiting on that syrup like ariel said it takes forever we're starving we're gonna make some french toast ariel made a sourdough loaf for us last night i sliced it up and i got it nice and stale so it's gonna be perfect for making french toast our french toast is pretty simple we're gonna do eggs milk we do vanilla cinnamon and some salt we've had no shortage of eggs so this is gonna be a great meal we're also gonna add a little bit of milk in here let's head over to our skillet we got it heating up over here with some coconut oil we're soaking our bread we do about probably a minute all together i'm gonna do 30 seconds on each side then they're going in the frying pan well that is a ton of really good looking french toast ariel's going to come in here and we're going to see how that syrup tastes we brought our syrup in from outside it's thickened up just a little bit and since we've never had birch syrup before we're gonna do a little taste test real quick the most popular syrup is probably maple syrup so we have a maple syrup here we're gonna try that and we're gonna compare it to our birch syrup maple syrup is obviously way thicker i was reading the sugars are different from the maple tree to the birch tree so that that's really sweet it's good good maple syrup this one it's not cold it's it's still pretty warm but it's already thickened up oh you're not going to get the same same thickness it's just not going to be as thick but it did get thicker as we were cooking it got a lot thicker do you want to take it out a little bit it smells really good yeah go ahead how big oh yeah that's not cold at all yet it's still like 70 plus degrees definitely concentrated stronger stronger rich really really rich we've been tasting it as we've been cooking it the whole time yeah it's almost not as sweet as that one definitely not a sweet and it tastes to me like a caramel like a toasted nutty caramel maybe we've been trying to kind of come up with what we think it tastes like and it's a really difficult it's really difficult to actually describe um i think we both kind of went back and forth like it tastes toasted not burnt just tastes toasted like a warmer toasty caramel toasted nut almost a little like sour you're getting like a little bit it tastes like a bitter like a tree you don't taste like it tastes like one of those caramel suckers that you used to get from sea's candy it's rich it tastes like caramel a but a real rich really strong strong caramel a lot of people don't even use it as a syrup they use it more as like a glazed desserts so that's something we may try it on like fish it's really good tea i like it um do you think it tastes like the chocolate not really anymore it just tastes extremely it's strong like you you don't have to use a lot of that stuff that's really potent really similar color not that similar with flavor but we were thinking about this earlier maple syrup we all know that flavor and most of us know that flavor it's real classic it tastes like probably a you know a maple tree essence and the birch one is a lot like a birch tree i think definitely are you ready to try this on some french dress let's do it starving any tiny bit because i don't wanna you don't want too much on it cause it's strong it's did you get any syrup are you dipped in there it's potent it's good i feel like it tastes a little bit like bark would taste like a little no i mean like earthy the yeah like the poteness of it i feel like i need a glass of milk well i mean it's so cute yeah it's really strong we'll grab some water and milk because it is very very strong i don't know if i would use it like this i think like i was mentioning a lot of people can use it different ways and i i think i would probably use it more incorporate it into something like tea dessert or i would try it on fish smoking fish maybe it's really good if i had maple syrup sitting there and i had birch syrups in there i'd probably take the maple syrup i just like it a little bit better hands down i take the maple syrup it is good it's really good it's strong it's strong and we wanted it to be kind of thicker so we kept you know reducing it down we didn't want a really watery syrup you can do that and it won't be as strong but it's it's good but it's strong yeah as you're making it there's different stages you'll see that it'll hit and it'll just get a little bit thicker and it kind of gets a lot of foam or a little bit of foam when it's almost done we're gonna put our forks down and answer the question do we think it was worth it to make this birch sherp and would we do it again yeah i don't think it was worth it there's a lot of time a lot of effort to go out there and tap the trees and it took a long time to render that stuff down for a small product so it's good but it takes like i said it takes a long time to get a little product we were both pretty much hands down uh agreed on that one as we were rendering it it takes a long time i think it took a total of five or six days especially the last part when you're really slowly reducing it you do get a little amount so i know that's some people's rationale as to why they wouldn't want to do it for me it's just kind of annoying how much propane it used i don't know how much actually we use but it's a lot more than we would normally consume to make six six jars yeah usually when we're canning or something the stove's on really low so that's fine you're not using a lot of propane when we're reducing this stuff the stove's on full blast the whole time for just hours upon hours so go through a lot of propane yeah we definitely won't be doing it again i mean we're going to enjoy it and we'll figure out what it tastes good in but for us the fresh thing is the best going out and tapping one or two trees is just drinking the sap straight is really good really fresh huh and it changes a lot it doesn't taste anything like that anymore in fact it was that ratio from 110 gallons to one gallon that usually yields that prevented us from doing this i think we didn't want to do it in the past for that and now we've tried it yep and we will not be doing it again no but we have we have plenty we have like that's going to be over probably two years worth of syrup there's other things you can do with birch sap too we've heard of people making beer and wine but we just really like it fresh and we did freeze some i think that was last year it's still pretty good when you freeze it but there is definitely a taste difference so i think fresh it does it the birch sap will usually like ferment in a day or two so it starts to get cloudy and not taste as good in our opinion so you really have to drink it fresh and once you freeze it in my opinion it definitely changes the flavor for sure so we just like to drink it fresh yeah probably tap one tree next year well that's gonna do it for today we hope you guys learned something new and enjoyed the video we're gonna be finishing off breakfast now we'll see you next time can i have some of that maple syrup i'm trying to think what we can use it in i want to try it on fish it's so strong i know it's all that's i think tea i'm telling you if you had some nice tea yeah you put in some tea that would be a really good but maybe the syrup is just we don't have any maple trees though hmm you

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 200,794

Rating: 4.9681411 out of 5

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, off grid vlog, homestead alaska, cabin life, tiny house alaska, off grid cabin, off grid in alaska, winter cabin living, homestead off grid, tapping birch tree, birch tree alaska, birch tree sap benefits, drinking birch sap, how to tap a birch tree, collecting birch sap, alaska birch sap, birch tree syrup, birch syrup, make birch syrup, tasting birch syrup, tapping spiles, how to make birch syrup, making birch syrup, birch syrup flavor

Id: yBxa9NPeuNE

Length: 28min 45sec (1725 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021