# Making Birch Sap/Syrup at Home



## Sonnyjim (Sep 17, 2009)

I thought I remembered a very good post being made on this subject but I did a search and just couldn't find it. Either way, it was just pictures and this is a video. This process is extremely close to maple syrup but you need 90L to get 1L instead of 40/1 for maple. I also did tap a few trees with just a knife, rock, hand carved spout, and empty jugs and it tapped almost as well as with the store bought taps. This was so that I could do this without a drill in a survival situation and have already done the trail and error phase.

From a small ammount of research, the natives would carve/burn a big oval bowl out of a log, heat up rocks and drop them in the sap in order to evaporate the water. I can't even believe the ammount of time it would take to do this. However, you could do this easily in a big cast iron pot/pan over a slow fire and you would save a lot of money on propane/electric(on stove). If you do use this method, make sure it is not a rolling boil as you will give the syrup a charred taste.

Only 1500Gallons of syrup are made annually in North America so this is a very rare product as it takes soo friggen long to make such a small ammount. This morning I went and got a cup of birch sap, boiled it, sweetened it with some of my birch syrup, and steeped some spruce pines for 10 minutes. It was very very tasty. A drop of cream would have made it just perfect. I have been slightly ill the past few days and I'm already feeling better, mainly I think because of the high ammount of vitamin C in this concoction I made.

Here's the link to the video:


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## *Andi (Nov 8, 2009)

We have made maple syrup but never birch. 

Thanks for posting!:2thumb:


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## gypsysue (Mar 27, 2010)

*birch sap/syrup*

Your video is great! I've been eying our birch trees for the last few years, thinking about trying to collect the sap and make syrup. Wow, 90:1 on the boil down! Tha't a lot of work. Thanks for showing us it can be done! You're inspiring!


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## TechAdmin (Oct 1, 2008)

That was great video. I didn't realize birch had so many uses.


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## *Andi (Nov 8, 2009)

:bump:
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## mosquitomountainman (Jan 25, 2010)

We did it one year. It takes a long time to boil it down and an unbelievable amount of sap! The syrup taste a lot like molasses so if you don't like molasses you probably won't like birch syrup.


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