Birch Tree Tapping

In April, I had the opportunity to take a class for teachers about teaching environmental subjects - habitat, resource preservation, environmental impact. These were all aimed at elementary kids, and when we completed the class, each of us was given a collection of curriculum for teaching these things to K-12. It was really neat. The class was centered on birch tree tapping, which I had always wanted to know how to do. Infact, most of my interest in ever visiting New England was to learn how to tap maple trees! I was thrilled to be able to learn how to use the trees in my own area, and how to get my kids involved and interested, from a scientific perspective. Explanation out of the way, here are some pictures of our first attempt at tapping birch trees!




From top to bottom: My group-mates at the class, Betsi and Kathy;
Betsi with Cal and Ed, tapping our first tree after the class! ;
Cal tasting the fresh sap;
one of our tree set ups.

I learned a lot about making syrup and tapping trees. Initially, we used my wine making supplies to collect the syrup. We now know that glass, while sterile, will heat up in even a small amount of sunlight, which makes the sap cloudy. Sap needs to be kept cool, and collected daily. Only use food grade buckets for collecting! Second, we were able to keep our taps from the class, which gave us three, and after all the cooking down, everyone ended up with a pint or so of syrup (divided four ways, collected for a week, about 3 gallons collected daily). We did find that it was a higher sap-to-syrup ratio than we had expected, partly because you cannot cook birch down to the consistency of maple or table syrup without sacrificing taste. Cooked down at just under 200 degrees F, it was pretty time consuming. We also discovered that the recommended tapping times vary greatly by area - farther north in the Matsu Valley, they tap in April, and southward in Haines, they tap in early March. We figure that for the peninsula, we should start no later than mid-march and finish mid-April. We caught the season a little late this year (and we had an especially warm spring) and so only tapped for one week.


Recently, my family used up the last of our syrup (goes pretty fast with 5 people eating pancakes!) and it was DELICIOUS! I am ready for next year, already planning how many taps, buckets and hoses to order, as well as planning a better set up for cooking it down. I am addicted! I cant wait to work this into homeschool - data collection, cooking ratio's, charts, charts, charts!




If we get a good amount of syrup, maybe I can even give some away next year :)