LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk Spring 2017

LOCALadk Magazine

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48 Spring 2017 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk A few years ago, my wife and I were enjoying dinner at an up- scale restaurant – the kind that serves tuna tartare, duck confit, and other dishes I am reluctant to try. My palate is not overly adventurous, so I tend to steer my way to more familiar menu items. In this case, I chose a standard cut of steak. Even so, haute cuisine snuck its way onto my plate with a side dish of vegetables glazed with birch syrup. I knew maple syrup, but birch syrup was uncharted territory. I was surprised when that side dish threatened to upstage the main entrée as the highlight of the meal. The glaze was unlike anything I had ever tasted, combining the sweetness of syrup with an earthy profile that is difficult to describe. Some have compared it to caramel, but I think it most closely resembles mo- lasses or horehound candy, only more refined. It was the perfect complement to the vegetables. I wasn't sure how much credit was due the chef and how much belonged to the syrup for this memorable dish. It piqued my curiosity. I wanted more of this flavor. New York State is well known for its maple syrup production. There are is abundance of maple trees in our region, and late winter provides the perfect climate of cold nights and warming days to generate an abundant sap flow. The process is slow, but simple: boil off enough moisture to concentrate the sugar con- tent and you end up with the perfect condiment for pancakes and waffles. The simplicity of the process lures backyard hobby- ists, like myself, to try their hand at small-scale production. For a number of years I have made a batch of maple syrup sufficient to get me through the year. It's been a great way to infuse excite- ment into March, when winter in the Adirondacks is beginning to feel wearisome. So, with the experience I had using my make- shift sugar shack, and with a handful of birch trees around my house, I decided to make my own batch of birch syrup a couple years ago, hoping to bring exotic cuisine into my home cooking. The overlap between processing birch sap and maple sap was helpful. The birch sap run begins at the time the maple sap run is finishing. The same taps and buckets used for my maple sap har- vest could be reused (after washing and sanitizing) for the birch sap flow. The same setup I used for boiling the sap could be used for both varieties, with slight modifications, and the filtering and canning of the final product was much the same. As with maple trees, only mature birch trees should be tapped. The trunk should be at least 10 inches in diameter and only one tap should be used per tree. The larger the crown of the tree, the more sap the tree will produce. Tapping does not harm the tree, since only a small portion of the total sap is collected and plenty is still available for the tree to bloom and continue to grow. I be- gan with five taps, drilled right after I finished my maple harvest. The flow began slowly, and I prepared myself for disappoint- ment. However, within a week the sap was coming so quickly that I was having a hard time keeping my buckets from overflowing. Many people are surprised to discover that it takes 40 gallons of maple sap to produce one gallon of syrup. The sugar content in birch sap, though, is about one third that of maple sap. There- fore, it takes nearly 100 gallons of birch sap to produce one gal- lon of syrup. The sap flow lasts two to three weeks, with each tap producing a gallon or more a day when the flow is at its heaviest. Concentrating the sap into syrup is a slow process, due to the amount of fluid that must be boiled off, but if it's not done soon after harvesting, the sap will begin to spoil. The sugar in birch sap is primarily fructose, while maple sap is primarily sucrose. This impacts the production because fructose burns at a lower temperature than sucrose. When you process maple sap you can evaporate it at a hard boil and not worry about affecting the flavor. If you do the same with birch sap, the sugar will begin to caramelize and your syrup will have an unpleasant Backyard Birch Syrup By Phil Huber Phil Huber Nancie Battaglia Phil Huber

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