This is my weirdest culinary experiment so far…
I pruned a birch tree in my backyard last week, and imediately sap started pouring out of this tree, I didn’t think much of it other than it seemed like a waste that this sap was pouring out of the tree and that I was going to have to power wash the deck after the sap stopped flowing. if it weren’t for my friend Mike who mentioned that you could make syrup from birch sap I wouldn’t be writing this, Mike also helped me immensely trimming the trees. Then my wife put a bucket under the tree to catch the run off and the next thing I know I’m dumping the bucket onto the stove and making syrup. I originally thought making birch syrup was like making maple syrup (which I’ve done many moons ago) but that’s not the case, it turns out making the syrup is a rather delicate process, so I burned my first batch. So far the second and third batches have worked out, and the syrup has a great fresh taste like maple syrup fresh out of the kettle. The other thing that should be noted: you need to reduce the syrup by a ratio of 80 to 1 which means I’ll only be making a few ounces but it’s been a learning exercise, I’m not wasting a natural resource and the syrup is pretty damn tasty.
For more on birch syrup see this rather authoritative page.