Method
Making birch syrup is more difficult than making maple syrup, requiring about 80 to 110 liters of sap to produce one liter of syrup (more than twice that needed for maple syrup). The tapping window for birch is generally shorter than for maple, primarily because birches live in more northerly climates. The trees are typically tapped and their sap collected in the spring (generally mid- to late April, about two to three weeks before the leaves appear on the trees). Birches have a lower trunk and root pressure than maples, so the pipeline or tubing method of sap collection used in large maple sugaring operations is not as useful in birch sap collection.
The sap is reduced in the same way as maple sap, using reverse osmosis machines and evaporators in commercial production. While maple sap may be boiled down without the use of reverse osmosis, birch syrup is difficult to produce this way: the sap is more temperature sensitive than is maple sap because fructose burns at a lower temperature than sucrose, the primary sugar in maple sap. This means that boiling birch sap to produce syrup can much more easily result in a scorched taste.
Read more about this topic: Birch Syrup
Famous quotes containing the word method:
“The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“The method of painting is the natural growth out of a need. I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.... I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end.”
—Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)
“You know, I have a method all my own. If you’ll notice, the coat came first, then the tie, then the shirt. Now, according to Hoyle, after that the pants should be next. There’s where I’m different. I go for the shoes next. First the right, then the left. After that, it’s every man for himself.”
—Robert Riskin (1897–1955)