The warm temperatures in the last weeks has caused a Kispiox Valley business to stop their production of birch syrup early.
Pauline Gomez and Jim Fowler produce a pure birch syrup from trees on their property near Pentz Lake. They normally tap their birch trees for two to three weeks between mid-April and mid-May, give or take a week or two. This year they had to shut down production after only 10 days due to warm weather.
“When the sap first starts to run it is clear and cool. It’s great to drink straight from the tree,” said Jim.
“When it gets warm the sap changes to a milky colour, it gets an odour, and it starts to taste funny. If you use it you get a bad product. Each tree is also different in timing and quality.”
When the weather forecast that higher temperatures were coming, Jim and Pauline took shifts keeping the woodstoves burning throughout the night to get the good quality sap reduced to a sweet brown syrup. Unlike other birch syrup producers, they do not add sugar to their syrup, so it must be watched constantly as it evaporates. For them, it takes about 180 litres of sap to get one litre of their pure syrup.
“Between the two of us we can produce about two litres of pure syrup a day if we stay up all night. One side benefit of working 24 hours is that all the extra moisture and heat from evaporating the sap does well for the plants in our attached commercial greenhouse,” said Jim.
This is their seventh year doing this commercially. The quality of their product and their environmentally sustainable method was recognized earlier this year at the 2018 BC Pacific Agro Forestry Show where they were asked to present a seminar on their operation.
This year their pure birch syrup was again featured on TV and radio as one of the outstanding niche products in the B.C. food industry. Their syrup is also featured in a recipe in award-winning chef Ned Bell’s book Lure released last September.
Currently their syrup is in use in many high-end restaurants throughout B.C. Recently, executive chef Adam Hunter of Nautical Nellies restaurant in Victoria emailed them saying, “Hi Jim, we just want to show you the dish we are using your awesome product on. Halibut tasting on spring pea puree. We are using the birch syrup over the strawberry & pomegranate salsa.”
Locally, their syrup is used at Telly’s restaurant in Smithers. It is also available at the Hazelton and Smithers’ Farmers Markets and at their farm in the Kispiox. They also have more information and recipes on their website, kispioxbirchsyrup.com.
-Submitted article
