Actually, my favorite use is probably ice cream." “You can mix it with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and make a nice salad dressing. “I like to use it on meat – salmon and red meat,” Moore said. The next spoonful, of Moore’s own New Hampshire birch syrup, was very different: dark and thick like molasses, with a tangy, savory flavor. The beech syrup had a mild, sweet flavor – almost indistinguishable, at least to this reporter, from maple syrup. “I'm always interested to see what people think of it."
“Let's start with the beech,” Moore said, pouring a caramel-colored spoonful.
NHPR Beech sap steams down into syrup in a pot in Lee. Part of Moore’s study at UNH aims to find the best processing techniques for these more finicky, less tested saps.įor a taste test, he produced two tiny glass bottles – one of birch syrup he made a few years ago, and one of beech syrup from New York-based New Leaf, run by Moore’s friend Mike Farrell. In the driveway of his house in Lee, he was steaming off some beech and sycamore syrup in big metal pots – the way maple syrup is boiled in a sugar shack. “But once I figured it out, I started tapping a lot more trees and selling syrup, and it turned out to be pretty good tasting syrup." "The first year or two were a real learning curve for me,” Moore said. It took a while for him fine-tune the process – these species don't like all the same temperatures and equipment as maples. Moore did that successfully for six years with his business, the Crooked Chimney, which sold syrups like birch and beech at farmers markets and to restaurants. "If you can think of some economical use – if you can make syrup from them, that would be a nice way to actually generate a little profit from them,” Moore said. It’s found throughout New Hampshire's forests, farms and sugar bushes – almost like a tree weed. So Moore sees untapped potential in other common species, like the American beech. Researchers say monocultures, like the all-maple syrup industry, are more at risk from climate change, pests and other unpredictable threats. Nearby, a bucket collected the resulting sap, while other equipment gathered weather data. “You can see I have three trees with sensors here that are all tied back to one data logger," Moore said, pointing to the tubes and wires running from the beech trunks. NHPR Sap flow sensors gather data from a beech tree in Lee.
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