Firefighter Having a Bit of Trouble

Nothing new
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_syrup

Birch Wine made from the sap is as old as wine itself and rather quite delicious

He should also be aware that it will take a lot of sap to make syrup- for maple syrup, I think you wind up with about 1/40 of the original volume. So his half liter of sap would produce about a tablespoon of finished syrup.

@ Humos - if you read the entire link, you would have read that he knows it is nothing new.
@ Jim - yeah, he knows that it takes a lot of sap to produce the syrup. It is in the link.

@Humos that Wikipedia link is not entirely accurate (well, duh). Birch sap isn't used generally for flavouring wine as such, it's been used for centuries to make fermented drinks (not strictly wine) for centuries.

In Lithuania it's natural thing to drink birch sap every spring :)

I don't know how many times I've scrolled past this item today and it looked like "bitch slap".

Miss Cellania, I did the same thing. And was thinking, "What does a bag of water on a stick have to do wi- ...Oh."

First time I've seen mention in Western media of this very common drink here in Eastern Europe. It's supposed to be very healthy but doesn't have much flavor. We got a couple bottles this spring with lemon slices in it- which helps tremendously. The park I walk in most days is full of birch trees and nearly every tree was tapped- plastic 2 liter bottles of every kind and ilk attached to a metal spigot and collecting sap. It seemed that it was mostly ordinary citizens doing the tapping. We had a lot of wind and it wasn't unusual to see other people in the park line bottles up with their spigots if they got knocked away.
just some birch tree sap trivia... thanks for the post!

Here in Finland its a tradition to make a very nice, fresh tasting drink out of birch sap. It has a lot of Xylitol in it and protects you from tooth-ache and ear infections :-)