April 2024
April is birch syrup season in the boreal forest of Alaska’s interior. It’s a busy time for the Alaska-owned Kahiltna Birchworks, one of the world’s largest birch syrup makers. Company founders Michael and Dulce East started the business over 30 years ago from their remote homestead near Talkeetna, and in 2023 they sold it to Hammers Family Birch in Wasilla.
“We have a great relationship with the Easts,” says Ted Hammers, the CEO and co-founder of Hammers Family Birch. “They helped with our 2024 harvest and trained us about the business.”
While pure birch syrup is their signature product sold around the world, they also produce birch-based condiments and candies and supply to both local and national breweries, including Denali Brewing Company for its seasonal OneTree Birch Beer.
Hammers also now owns Alaska Wild Harvest. Another creation of the Easts, the company buys wild Alaskan berries from independent harvesters to produce a suite of jams and syrups. They include blueberry, lingonberry, and mixed berry jams, raspberry rhubarb syrup, cranberry sauce, and more.
Hammers is excited about all the brands, but birch is his passion. April, he says, is when the trees begin thawing from the long winter and pulling water from the ground to grow their buds. The resulting sap is loaded with vitamins and minerals. His company’s high-tech automated system of taps and tubes brought in 135,000 gallons of sap last year from 5,500 trees. About 100 gallons of sap make one gallon of syrup.
Hammers calls it a sustainable form of “wild agriculture” that does not harm the trees. And he’s excited to make birch sap’s health benefits available in a new fermented birch brew he describes as a little like kombucha.
“It’s a naturally effervescent beverage rich in electrolytes, antioxidants, and vitamins,” he says.
Check them out at www.alaskabirchsyrup.com
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