Does your Father’s Day include plans to spoil Dad with a homemade breakfast like a big stack of waffles or pancakes, or maybe a platter of French toast? If you celebrate later in the day, will there be grilled meats and vegetables basted with a sweet glaze?
For any of those dishes, maple syrup may be the first sweetener that comes to mind. But syrup can be made from many trees, including birch, poplar, black walnut and hickory.
“I didn’t know hickory syrup existed until I was at a festival in North Carolina and met a couple selling it,” said Beth Palmer of Clarkesville’s Sutton Mill Creek Syrup Co. in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I bought some for gifts and shared it with my husband Bruce. We liked it and thought making hickory syrup just might be the project we wanted to take on in our retirement,” Palmer said. “I did research on the history of hickory syrup and how it’s made and learned people can be secretive about the process. With some trial and error, we came up with our own version.”
With her syrup recipe perfected, Palmer took classes and studied the regulations required to produce a food product they could sell in Georgia and across state lines. They named the company for Sutton Mill Creek, where they live. The Palmers have now been selling hickory syrup for almost 10 years.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Making hickory syrup
Hickory syrup can be used in all the same ways as maple syrup, but the production process is entirely different.
To make maple syrup, maple trees are “tapped” by drilling holes in the tree trunks and collecting the sap that drains from the holes. The collected sap is concentrated by boiling it down to a syrupy consistency.
Hickory syrup is made by boiling the bark of hickory trees, often the shagbark hickory, although other hickory species can be used. The process of making hickory syrup varies by producer, but Beth Palmer boils the bark for several hours, then adds sugar to the strained mixture since the bark is not inherently sweet. The result is an amber-colored syrup with a smoky, caramelized flavor.
Restrictions to keep invasive pests from spreading generally prohibit transporting bark and firewood across state lines so the Palmers are only able to use hickory bark that is grown and harvested in Georgia.
Since they don’t have a stand of hickory trees, they gather bark that has shed naturally from other properties in North Georgia and from a local sawmill that strips the bark from the hickory trees they process.
“We often trade out bark for syrup. One of our sources enjoys it so much he drinks it right out of the bottle,” Palmer said with a laugh. She added that her family takes pride in making something delicious from what others might consider a waste product.
Nine flavors made in small batches
Sutton Mill Creek Syrup’s busiest season is May through November.
“We want our syrup to be as fresh as possible, so we make it in small batches as we need it for retail and wholesale, and the events we attend.” Palmer said.
Making syrup takes about three days from start to finish and produces enough for three or four dozen 8-ounce bottles at a time.
Bourbon hickory syrup was her first variation on the original flavor, soon followed by pecan hickory syrup, which has become their best seller. The Palmers now produce nine flavors, including one that gets a kick from the addition of smoked habanero pepper powder.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
How the Palmers enjoy their syrup
The company website offers recipes for beverages, breakfast, marinades and sauces, entrees, sides and desserts, all developed by Palmer and tested with their syrups. “We like our hickory syrup with French toast but we enjoy the French toast for dinner more often than we eat it for breakfast. And we really enjoy the syrup in savory dishes, using as a glaze for vegetables and grilled or baked meats like the glazed pork chops on the website. And it’s great on ice cream and in coffee,” said Palmer.
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