Sapsucker - Skyes’ North Star Cocktail

Situated on the Northern shore of Great Slave Lake, the deepest lake in North America and the tenth-largest lake in the world. 

The waters here were named for the Slave or Slavey First Nations, a part of the Dene family. These groups were known to make and trade knives made from copper deposits near the Arctic Coast and at the time, they were known as the “Yellowknife Indians”.

Home to a variety of resources, Yellowknife was put on the map for its rich gold and later its vast diamond deposits. The location north of the 60th parallel means that summer enjoys weeks of endless daylight where dusk rolls into dawn and the sun never sets, virtually 24 hrs of daylight!

One of the most unique attributes of the region is the Aurora Borealis sex tourism that draws thousands of Japanese travelers here every year. They believe that if a child is conceived under the Northern Lights, it will be blessed with good fortune. If you’ve never seen the Northern Lights, their otherworldly allure will make you believe in magic, mystics, and miracles. 

Welcome to Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories! 

    I was headed here the first week of May, a bit of a dicey time to motorbike North. The upside is you can usually avoid the tourist season and traffic on the only road in and out of Yellowknife; the downside is, that it’s typically still cold with potential for snow this early in spring and there are rarely campgrounds or tourist attractions open, or in my case, none of them were open! This was the spring of 2023 and the unusual conditions would eventually lead to early and seemingly endless wildfires that ripped from one side of the country to the other, including the evacuation of Yellowknife and surrounding areas. Talking to locals here, they said there was a lot of snow, which was typical, but what wasn’t typical is that it seemed to evaporate rather than flood or soak into the ground. “It all just sort of disappeared into thin air,” one of them told me.

    I ended up camping riverside, in closed campgrounds, and next to cell phone towers, a trick I had learned moto-camping in South America. Packing a small electric heater to avoid freezing at night (assuming I was staying at organized campgrounds), I did catch a few breaks. For one, during the day the unusually warm weather and sunshine were much more enjoyable than the snowstorms I rode through in B.C. a couple weeks earlier. Another, was when I arrived at a cell phone tower to set up camp and noticed a plug-in on the exterior of the building at the base of the tower. I’m guessing these are used to plug-in vehicles during the frigid winters. However, in my case, it was used to plug in my heater during the frigid spring night! After overpaying for cell phone plans for more than twenty years now, it felt good to get a little something for free  :) 

I toured Lady Evelyn Falls, managed to catch the last slabs of the ice breaking up on the Mackenzie River, and enjoyed a few sightings of the bison that still roam the forests up here. An animal whose head is the size of my 250 Honda, I opted to take some drone photos rather than trying to ride up and make friends with these behemoths. 
    
The last, and only other time I was on this route, the roads were gravel and the Deh Cho Bridge over the Mackenzie didn’t exist. Instead, a ferry took our little yellow VW van across the water during its final years in service near the completion of the controversial and capital-consuming construction. A bridge whose initial 55 million dollar budget ballooned to over 200 million by its completion.

     My final night of camping headed north, was in an abandoned fish camp not far from Yellowknife. With an inspiring dinner of rice and canned sardines, I decided to walk my empty sardine can a hundred feet up the hill and hang it in a tree for the night, before collecting it in the morning. Early spring typically sees hungry bears waking up and I figured the combination of an old fish camp and an old fish can might attract more attention than I was looking for. Though the day was warm, there was no place to plug in a heater that night and I shivered myself to sleep again.

​My luck with the sleeping arrangements quickly changed as a cousin of mine had sent a message noting his dad was living in Yellowknife. Just like that, the phone rang and I had a reservation at uncle Carls place! Uncle Carl and his partner Pat were 5-star hosts feeding and watering me for several days. Carl even treated me to several of his infamous tours up to Bush Pilot's Monument that overlooks the year round houseboats on the lake. From here we drove out to the start of the Ingraham Trail, the starting point of the ice roads for an explanation on how tractor trailers can drive on ice and an overview on the diamond mines.

Aiming to line up as many food-related activities as possible while in the area, I lucked out and caught the tail end of the Delicious Exhibit at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Center. A photographic food exhibit documenting how people in the north have been preparing food over the generations. Compiled in part and presented by local archivist Erin Suliak. 

Erin spent some time with me explaining the project as well as northern food culture. The photos and stories were fascinating. One photograph depicted a competition amongst ladies in one of the northern villages. They needed to start from scratch, gathering kindling to build and start a fire, then bring a pot of tea to a boil; the first pot to boil was the winner! A practical skill in the north with bragging rights for the winner. ​

Erin walking me through the Delicious Exhibit.

Other photos displayed various hunting, skinning, and cooking techniques reflective of what one might assume you would experience up here. Others required a bit more explanation, namely the photo of a 1980s Colonel Sanders head atop the local KFC franchise. Erin explained that the first ever fast food restaurant in the north was KFC and that signature recipe of fried chicken struck an irresistible chord with locals. In an area not accustomed to fried fast food or a steady supply of chicken for that matter, it became a staple of the community. 

The connection with the Northern Heritage Center led me to the Territorial Agrifood Association, who then pointed me toward Skye Plowman. The stars then aligned and I found myself in an exclusive North Star Cocktail class.

Proudly waving the rainbow flag high in the sky for the N.W.T, I met up with mixologist Syke Plowman counting bottles behind a long wooden bar lined with cocktail glasses in the lounge of the Explorer Hotel. 

Skyes' story of taking a leap of faith to seek out the unknown should strike an inspirational chord with anyone waffling through life right now. After leaving theater life under the big city lights of Toronto, she decided to exit stage left and open the curtain for a dramatically new experience. Arriving in Yellowknife on a twin-propeller plane, Skye landed around midnight in July, surprised it was still light out. Caught even more off guard, like the sun, her plans never really settled during her stay. Initially planning to only spend the summer, ten years later here we are. Skye tells me she loves life in the north, that Yellowknife is super inclusive, and has a huge queer community. Honestly, the words “huge queer community” were not what I was expecting to hear about Yellowknife, but more and more on this trip what I had been led to believe about one part of the country or another was often delightfully inaccurate. More on that when we get to Quebec.  

The unique surprises of the area continue when Skye meets me the next day to showcase a cocktail made from birch syrup and smoked spruce tips. In a beautiful park on the edge of Great Slave Lake, Skye blends local ingredients with international flavors for this uniquely northern cocktail.

Utilizing locally sourced Sapsucker Birch Syrup, I later discovered that birch sap is harvested in a similar fashion to maple syrup, though with a shorter harvesting window and requiring much more birch sap than you would need from a maple tree. A liter of birch syrup requires 100-150 liters of reduced sap, whereas a liter of maple syrup needs on average 40 liters of reduced maple sap. Though both recipes can vary greatly depending on the saps' sugar content.

The closest comparison I could make for the traditionally flavored birch syrup is to that of a runny molasses. A bit sweet, a bit tart, and very robust. Not something your local IHOP is likely to be featuring on International Pancake Day. The flavor is more tuned to the tastes of a gruff gold panner drizzling the reduction over his freshly flipped cast iron flapjacks inside a canvas tent on the edge of the Mackenzie. In a blind taste test, I would have never guessed this syrup had come from a birch tree.

To make the drink: First, a classic cocktail glass is produced somewhere in the 10oz range. To this, you add a 1 ⁄ 4-1 ⁄ 2 teaspoon of birch syrup, followed by 4 dashes of Angostura bitters, a 1/4 oz of water, 1 oz of bourbon, and a dramatically large ice cube. Next, a long bar spoon spins its way through the ingredients until the mixture is chilled throughout. 

From here, Skye peels back a large swath of orange peel noting that in an area that imports its fruits, the $2 cost of the orange was likely more than the price for the bourbon! She then expressed the peel to tease out the orange oils and infuse them into the drink before injecting the final bit of magic into this delightful cocktail. A small satchel of dried spring spruce tips appears. She places ten or so into a cocktail smoker and sets them a light until the glass becomes half cocktail and half spruce tip smoke. Sealing it with a lid, the mixologists' masterpiece is then left to allow the smoke to seduce the rest of the ingredients just long enough to inspire the mix but not overpower it.

A few moments later, the lid is released and the ice cube encased with hot spruce smoke gasps up towards the open air unleashing this amazing North Star Cocktail!

The flavors are sweet, smokey, and robust. As it hits my lips, I get this feeling of sitting next to a campfire on the stump of a birch tree after a long day of harvesting sap and reducing it over the open fire; while smoke from the spruce tips slowly slips away into the spring sunset. 

Recipe:

• 1/2 a teaspoon birch syrup
• 4 dashes of Angostura bitters
• 1/4 oz water
• 1 oz of Bourbon, something sweeter like a Maker’s Mark
• 1 dramatically large ice cube
• Stir heavily to chill the drink
• A large chunk of orange peel is expressed to tease the oils to the top and infuse some of the subtle orange oil flavors. Then add peel to mix
• 10-15 dried spruce tips smoked in a cocktail smoker for one minute
• Remove the smoker lid and enjoy!