How You Can Make Gum From a Douglas Fir Tree (w/ an air fryer too!)

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    The gum from trees is not only free but there are also medical benefits to doug-fir needles as well as the resin. There are also benefits to chewing gum, especially gum is hard to chew like this one, which strengthens jaw muscles and the muscles of the face which then make the breath-ways expand, leading to more effective breathing anyways, according to a chapter in one of my favorite books, Breath the science of a lost art, by James Nestor.


Resin and pitch are the same thing, but resin/pitch is not sap.

Required Items, starting with collecting the resin:

*Note: Anything you use will get a bunch of resin on it and it is very difficult to remove, so it is best to use stuff and keep it for making tree gum 
  • Douglas fir (or other resin producing conifer) resin
  • A knife to collect the resin (it is very sticky and I do not recommend touching the resin before you cook it)
  • A container for collecting resin (I use a small glass jars)

And then for cooking/heating the resin and straining the debris (insects, bark, lichen) out of the resin 

  • A means of heating it (i.e. airfryer, oven, closed lid on a stovetop, on top of a fire, anything that can get above 180°F
  • A container for the unheated resin to flow into
  • A mesh for the stuff to go through (I used cheesecloth, I have also heard of people using old clothes or coffee filters)
  • Container with water to cool the resin
  • A spoon for putting the hot, gooey resin into cold water (it will become your resin spoon)


The Process:

1. Harvest the gum from a Douglas fir, most conifers have some kind of resin that can be used for gum. Be respectful to the tree and don't take too much, the tree needs it to patch its wounds, but it does tend to generate excess.

2. Put the container with the resin upside down in a slightly larger mason jar with a cheesecloth that the resin flowed through, but anything similar would work, I have seen people use tin cans and poke holes in it, but with that you need to be careful that the can has no inner plastic lining (BPA free or something similar will be marked on the can)

3. Heat it up (I turned my air-fryer to about 360°F)

4. Watch it as it heats up, it is cool to watch it flow into a more liquid form, be careful not to touch it when it is very hot.

5. After most of the flow has stopped (time will vary depending on how much resin you had), you can scoop the hot gooey resin with a spoon and put it in water. It will rapidly cool and harden forming an amber, glass-like structure that you can either mold (if warm) or break (if very hard) into gum sized bites

6. Chew! You can chew the same piece of gum for days and it will not lose its flavor, I also enjoy how it breaks at first and then reforms as you chew it and it warms up in your mouth. The gum also has antimicrobial properties!


And that's it! This really is a simple process! You never need to pay for gum again!







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