There are many good reasons to collect and use birch sap - the most common uses are for beer, wine and syrup, but birch sap straight from the tree is reputed to be good for digestion, provide extra energy and nutrients, and be helpful in treating hayfever. It is also said to be good applied externally to wounds and burns, being a sterile and cooling medium containing natural antiseptic properties. So of course the question arises - how do I get hold of some?
Equipment (per tree)
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Length of flexible piping 15-20mm diameter (from plumbing shop/homebrew supplies)
Plastic bottles (2l soft drink bottles are great)
Gaffer tape
Drill (with drill bit 1-2mm SMALLER than your piping).
Corks
Sharp Knife
The time to go birch tapping is in late spring - you should be looking out for buds appearing on birch trees - where I am some trees have just begun open their new green leaves, but the ones we tapped were just before the leaf stage. A friend who was tapping in Kent told me he tapped successfully around March 15th this year - for me in Edinburgh, it was April 10th, so you can work it out for where you are
Look for a tree that is at least 8-10 inches in diameter, any smaller and you risk damaging the tree.
Find a point about 1-2 feet off the ground, which does not have any branches, knots or rough bark. Begin to drill a hole (VERY SLOWLY!) into the tree - drilling fast creates friction and heat which cauterises the hole, preventing sap flow. Make sure you drill up at a slight angle up into the tree so the sap runs out the hole.
You only need to drill max 2-3 inches into the tree - at first you will get 'normal' sawdust but then it turns sticky and pulpy with the sap - clear the hole out with the drill bit and the sap should begin to drip out (this is the exciting bit!) It runs surprisingly fast if you've got the trees at the right time. If you're too early in the season, then nothing will run out. In this case, simply fit a cork to the hole and go back every few days to see if the sap is running yet, and continue when it starts to flow.
Force a length of piping (about 8-12 inches) into the tree - it needs to be tight so that the sap doesn't escape around the edge of the pipe.
Put the free end of the pipe into the top of the bottle, and add a bit of gaffer to stop rain/flies etc getting in. Then gaffer tape the bottle securely to the tree (if the tree has a bit of ivy on it, this can be very helpful in securing the bottle).
It should look like this when in place:
(you can see a bit of sap collecting in the bottom already). Note the white speckles on the bark just below the pipe - this is drops of sap that have oozed out around the pipe and are dripping down the tree - this came from using a 16mm drill bit and 15mm pipe on the first tree. For the others, we use a 13mm bit and 15mm pipe.
We tapped 4 trees in this way, and left them overnight to collect the sap (you'll see it collecting very quickly, and in the 30 minutes it took us to tap all four trees an inch or so of sap had collected in the first bottle).
You should ideally go back every 24 hours or so to check on the bottles, for our trees, 24 hours was enough to collect around 2 litres from each tree. When you're done, take some wine corks, shave them down with a knife to the size of the hole, and wedge these in when you take the pipe out. If you don't do this the tree will continue bleeding, risking infection or pests which could damage the tree.
You can collect up to a gallon (4.5 litres) per tree, but we decided that 2 litres was enough - we didn't want to be greedy!
Remember, no matter how excited you are at collecting vast quantities of sap, don't get too exuberant if you're in a fairly public park, since little old ladies will stop you and ask you what you're doing to those poor trees
(Me on left, accomplice on right)
Once you get the sap home, you'll need to do something with it. You can make wine, beer, or syrup, but wine is the easiest and is more satisfying (in my experience anyway). Birch sap doesn't have enough sugar in it to make syrup worthwhile (1:100 ratio means 1 litre sap makes 10ml syrup
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Anyway, here is my wine recipe - birch wine is very easy to make, and is very drinkable when young, so you don't need to wait months and months for it to mature.
Ingredients
4 Litres Birch Sap
1.2kg sugar
1 Lemon
1 Orange
Yeast and Nutrient
250g raisins
Bring the sap to the boil, add the orange and lemon peel, and raisins and simmer for 15-20 minutes. Take off the heat and dissolve in the sugar, and add the juice from the fruit.
Leave to cool to body heat. Add the yeast and nutrient, and strain into demijohns (add 2-3 tbsp of raisins into the demijohns with the liquid). Fir airlocks and keep in a warm place until initial fermentation ceases (4-6 weeks). Rack into fresh demijohns, leave to settle to ensure any secondary fermentation has stopped, then bottle.
Leave to mature for 2-3 months minimum.
Hope this is all of use to people - if I've missed anything obvious, let me know and I'll edit this post to include the extra information.
