Is anyone collecting Birch sap yet?
by Steve Medlock » Wed Mar 02, 2011 3:53 pm
I collected some last year but it wasn't what I was expecting. It just tasted like stale water. Did I do something wrong?
by Steve Medlock » Fri Mar 11, 2011 5:37 pm
I seem to be great at terminating threads - perhaps I'd better start some in compensation!
by Henrietta » Sun Mar 13, 2011 11:01 am
Hi Steve, I did the same as you. I collected some birch sap and decided it was more or less just water. I don't know what I was expecting, maybe something like maple syrup ha ha!. Anyway I ended up throwing it away, which I regret now. Like elderflower fizz, it gets most of the flavour from lemon and sugar. I might give it another go as this is the right time to collect the sap.
by The Barrowers » Sun Mar 13, 2011 9:18 pm
Hello, The sap should start rising soon.
Only used it as a mouth wettner last year in the last fellings (a bit late). Others do it full on and tap the sap and bottle it. (you tube and they use a tube and a demi john)
Any one that attended the Waste Wood soiree prior to Christmas 2010 would have had the chance to sample a Birch Sap import from Lithuania. It is sold in 3 litre bottles in the "corner shop" as a drink. It has a preservative (I think, my lithuanian is limited) and it has no added sugar. It's light, refreshing and thirst quenching.
by Stephen1 » Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:23 pm
You can drink Birch Sap if you want - but let's be honest it's pretty much just like drinking slightly 'rusty' water.
If you collect enough you can make something very similar to maple syrup. about 30 litres of birch sap will make 1 litre of birch syrup (yes you reduce it thirtyfold!)
I collect the sap, put it in a huge jamming pan which I just boil a nd boil away- keep adding more sap and eventually you'll get your syrup. BAsically you're just boiling off all the water and leaving behind the sugar. It's very easy and fantastic on crumpets or pancakes. The only tricky bit is making sure it doesn't caramelise too much once it starts to thicken and move less freely in the pan.
The syrup you get from reducing down sycamore sap is if anything even better.
I have done it using a tripod to hold the pan over a fire whilst I was working in the wood - I'm pretty experienced at managing a fire well for cooking, but even so it took me two days to reduce nearly 40 litres of sycamore sap to about one litre of syrup!
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