Birch sap Question

[BushTucker]

Hi all

After watching the boss the other night I pondered over something he had shown. He tapped a hole in a silver birch during the spring, drained the sap and drank it.

Now, bear in mind my lack of skills with trees.

Can this be done also with the downy birch and are there any other uses for this sap once collected.

Cheers all

Don

[nicodiemus]

Brew it up with spruce needles in your chally mug!

Don't quote me, but i THINK it might be sterile? If that's so, you could use it to bathe wounds, i suppose.

[rancid badger]

you can make;
beer, wine and syrup although the conversion rate for the syrup isn't too good at about 85-90 to 1! in other words, to get a pint of syrup, you need to boil down about 80 pints of sap.
there will be other stuff you can make I imagine-I've only ever bothered to drink it but a local chap had a go at the wine and reckoned it's taste left something to be desired but that it blew his head off!.

As far as downy birch goes, I've tapped it alongside silver birch and didn't notice any difference. There are a few points that Rayvon might not have mentioned- don't tap a tree of less than a foot or 30cm diameter, it's best to tap the tree on the south facing side and I always use a live hazel stick to make my plugs-this last one is just me but live wood is less likely to be infected with fungal spores.

I have a rather neat design for a collection bottle made from pop bottles, I'll post it up if I can find the photo's.:D

Hope this helps
regards
R.B.

[rancid badger]

if you don't want massive amounts of sap then this set up is ideal:
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x125/stalch/bottleresized.jpg
it's made from two 2ltr spring water bottles from tesco's these happen to be square rather than cylindrical, it doesn't matter, the process is the same; top off one goes into the bottom of the other. leave the bottle top off the internal one! T
Then all I did was melt a load of holes around the edge-(melt rather than drill etc for better strength and durability)- stitch it round and fit a hanging cord. All the materials used are recycled-the blue cord around the rim was made from toilet roll pack handle tape and the heavier white cord from pallet wrapping.
At peak output this fills in about 2 hrs, giving roughly 1.5 ltrs.

you can make it easier to use by fitting a"sports type" bottle top, the type you have to pull open, then push back in to close.

Oh and if you attach a longer length of chord to it, shove a bit of bread crust inside then fill with water and finally chuck it into your nearest minnow filled stream, you will find it makes an excellent minnow trap-filling with minnows within a couple of minutes!

Regards
R.B.

[Nightwalker]

Last spring was my first time at collecting the sap from a Silver-Birch. I simply used a small wood-chipping (half-thumb size) crafted sharp and clean, I then stabbed my knife blade at a upward angle into the trunk, then pushed the wood-chipping in the slit followed by a bottle strapped to the tree below. Left for about 45mins and collected all that I needed. Nice :)

[nicodiemus]

I never thought of fermenting this stuff. That's a damned good idea.

[match]

There's a quick howto thread I posted a while ago here:

http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5623

complete with birch sap wine recipe, and dodgy photo of our spoils :o

[BushTucker]

Well, thanks all for your comments. Do I understand this correctly then, if needed you could survive on birchsap if no water was available?
Would there be a limit for amount of time on above question?

Thanks

[nicodiemus]

Thanks Match. Nice dodgy pics. ;)

[big_swede]

Well, thanks all for your comments. Do I understand this correctly then, if needed you could survive on birchsap if no water was available?
Would there be a limit for amount of time on above question?

Thanks

Birch don't grow in really dry areas. If there are birches around you will be able to find water more easily. A faster way of collecting fluid from a birch is to chop it down in slope, cut of the crown and collect the fluids from the cut (where the crown used to be obviously), this also works when it's not spring. Spring being the only time when it's possible to collect sap the 'usual' way.

[rancid badger]

Well, thanks all for your comments. Do I understand this correctly then, if needed you could survive on birchsap if no water was available?
Would there be a limit for amount of time on above question?

Thanks

The thing with birch sap is that it only flows for a short period in spring- it blasts up the tree to get it into leaf and then the leaves take over from there.

I avoid drinking more than about half a ltr at a time of the raw sap as it seems to give me the skid pan shufflers blues!( the shxxs) the other thing is, it doesn't seem to keep that well either. I keep it in the fridge or actually freeze it.

big swedes idea of chopping down the tree seems a bit drastic when looking at it from the comfort of a desk and chair but obviously, in the field in Sweden or such like,I suppose it may well be a viable option for safe water sourcing.

Regards
R.B.

[BushTucker]

Many tahnks for your advice on this guys, much appreciated.

Cheers

Don

[Nightwalker]

Do I understand this correctly then, if needed you could survive on birchsap if no water was available? Would there be a limit for amount of time on above question?Easy tiger!... this stuff dosent grow on trees you know :p Its seemingly good for you, just a shame its only available for a short period of time normally. 2-3 weeks I think and it can start flowing in different parts of the country at different times (still roughly the same time) due to local weather being colder or warmer.

[Boon]

I did this for the first time this year, I didnt get a lot but after reading the advise posted on here, hopefully next years harvest will be a lot better. i made some pine needal tea, the rest was made in to ice cubes and will be added to my favorite tipple (sloe whiskey) christmas day and new year.