Tapping Birch Trees

[jdlenton]

Hi all

There have been a lot of mentions about tapping birch trees and the uses for its sap in varying threads but I can't find a dedicated thread on the subject so I thought I would start one.

I've never tapped a tree or even tried any sap but I would really like to. None of my reading material goes into enough depth for me to be confident in tapping a tree, so I thought I would tap the wealth of knowledge here on BCUK before i go out and try.

So my questions to start with are;

How do I choose a tree to tap?

How do I tap a tree without harming it?

What kit do I need to tap the tree?

What can I do with the sap once I have it, how do I store it, any good recipes etc?

over to you guys J*

[match]

Well, you beat me to it - I've just finished tapping some birch trees here in Edinburgh, and have completed the process of turning this into fermenting birch sap wine. I'm planning on posting a tutorial on how this went, complete with pictures, but I've not got them off my digital camera yet... So watch this space everyone!

[bambodoggy]

Hey There,

As soon as Martin (Shinobi) comes on line I'm sure he'll be more than happy to tell you all about it.
I do a little tapping myself but tend to just drink what I tap as soon as it fills my mug...lol Martin makes wine and all sort from the sap he collects and where I collect a bit here and there in my mug, Martin uses demijars to collect his!

I have to say unless you live right up north like Match does then you've pretty much missed this years season.
You need to collect it when "the sap is rising"....and this is typically late Feb to Early March...i.e when the tree is pumping the stuff up in great quantities ready for the spring growth spurts. When the buds start to show then the sap will have stopped rising and it's too late to collect really.

Hope that's of a little help to you....as I say Martin and others on here will be able to tell you more.

Cheers,

Bam.

EDIT: Sorry I didn't even look at answering your questions!

1) Pretty much any healthy tree is fine to tap but the larger the tree the more sap it will give you and the more it is able to spare before causing the tree problems.
2) There are numerous ways to tap...the easiest is to make two 2" cuts to form a "V" and use your knife point to drill a hole at the bottom of the V, then insert a hardwood peg you've carved about 1/4" diametre and about 2" long, then hang you collection pot under that and leave it too it. Or you could use a 2" bit of thin metal pipping and just hammer that in about 1/4" to 1/2" depending on the size tree (you're aiming to get to the sap transportation part of the inner bark ideally).
3) You shouldn't damage the tree using the two above methods but just be respectful and after you pull the plugs out repair the hole...use some pine resin to glue some of the birch paper bark over the holes to help protect it while the tree heals itself (bit like a sticky plaster for us humans). Under NO circumstances cut the bark in a complete ring around the tree (and theres no reason to do this for tapping anyway) or you will cut off the flow of sap to the rest of the tree above the cut and will kill it.
4) Martins' better to tell you what you can use it for but to get you going; you can drink it neat. Make bear or wine out of it by letting it ferment (Match's tutorial should tell you all this when he posts it - I'm looking forward to reading that myself Match ) or boil it down to make birch syrup or even candy but bear in mind that this takes a lot of doing...eg, you'll get one litre of syrup for every 100 litres of sap collected (with maple it can be as good as 1 to 40 but birch isn't as good).

Right...hope that helps a little bit more

[match]

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)
------------------------------

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 )

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.

[Gary]

http://www.bushcraftuk.com/community...?searchid=2408

Hope this helps - its something we have talked about many many times!!

[jdlenton]

Thanks Match nice post

Thanks Garry I did the same search my self but wanted to know more

J*

[Gary]

No worries mate, have you tried it yet?

Nows a good time of year to try!

[Tony]

Those of you that do get out see if you can get some pictures as well, the gallery will be back up in a while and other than that you can attach some pics. Tapping sap is one of those things that are much easier to understand if there's something to see, rather than just text.

Saying that, do find out as best you can how to do it so there's the least possible damage to the tree.

It would be interesting to know what you guys do with the asp as well.

Drink it there and then, boil it with other ingredients etc.....

[Gary]

Drink it there and then, boil it with other ingredients etc.....

Yuk - must be a northern drink - boiled wee!

[Stuart]

good post match !!!

[Toddy]

Boiled wee? Never tried it, thankfully But I add some of the meadowsweet I gathered last August and use honey instead of sugar and I make mead with the birch sap.....nectar of the gods, laddie! Somewhere I've got an old 'receipt' for heather ale made using the sap too.
Cheers (literally)

Toddy

[shinobi]

Yup, my method is like Matchs but with a few variations. Unfortunately, my camera is knackered so there are no piccies
I use a brace & bit with a 25mm bit rather than a drill. My reasoning for this is that you make a bigger hole which creates a bigger flow. I use a winemakers cork bung because they have a predrilled hole for the piping and cork is more natural. I use a 1 gallon demi-john as that is the amount needed for the wine and it is a reasonable amount from a tree without damaging it. If you place the demi-john at the base of the tree, you can use a longer piece of pipe and hide the demi-john from prying eyes (Some people object to trees being "damaged" and they might damage/nick your equipment.) When you've finished, you can fit a cork bung (this time without a hole!!) and go back year after year to tap from the same point.

This shows that there's more than one way to tap a tree. But good work Match!! have you made your wine yet? I used the same recipe as you and am looking forward to this years batch

Martin

[match]

Shinobi - thanks for an excellent post in response to mine - I had actually started out deciding to do it that way, then my friend pointed out that we'd need to carry 2 full demijohns by hand about 2 miles - this is when the plastic bottle option came up

I made the wine the day the sap was collected, took about an hour to do (including all the cooling) and is now sat happily going 'bloop' at the foot of my bed - much to my girlfriend's disgust as she can't sleep with all the noise (I personally find the sound of wine being created very relaxing )

Oh, and now I think about it, I'm wishing I had put more bottles up and collected an extra 2 litres from each tree, but only because 2 demijohns worth of wine now doesn't seem enough. Oh well, there's always next year...

[Tony]

Yuk - must be a northern drink - boiled wee!

I thought is was a southern drink

Bearclaw's Spring Foray

One of the joys of spring to our ancestors would have been the chance to eat something other than their meagre dried winter stocks of meat and so it was with me for at the sap began to slowly boil I diced up my nettle tops and dropped them into the steaming liquid to make myself a warm, sweet tasty drink. This done I sat back in the dapple shade and enjoyed my meal the hawthorn leaves adding subtle flavour to the meat and the hedge garlic leaves giving the cheese a onion like lift that improved its flavour no end.

[Tony]

There's some excellent posts in here, it's inspired me to get off the computer for a while and see what I can find

[match]

Your talk of people supplementing their meagre winter stocks with spring greens has reminded me of something related to tree sap.

It is believed that early people discovered tree sap by accident through chopping and felling of certain trees (birch, maple etc) during spring time. The sap would have obviously been of interest to early people and may have been perceived as a 'magical fluid' or a good source of energy as it came from the tree. Some American Indian tribes use these tree saps for both drinks, and for a liquid for cooking foods in, especially meat, as it was believed to give an extra energy to the food. It is likely that this cooking approach will have lead to the discovery of syrups from tree saps from the sweetening effect such saps would have when cooking the meat.

So - who fancies making a stew with a birch sap base instead of stock?