The birch sap season has begun: how to make champagne from it

The first half of April is the time when trees are preparing to bloom their leaves. This means it’s time to collect and drink birch sap – the most Russian of “forest delicacies”. It is extremely important to follow simple collection rules so as not to destroy beautiful trees and not run into a large fine. MK found out how to properly collect birch sap from trees and in what form it can be used until mid-summer.

Collecting birch sap is a tradition that, like almost all folk cooking, did not originate from a good life. Spring is the time when the food supplies stored last fall are almost gone, and in the old village they were therefore looking for any opportunity to feed themselves with something fresh. The textbook “here comes quinoa, it will be easier” – birch sap is from this series, only in liquid form and one of the earliest gifts of nature.

And for those who, at least in childhood, saw Soviet trade and the food industry, birch sap is remembered as endless rows of three-liter jars in stores (it is still sold today, you just have to look for it). To the actual liquid obtained from birch tree scraps in the spring, sugar was added for sweetness and citric acid for taste – so the result was something like the current “drinking water with lemon”, sold as a healthy alternative to Coca-Cola.

One way or another, it’s probably worth joining the tradition of collecting and drinking birch sap in the spring at least once in your life. True, for this to happen, some important conditions must meet.

A little theory: birch sap is the same liquid that birch roots “pump” into the trunk to nourish the swelling buds and blossoming leaves. The period of sap flow is the end of March and the beginning of April (this year spring is late, so April is the height of the season). If at this time you make a hole in the birch bark, the sap will drip vigorously, and in some cases even flow in a trickle. From an adult birch tree you can get 2 – 3 liters of sap per day, and if the tree is large, then more.

Here we encounter the first limitations of modern life. Firstly, both by law and common sense, you cannot touch young trees – they need the juices completely for their intended purpose. Yes, you can get more liquid from old birch trees. Secondly, in Moscow, in specially protected areas, in green areas and even just in front gardens – in general, nowhere – birch sap cannot be extracted: it is prohibited by regional legislation, as damage to green spaces (fine 3,500 rubles). Mospriroda inspectors are monitoring this.

Outside of Moscow, you also need to be careful: the extraction of birch sap in nature reserves and nature reserves, botanical and hospital gardens is prohibited. And industrial extraction of birch sap is permitted only in those birch forests that are planned to be cut down in the next five years.

So, you need to choose a forest near Moscow that is not a nature reserve. And in it there is a tree at least 20 cm thick and without visible damage to the bark. Our ancestors used an ax to extract birch sap – one small cut and a groove to drain the liquid into the reservoir. But our ancestors did almost everything with an axe—and our contemporaries, who are less skilled at this instrument than they, were better off not doing this. You can damage the tree too much.

A more suitable method for our time is this: using a cordless drill, we drill a neat hole in the bark with a diameter exactly the size of the transparent tube from the dropper. We insert this “catheter” tightly into the tree, and lower the end of the tube into the bottle. After collecting the juice, we plug the “catheter” with a suitable-sized wooden stopper and cover it with garden varnish or plasticine.

Birch sap, first of all, is a delicacy in itself: it is a liquid with a delicate and fresh taste, which is definitely worth trying “by the glass” in its pure form. But in order to somehow process it (this was especially important for our ancestors, who collected sap from many trees at once), the sap is boiled – this makes it sweeter – and fermented. The result is a special drink – birch kvass. It is just as fresh, but also with a slight “degree”.

“The simplest birch kvass does not take long to prepare: a jar of birch sap is fermented with several raisins and left to ferment for one to two weeks,” notes Russian cuisine researcher Maxim Syrnikov. – Final ripening under a tight lid occurs within a month. A richer berezovitsa is obtained by boiling the sap for two hours. It is also best to ferment such condensed juice with raisins.”

According to Syrnikov, in the old days several varieties of fermented drinks were made based on birch sap. In particular, even “champagne wine from birch trees” was known – Nikolai Yatsenkov mentioned it in his “Newest and Complete Cookbook” of 1790.

The modern recipe for “Russian champagne” is as follows: for 12 liters of birch sap, a little over 2 kg of sugar, 5 grams of citric acid, 100 grams of raisins or wine yeast, 50 grams of honey.

First you need to make a raisin starter (raisins, sugar and water or birch sap for 4 days in a jar covered with gauze, keep until foam and a yeasty smell appear). Next, boil the birch sap with citric acid and sugar to 75% of the initial volume. Cool the wort to 25 degrees, add the starter along with raisins, add honey, mix and pour the wort into a fermentation container.

What follows is the process of making fruit wine, familiar to many gardeners, under a water seal or a glove with a hole in the finger. Fermentation should take place in a dark place with a temperature of up to 25 degrees for 20 – 40 days. After this, 10 grams of sugar are added per 1 liter of volume, the liquid is drained from the remainder through a straw and bottled. After 7 – 10 days, the drink is ready, its strength is 7 – 10 degrees, and can be consumed within six months.