A very long time ago I read the Little House on the Prairie books and that was when I first became fascinated with the idea of tapping trees for sap and making syrup for pancakes and general sweetening but now, with all this brewing and country wine making I have been planning on making birch sap wine for a while now. I"d say it all starts with getting the sap but let's be honest; it starts with finding a recipe to try then we go to the sap searching.
I found a big wide tree a while back that I would like to tap so that when the day came I was ready to go as soon as I carved my 'tap' although you can buy them (amazon- tree sap taps) but being me I would like to do this with the minimum of expense and felt like I wanted to try to carve the tap too.
Using Rowan (white mountain ash) I cut a small section of live branch before peeling it and starting to cut the groove. My aim was to create something that was 'U' shaped for the sap to trickle down.
After doing this I used a brace to drill a hole in the tree at an upwards angle. I did a little a time to make sure it was not too deep; I do not want to harm the tree at all which is why a large tree was chosen and why I will not be tapping this tree again for a few years.
After clearing out the 'ground tree' (which if it wasn't so wet could have been called sawdust) I put the tap in the hole and fitted the rubber hose to the end of it. I ran the hose into an empty water bottle through a hole I made in the lid with the brace.
This will fill slowly so it has to be left so I have tied the bottle to the tree in the hopes of it not falling down.
***a few days have passed***
Unfortunately we had a cold snap (as in a few days of snow showers!) so I think that slowed down the sap collection. I visited the day after tapping the tree (I seemed to have this odd idea that the sap might have started gushing out of the tree after I left it) then a few days later to see how much had gone into the 2 litre bottle which was not a lot but I decided to try with the amount I had and to scale down the recipe; after all this is a test batch and if I like it I can make more next year and if I don't then I will not have too much to drink down!
This is the recipe I used: http://www.7thrise.co.uk/Birch-Sap-Wine
One thing that I found surprising was when I poured the sap out of the bottle it looked just like water; not slightly thicker or at all syrupy which was what I was almost expecting. For the first week or so it was going completely nuts in the demijohn but has since calmed down which is nice because the gurgling in the corner of the kitchen was a bit weird, particularly in the evenings!
Hugs from Haggis land,
Jx
***a few days have passed***
Unfortunately we had a cold snap (as in a few days of snow showers!) so I think that slowed down the sap collection. I visited the day after tapping the tree (I seemed to have this odd idea that the sap might have started gushing out of the tree after I left it) then a few days later to see how much had gone into the 2 litre bottle which was not a lot but I decided to try with the amount I had and to scale down the recipe; after all this is a test batch and if I like it I can make more next year and if I don't then I will not have too much to drink down!
This is the recipe I used: http://www.7thrise.co.uk/Birch-Sap-Wine
One thing that I found surprising was when I poured the sap out of the bottle it looked just like water; not slightly thicker or at all syrupy which was what I was almost expecting. For the first week or so it was going completely nuts in the demijohn but has since calmed down which is nice because the gurgling in the corner of the kitchen was a bit weird, particularly in the evenings!
Soon this will be bottled as it has cleared a lot and fermentation seems to have stopped so it will be added to my collection of bottles in the cupboard under the stairs. The rate of depletion is very slow although we went out to a party at the weekend and my OH had some of the pea pod wine and it agreed with him! The alcohol content is higher than I expected and it is quite a strong wine although he felt fine the next morning.
Hugs from Haggis land,
Jx
No comments:
Post a Comment