Birch Sap Is A Magic Drink. When Is It Harvested? How To Get It Right? The Benefits Of Birch Sap. Photo

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Birch Sap Is A Magic Drink. When Is It Harvested? How To Get It Right? The Benefits Of Birch Sap. Photo
Birch Sap Is A Magic Drink. When Is It Harvested? How To Get It Right? The Benefits Of Birch Sap. Photo

Video: Birch Sap Is A Magic Drink. When Is It Harvested? How To Get It Right? The Benefits Of Birch Sap. Photo

Video: Birch Sap Is A Magic Drink. When Is It Harvested? How To Get It Right? The Benefits Of Birch Sap. Photo
Video: How to tap Birch Sap | Health benefits & a taste of spring 2024, March
Anonim

Birch sap, or birch tree, as it is popularly called, has been famous since ancient times for its healing properties - it is an ecologically clean, tasty, healing, refreshing soft drink. The healing secret is that in the spring, birch pours out into the leaves all the vitality that it has accumulated during the winter.

Birch juice
Birch juice

Content:

  • When is birch sap harvested?
  • How to get birch sap correctly?
  • The benefits of birch sap
  • How to prepare birch sap for use?

When is birch sap harvested?

The birch sap is collected until the sticky leaves have blossomed (about a month before the leaves appear and flowering, during the snow melt), the birch begins sap flow, called "birch weeping". Within 15-20 days, birch gives us its sweet juice.

How to get birch sap correctly?

Option 1: Hole in the barrel

If you delve into the library or the Internet, looking for the rules for collecting birch sap, then general recommendations will apply approximately to the following. The sap should be collected (experts call the targeted extraction of birch sap by tapping) from mature trees with a well-developed crown and a trunk of at least 30 cm in diameter. At the same time, a small hole (channels) with a diameter of up to 2 cm is drilled in the bark, depending on the diameter of the tree, one to four holes are made on it, and a tube or tin tongue is removed from it, through which birch sap enters the dishes attached to the wire or rope.

Important! At the end of the collection of birch sap, the wound is closed with a wooden stopper and covered with garden pitch, wax, clay or plasticine. This is necessary in order to prevent pathogens from entering through the notch, which can cause the death of the tree.

Here are just a method of collecting birch sap, which is described everywhere, we almost never used. Firstly, making it so that the juice flows only through a straw or a tin gutter is quite problematic, often most of it flows past the trunk. Secondly, it is not always possible to attach a bottle or a jar in such a way that the drops fall inside, and if it succeeds, then often, when a little juice is collected in the dish, it shifts under its weight, and the birch sap no longer falls into the neck. Thirdly, it is necessary to make a triangular tongue made of birch bark under the hole, thanks to which it is possible to avoid the loss of juice, and traces of these actions remain for a long time, if not forever, disfiguring slender white-barked birches.

Moreover, if you follow the instructions and drill a hole no more than 2 cm, then after a couple of days the birch sap will flow much slower than at the beginning of the damage. And there are two ways out: either enlarge the hole in diameter, or make a new one. We saw both as undesirable, so this method was not popular with us. Sometimes I had to come across bottles in birch forest belts suspended from a trunk, and above them several old and fresh holes or, even worse, deep notches with an ax. Unfortunately, this is how the recommendations that are common in the literature look like in practice.

Collection of birch sap
Collection of birch sap

Option 2: Collecting birch sap from a branch

Rejecting the most inconvenient, destructive and not aesthetic, in our opinion, method, we collected birch sap in a different way. They chose a suitable branch, about a finger thick or slightly larger, but not extending directly from the trunk at an upward angle, but from a thicker branch or almost horizontally. Then an oblique cut was made and the branch was inserted into the neck of a 1.5 liter or liter bottle, depending on the intensity of sap flow. It was not a big pile to secure the bottle to a branch with a wire. Sometimes the suitable branches were located at a great distance from the ground, and we had to climb a tree. This made the birch sap even sweeter. However, this may be due to the fact that it has gone a long way down the trunk and has absorbed more glucose and fructose - sugars that determine the sweet taste of a healing drink.

It was also an unbreakable rule that we put one bottle or, at most, two on one tree. This ensured both the stability of sap flow throughout the entire period, and the limitation of injuries to some of the most "sweet" trees. The latter most often stood separately on some hill well warmed by the sun. In some places there was still snow, and the birches were just beginning to move away from their winter sleep, and here the birch sap was already running at full speed. We tried not to touch young birches, but preferred mature mature trees.

It is better not to collect juice near settlements and villages. You should not once again endanger trees already exhausted by people's attention. In addition, sap flow here was always late, was rather sluggish and short-lived. And the sap of a tree growing near a busy highway or in an industrial area of the city will only bring harm instead of benefit.

And yet, the amount of birch sap collection is influenced by a number of factors: latitude, type of forest, weather in summer and winter before tapping and during tapping, hours of the day, tree stand density, degree of tree dominance.

Collection of birch sap
Collection of birch sap

The benefits of birch sap

For medicinal purposes, two types of birch are most often used - drooping and spreading. Their buds, leaves, sap, ash (activated carbon), tar obtained by dry distillation of wood, xylitol (sugar substitute for diabetics, obtained from wood waste), are all widely used in medicine. Birch sap contains 0.5 - 2% sugar, it contains enzymes, organic acids, tannins, calcium, potassium, iron salts, plant hormones, glucose and substances with high antimicrobial activity (phytoncides).

Every year, a person should consume at least 6 liters of birch sap. This healing drink destroys urinary stones, is effective in the treatment of stomach and liver ulcers, headaches, bronchitis, cough, helps with rheumatism, radiculitis, arthritis. In addition, birch sap cleanses the blood, has a regenerating effect, stimulates metabolism, and is also an excellent dietary and refreshing drink. The systematic intake of birch sap has a tonic and tonic effect. Doctors say that if you drink at least a glass of juice a day, drowsiness, fatigue, and irritability will disappear. In general, drinking birch sap in its pure form is a pleasure. It is a pleasant, refreshing and invigorating drink.

Collection of birch sap
Collection of birch sap

How to prepare birch sap for use?

125 g of sugar and 5 g of citric acid are added to 1 liter of birch sap. Then it is filtered, poured into jars, pasteurized and tightened with lids. It is useful to mix birch sap with other juices from fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as insist it on the leaves of mint, lemon balm, thyme, St. John's wort, linden blossom, rose hips, lingonberries.

Birch kvass

A bag with burnt crusts of rye bread or breadcrumbs is lowered on a rope into an oak barrel with birch sap. Fermentation will begin in two days. Then oak bark, berries or cherry leaves, as well as dill stalks are poured into the barrel. Kvass is ready in two weeks.

There is also another recipe. Birch sap is heated to 35 ° C, yeast is put in it at the rate of 15-20 g per 1 liter. The leaven is placed in a cold place for 3-4 days, then poured into containers and canned.

Birch syrup

In addition to kvass, fresh birch sap (sweet and slightly sour in taste) can be used to prepare a tasty and healthy syrup (it can be added to tea or mixed with water). After evaporation, the sugar concentration in it reaches 60-70%. This syrup has a lemon-white color and honey consistency. It has been proven that sweet syrup made from birch sap not only prevents dental caries, but even stops its development.

Author: Vasily Vishnevsky

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