Birch sap

Birch sap (also birch water) is a clear, colorless liquid that can be in the spring from the birch, especially the silver birch, tapped or exits wounds.

Taste and extraction

The birch sap has a slightly sweet, not very intense flavor and can be drunk neat or are fermented by various recipes. The durability of the untreated juice is only a few days in the fridge.

While in Western Europe, this tradition was almost abandoned everywhere, in the rural area of Eastern Europe the birch sap is drawn up to the present, however, the once common fermentation is not practiced. The tapping of birch sap is later than that of the maple sap when soil frost is gone. Otherwise, the juice extraction is the same as the maple sap.

To bore deep harm rather than good; it is sufficient to drill only just through the bark. Some of the major branches will take the strain drilled close to the trunk on the Astunterseite, which also provides a lot of juice and the tree hurts even less. Also you can get the juice by simply trimming the branches; while the branches are placed in a fixed bound thereto bottle and the juice collected so.

A thick birch (50 cm DBH ) delivers up to 10 liters of birch sap per day, depending on weather and bore. The sap flow is maximal at two weeks.

Medicine

The birch sap is used in folk medicine, including gout and rheumatism. The effect of a hair growth agent is not medically detectable.

Others

• Birch sap comes out in the spring of birch stumps and is sucked by flies and butterflies.

Birch sap harvest at Colditz 1985