Monday, April 14, 2014

Birch Brewing

We ended up with about 2 gallons of maple syrup.  As quickly as the season came, it went.  As you know, I like to try new things.  So, rather than put the equipment away, I tapped a birch tree for the first time.


Birches flow differently than maples.  I am not sure what temperature range they like, but as soon as I tapped the tree, the sap poured out.  In fact, in 24 hours, we had collected 5 gallons of sap.  If we were to boil this down to syrup, it would take 100 gallons of sap to make a gallon of the sweet stuff.

So, true to my nature, willing to stumble along and make mistakes, I decided to try brewing it. 

Tonight, I made 3 gallons of birch beer using a traditional recipe from Stephen Buhner's book, Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers (well mostly).  After which point, I made 1 gallon of Mugwort-infused birch beer.  And, just for fun, I made 1/2 gallon of birch, freezer berry wine (11%) and 1/2 gallon of birch, freezer berry mead (10%). 

The last were made following (sort of) the recipe I posted here.  I boiled 1 quart of berries in birch sap and let it cool.  Then, I added sugar to half and honey to the other half.  Presto!

Here's hoping that some of this turns out good!  Regardless, I have learned something new ... and isn't that the point of these MooseBoots excursions?

5 comments:

  1. Is there a bottle of birch beer available to sample? Tom H

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    1. Not yet, Tom. It will be another couple of weeks.

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  3. How does the birch taste compared to maple? Is it significantly different? Here in Central Oregon we have junipers. No good trying to tap those.

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    1. We tried a small batch of birch on the woodstove, but the weather got warm too quickly and the sap didn't get finished because we stop burning for heat. The ferments look good, but I still have to bottle them. I hope to do that this long weekend.

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