Quote:
Originally Posted by chadcuevas
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What about drinking the sap - it's meant to be healthy for you?
Tapping the Birch Tree for Sap in March - Collecting Birch Sap a clean sugar rich water - Wild Food - Natural Bushcraft - The True Spirit of Bushcraft
From Wikipedia:
Birch sap is the
sap extracted from a
birch tree, such as a North American
Sweet Birch or a
Silver Birch. The sap is often a slightly sweet, thin syrupy-watery liquid. The tree sap contains
sugars (namely
xylitol),
proteins,
amino acids, and
enzymes.
Birch sap must be collected during a specific time of the year, depending on the species and geography, at the break of winter and spring when the sap moves intensively, typically between the first
thaws and the start of
bud development. The collected sap can be drunk as a
tonic and it is a traditional beverage in
Russia (
Russian: берёзовый сок /
byeryozovyi sok),
Latvia (
Latvian:
bērzu sula),
Estonia (
Estonian:
kasemahl),
Finland (
Finnish:
koivun mahla),
Lithuania (
Lithuanian:
Beržų Sula),
Belarus (
Belarusian: Бярозавы сок /
biarozavy sok,
Byarozavik),
Poland (
Polish:
Sok z Brzozy),
Ukraine (
Ukrainian: Березовий сік /
berezovyi sik) and elsewhere in
Northern Europe as well as parts of northern
China.
Birch sap collection is done by tying a bottle to the tree, drilling a hole into its trunk and leading the sap to the bottle by a plastic tube. A small birch (trunk diameter about 15 cm) can produce up to 5 liters of sap per day, a larger tree (diameter 30 cm) up to 15 liters per day. Birch sap has to be collected in early spring before any green leaves have appeared, as in late spring it becomes bitter. The collection period is only about a month per year. The price of birch sap is correspondingly high in some countries, e.g. in Japan reaching up to 50
Euro per liter.
Birch sap may be consumed both fresh and
naturally fermented.