Tapping Sap from Birch Trees

 

I was down at Liam’s, our local barber last week. Not that my bald patch needed a polish of course -My lads still have their hair and as much as I offer they won’t let me put the pudding basin on their heads and cut around it. I had that style as a boy and it never did me any harm. I suppose things have changed and pudding basin hair styles have long gone along with tank tops and Glam Rock.
Liam always has an interesting project on the go and this week he told me about how he is tapping birch trees for their sap to make wine. Liam has made wine out of a lot of things growing in the hedgerows and as we speak he will be pulling the thorns out of his hands after picking the gorse flowers for his latest batch. When I got home I thought that we should give this tree tapping idea a bit of a go. I am in the habit of videoing (nearly) everything I do in the garden so got my lad onboard as artistic director and camera person for our latest Youtube classic. Tapping Birch Trees for Sap.

Tapping the Birch

We used two different methods of collecting the sap. The first was to make a 45 degree angle incision in the bark with a sterilised chisel (we used tea tree oil as it seemed apt). We could have used any sharp knife as long as it was clean as we didn’t want to be infecting trees with any fungal diseases. The incision was opened up and a small stick was pushed into the gap. Sharpening the points slightly helps the sap run down the stick and into a container, for this we used a jam jar. Liam is a bit more organised and he fed his sap into a fermenting jar via a food grade rubber pipe. This stops flies getting into the liquid and keeps thing clean.
The second method was inspired by Liam’s idea but we substituted the rubber hose for a drinking straw. I drilled a small hole into the bark just large enough for the straw to fit in snugly. Holding the jar in place on the trees wasn’t a problem I have taken to stripping the leaves of all of our dead cordylines down into fibrous strands. They are remarkably strong and tied together make and ideal string substitute.
The sap is used for wine but can also be drunk fresh from the tree, made into tea, used for cooking and boiled down to make something similar to maple syrup, although I think you would need a lot of liquid to do that.
Liam managed to collect about 1-1.5 gallons of liquid from each tree. We weren’t quite as productive. Two hours later we found that after about half a jar the liquid had stopped flowing. This might be because we left it too late in the season to tap into the sap. In late March the sap begins to rise into the tree and the last thing the tree wants is to lose any of it.
The liquid tasted of “tree” but we managed a drink, carefully sipping through the floating dead flies that were swimming around in the jar. Yum Yum.  SEE THE VIDEO

There is something else for Liam to try making wine from that will be doing everyone a big favour. Japanese Knotweed. The scourge of the countryside.

If you can’t beat it –eat it

We’re always looking for new delicacies to eat for free and the latest revelation is about Japanese Knotweed. The young shoots of this invasive plant are edible and can be made into wine, just substitute rhubarb with knotweed. The idea is to pick small asparagus looking tips from the knotweed plant and make them into wine, puddings, again like you would with rhubarb, either a crumble or a fool. Harvesting between now and May is the best time as the shoots are young and tender.
It’s estimated that in the UK alone it would cost £13.5 billion to eradicate the pest and has already cost £70 million to keep it off of the new Olympic site in London so we will have to do our bit to make sure we can keep it in check in Ireland.
Cutting the plant back weakens it and the plants will eventually die off so eating the plant will be a good idea all around. We haven’t tried this yet so if you feel brave and do it before us I would be delighted to know how you get on- check the internet for recipes and health and safety tips..
A couple of words of warning though; Knotweed will grow anywhere, even through concrete, asphalt and most importantly through sprays of herbicide. Make sure you gather it from places where you know the soil is clean and chemical free. The other thing will be to burn anything you don’t eat. The plant can grow from the tiniest piece left on the ground.
I’ll mention this to Liam next time my lads need a haircut, which won’t be long now. Everything’s growing really quickly in this sunshine, apart from my bald patch, that’s just going red.