Birch water/sap?

Two years ago, I developed seasonal allergies here in Fairbanks, AK. Never had allergies before, but I'm getting older and things are changing I guess.
Some friends, who where born here, told me to tap some birch trees and drink the water. This would help build some type of tolerance to the birch pollen.

I tapped two trees and I'm getting about 1.5 gallons per day of birch water. The stuff is pretty good. No grassy taste at all. Just cold clean water.

I'd like to use it to make my next beer. My question is what grains or beer style would go with this water. I run a water plant and have the ability to run some basic wet chemistry.

I did find the following online...
Contents of birch sap
Mg 11 mg/l
Mn 1.2 mg/l
Na 0.2 mg/l
Ca 70 mg/l
K 120 mg/l
Fe 0.1 mg/l
Zn 1.5 mg/l
P 6.4 mg/l
Fructose 0.5 g/100 ml
Glucose 0.3 g/100 ml
Dry solid content 0.7 - 1.5 %
pH 5.5 - 7.5
I can specifically check some of these, but not all.

This is definitely the most interesting brewing water question I have seen in a good long time!

First thing I'd do is run an alkalinity test on this stuff. That's really brewing water's most important parameter in terms of planning how to use it in beer. Not knowing that makes it hard to make a recommendation. Your list doesn't have any anions save the implied phosphate and there probably isn't enough of that to balance all the cations. The phosphate does imply some alkalinity and I can rough that in from the number given but I need to know if that number is "as phosphorous", "as P2O5" or "as Phosphate".

I'll run a hardness, alkalinity, Fe, Mn, and pH tomorrow.
My phosphate test reads as (PO4)3-.

bstacy1974 said:

I'll run a hardness, alkalinity, Fe, Mn, and pH tomorrow.
My phosphate test reads as (PO4)3-.

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What did you find out with this experiment? I am in the middle off tapping birch right now and usually make syrup. This year am going to boil down 20 gallons sap to a 5 gallon concentrate and use it as my base. Curious to know what you found?

Maybe you could get together with some fellow Fairbanks Brewers and give it a try.....

Hi there, did you end up making a brew from the birch water? I have many birch trees around and am interested in tapping them in the spring. I've seen some information/recipes in Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers.

porcupine73 said:

Hi there, did you end up making a brew from the birch water? I have many birch trees around and am interested in tapping them in the spring. I've seen some information/recipes in Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers.

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Not sure if you were asking this of me or not but I'll answer anyway!

I did end up making a batch with the birch sap I collected using an IPA recipe off the shelf of the brew store. Ended up drawing 33 gallons of sap and boiled down to 3 1/2 gallons of concentrated sap (would have had to keep boiling to get it to true syrup). I took a reading of the concentrated sap to figure out how much more malt extract sugar I needs to add (ended using 2 1/2 lbs of PME). Used a separate pot to steep grains and provide the make up water to 6 gallons.

It turned out to be very good and tasted very different at 1 month (dry and crisp) than it did at 3 months (very rich). It was a lot darker than I thought it would be but I think that had a lot to do with the burning of the sugar during the boil down of the sap.

Going to do it again this spring using the same recipe (maybe try a Pale) for 2 batches, one with more birch sugar than above and the other with about 1/2 of the above. Sucks to have to wait another 7 months though!

Following is a link to a UAF publication that has great info on birch characteristics and will take you through almost everything you need to get started:

http://www.uaf.edu/files/snras/MP_04_02.pdf

Wow wonderful thank you for the information. How many trees did you tap and how long did it take to collect that much sap?

Very interesting!

I tapped 6 trees, all 10" to 16" diameter. The season is short in AK compared to the maple season back East (2-3 weeks here in Anchorage even shorter in Fairbanks is what I have heard). First sap of the season has more sugar in it but on average is around 80-1 where maple is 40-1 (these are to get to true syrup which I didn't go that far).

At the height the trees push out a gallon a day so things go pretty quick. It sounds like a lot of work but is really not bad and just a bunch of boiling down. I filled my brew kettle with 6-7 galllons of sap and boiled down to 1 gallon put that in a glass jug in the fridge and started again. I took 5+ 1 gallon jugs poured them back in the kettle and boiled it down to the 3 1/2 gallons of concentrate.

Ended up taking a SG reading from the concentrated sap (it was pretty sweet at this point) and added the malt extract that the recipe called for until I hit the right reading which I think was 1.072?

One of the great things that happened was that the guy that owns the brew supply store wanted birch sap to make a mead with so I brought him all of my extra sap and he traded me for hops!

Sorry about not having more detailed info about the actually beer recipe. When it comes to making beer I am not all that good at it and no where near as advanced as the members of this forum.

Brew72AK said:

I tapped 6 trees, all 10" to 16" diameter. The season is short in AK compared to the maple season back East (2-3 weeks here in Anchorage even shorter in Fairbanks is what I have heard). First sap of the season has more sugar in it but on average is around 80-1 where maple is 40-1 (these are to get to true syrup which I didn't go that far).

At the height the trees push out a gallon a day so things go pretty quick. It sounds like a lot of work but is really not bad and just a bunch of boiling down. I filled my brew kettle with 6-7 galllons of sap and boiled down to 1 gallon put that in a glass jug in the fridge and started again. I took 5+ 1 gallon jugs poured them back in the kettle and boiled it down to the 3 1/2 gallons of concentrate.

Ended up taking a SG reading from the concentrated sap (it was pretty sweet at this point) and added the malt extract that the recipe called for until I hit the right reading which I think was 1.072?

One of the great things that happened was that the guy that owns the brew supply store wanted birch sap to make a mead with so I brought him all of my extra sap and he traded me for hops!

Sorry about not having more detailed info about the actually beer recipe. When it comes to making beer I am not all that good at it and no where near as advanced as the members of this forum.

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There are a lot of birch around here but nobody taps them, I've never even heard of it. What do you use to "tap" the tree

They are basically the same taps that maple industry uses. I have ordered online pretty cheap and bought a few local (there are birch syrup makers here).

Page 5 in the link to the pdf in a previous post on this thread has the details on how deep to drill, what trees to tap etc.

If it were possible to double like a post, I just would have. I had the same question. I will review the PDF in more detail. In Sacred and Healing Herbal beers, or is it Scared and Herbal Healing Beers, I can never remember which way is which, it mentions a 3/4 inch hole being drilled in the trunk, and a quill being driven through it to get about a gallon a day per tree at the peak.