Birch beer (alcohol) recipe

[johnnydoggs]

My friend gave me 9.5 gallons of birch tree sap and would like me to make a beer out of it. My idea is no water and all birch sap. It is 1.006 OG by itself. We would like the ***** taste to come through. What grain bill would a guy want to use? I have 2 row and Pilsner malt as base malts and crystal 15, oats, wheat malt, Victory, and chocolate malt for specialties. Thanks for the help

 

[madscientist451]

I think I'd start by boiling it down to reduce the the volume by at least half and concentrate the flavor. I would then brew a 1 gallon test batch with some basic 2 row or pilsner, very lightly hopped, and see what kind of flavor profile you are getting.
If it comes out ok, you could develop a recipe for the remainder of the birch sap or run another test batch.
I searched on google and there is information out there, including making Birch Sap wine, mead and alcoholic beer.
Here's an interesting article:

https://waldenlabs.com/uses-for-birch-sap/

 

[vtipsy]

Very interested in how you get on with this. The flavor of birch sap is very mild and I'd imagine you could easily drown it out with malt so I'd go for an extremely light beer. Also, in my experience, heating does a lot of damage to the freshness of birch sap so the boiling it might not work out so well. I've done a grandma-style kvass before by adding sugar, raisins and yeast to the sap. That was fantastic. Saying that, if it were me, I'd do a sour or a saison and add cooled wort to the sap just before pitching.

 

[madscientist451]

vtipsy, has a good point, boiling the birch sap will change the flavor.
But if you're making a beer, its going to be boiled anyway, but you can deal with that in several ways.
I think a good way to use your 9 gallons would be to take 3 gallons and use vtipsy's recipe above, execept I'd substitute a very neutral honey for the sugar, and add the usual yeast nutrients for mead, aiming for about 5-6% abv. Then I'd take 2 gallons and add to 1 galllon of boiled wort (you don't want grain soaking up the sap) and I'd boil down the remaining 4 gallons to 2 gallons and add that to similar wort as above so you can compare the effects of boiling the sap after fermentation.
For the wort, a light blond ale, maybe with some rice added to keep the malt flavor to a minimum would be my choice. You'd have to make a high gravity wort since you'll be diluting it with un-boiled sap.
You can add the sap at flameout to sanitize it as long as your temp stays above 180F or so, you'll be ok.