Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

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Going to try birch sap sparkly wine (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by tasankovasara@sopuli.xyz to c/homebrewing@sopuli.xyz

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Lemmitor @A_norny_mousse@feddit.org in this community tipped that if the process serves and luck is on one's side, fermented birch sap can be better than champagne. Right now is the time when sap can be collected, so I'm giving it a shot!

The tree isn't terribly bothered, the tap hole is only a few millimeters deep. I only do one tap per tree.

Plan is to empty these tap bottles off several trees once a day into an intermediate container, use a Campden tablet per container and keep the intermediates in the fridge until I have enough, five liters maybe? Then one liter yeast starter, possibly with some cane sugar to lend a little extra aroma and colour (the sap is clear). Ferment fingers crossed. Serve force carbonated. Wish mi luck :D

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[–] alzymologist@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If you inoculate it with vigorous yeast and add a bit sugar, you can just pour new bottles into active fermenter with minimal spoilage risk, certainly safer than storing non inoculated medium.

[–] tasankovasara@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago

Great idea, thanks!

[–] tasankovasara@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

That was a quick one! The result is a dry, refreshing and probably low ABV product. The colour comes from added dark cane sugar. It only took a couple of days to get 6 L of sap out of three trees. And yes, there is a light, hard to describe, maybe citrus-like taste from the sap.

[–] DearMoogle@lemmy.today 3 points 3 months ago

Hmm well they make birch root beer so that could work. Let us know how it goes! :)

[–] MuteDog@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Birch sap does contain sugar but not a lot. You have to boil 100L of sap down to get 1L of birch syrup (while for maple syrup you only need to boil 60L down to get 1L).

Fermenting the sap directly you're not going to get much of anything, probably less than 0.5% abv if you don't add any other sugars. I know you said you are going to add sugar, but I do wonder if you'll be tasting much flavor from the sap at all if you don't concentrate the sap.

[–] tasankovasara@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 months ago

I know it's not going to be strong. However, having tasted birch sap before I've got a feeling there will still be a distinct taste there after the sugars have been fermented, and that's why I wanted to try this. I have a forest industry book about all the things in trees apart from fiber and lignin, and from there I know that the sap has got all kinds of interesting constituents, so this could turn out to be a health cava :D Concentrating the sap would surely boost the taste, but that's not in my interest for this experiment.

[–] Ildar@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

А целиком рецепт можно, хотелось бы тоже попробовать сделать такую штуку

[–] tasankovasara@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

By all means! If you can read my English...:

The nice thing about fermenting birch sap is that it naturally comes with nutrients for yeast to thrive, unlike regular wine juice. So no need to use yeast nutrient. But there is not a huge deal of sugar in it, so that needs to be added.

I gathered about 6 liters of sap over a couple of days. Emptied the bottles from trees into five liter containers every day and put in a Campden tablet to stop wild yeasts from messing with my magic. Stored in a fridge until I had enough to start fermenting.

Then I boiled 2 liters of water to sanitise it; dissolved 1 dl of syrup to provide extra sugar and hence extra alcohol in the finished product; let it cool to room temperature and added yeast to this container and let the yeast start making bubbles.

Then just poured the sap and yeast starter in the fermentation vessel with an airlock on. Let it ferment for the couple of days it bubbled. Then put the fermentation vessel in the fridge for a couple of days to clear out the yeast – it sinks to the bottom and the 'wine' ends up nice and clear (clearer than the photo I took, it eventually got perfectly clear).

To make it bubbly I used a Sodastream thing :D It was good also without carbonation.

Easy and really good stuff! Go for it :)

[–] Ildar@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I heard that birch sap can be concentrated to get more sugar, but it should be low temperature distillation

[–] tasankovasara@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah - moderate temperature, huge surface area and plenty of air movement across the surface would bring best results. I'm absolutely doing this again next spring, aiming for 20 liters of sap so I can put my fancy fermentation setup to work. Was thinking of using two of those under-the-bed storage boxes to make an evaporating setup, having the lids on and feeding in air with an aquarium pump that has two outputs. I'd still add dark syrup for colour though.