Braga on birch sap is a product that many distillers know. It was put hundreds of years ago by our ancestors and believed that such a drink would have healing power, relieve health problems and help save energy.

By its nature, birch sap contains a lot of trace elements. It also contains glucose. For this reason, if you replace the water in the mash recipe with juice, you can get excellent quality alcohol. It will have a mild taste and a strength of 40 degrees. The taste and aroma of this moonshine is very interesting.

Product Features

Braga from birch sap ferments well and rarely turns sour. The latter occurs only if the proportions were not observed or the recipe was violated.

Preparation of mash from birch sap

You can put the mash using various recipes, this will not have an effect on the quality of the product. Moonshine, expelled from birch sap, has differences:

• wonderful aroma;
• mild taste that does not have to be improved with flavorings;
• it is excellent to drink and does not cause a hangover when consumed in moderation, which indicates the quality of the product.

Moonshine on birch sap is a special product, it can become a festive table decoration and surprise friends and guests with an unusual taste and smell.

But birch sap still needs to be “extracted”, it is usually collected in the spring, but there are some nuances in the collection process, they should be taken into account:

1. You need to collect juice closer to the top of the tree.
2. You should choose a strong and healthy birch.

The plant has been accumulating trace elements and glucose since autumn. If you collect juice closer to the top, then it will be sweeter, it has a higher content of glucose and nutrients.

The product should be stored in a dark place, protected from the rays of the sun, the best container for collecting and storing juice is a dark glass container with a tight lid.

Popular Recipes

It is not so difficult to prepare moonshine from birch sap at home, in order to create high-quality alcohol, you will need the following ingredients:

1. 3 kg of sugar, you can use sand or refined sugar.
2. 40 grams of dry yeast or 200 grams of pressed, in a briquette.
3. 1 st. a spoonful of kefir or milk, you can use yogurt.
4. Birch sap - 10 liters.

You should start by washing the container in which we will put the mash. When the dishes are ready, pour a warm, warmed up to 25 degrees base (birch sap) into it.

When the juice reaches room temperature, pour sugar into it, slowly stirring the wort with a wooden spoon or spatula. Metal utensils can oxidize, and metal ions will get into the wash, this will change the taste of the finished product and affect its quality.

Then we proceed to prepare the yeast, pour it with a small amount of water and let it stand for a while (all the recommendations are on the package). We follow the rules, and then, when the fungi "come to life", we send them to the mash.

Mix birch sap syrup, sugar and yeast thoroughly again. And then add a spoonful of kefir or milk to the components. After we send the container to a dark, but cool room, with a stable temperature.

Kefir, milk or sourdough will reduce the process of gas formation and help avoid active foaming.

The product will be ready for processing in 10-12 days, you need to make sure that the mash is ripe, and then start distillation.

From the indicated volume of birch sap, it will be possible to obtain about 3–3.5 liters of good alcohol with a strength of 45 degrees.

You can resort to additional cleaning methods or re-distill the distillate in the apparatus if its quality does not suit the consumer.

Birch is a tree that is a symbol of Russia, but not only birches are full of national color. Moonshine made on the basis of the juice of this tree can also be attributed to the original Russian products.

You can also make mash from birch sap without yeast and sugar. Such a recipe will be distinguished by a minimum of ingredients, excellent taste and aroma.

How to make alcohol from birch sap? You will need the following components:

• 1 st. a spoonful of sourdough or kefir.
• 30 liters of birch sap.

The yield of moonshine from such a product will be much less. From the specified volume, it will be possible to “extract” only 3 liters of moonshine, but what! The drink will have excellent characteristics, but it will take time to make it.

How to make mash: step-by-step production instructions:

• You should start by evaporating excess liquid. Since the main thing when creating a wort is to maintain proportions, you will have to get rid of excess water. Pour the juice into the pan, pre-draining about 3 liters.
• Bring the product to a boil, reduce the temperature to a minimum and cover the pan with a tight lid. When about 10 liters remain in the container, remove the pan from the stove and cool to 20 degrees.
• When the product has cooled down, pour 3 liters of juice into it previously poured. We add kefir or sourdough to the container, mix everything thoroughly and send the wort to ferment in a dark room with a stable temperature.
• Since the mash is made with wild yeast, it is worth controlling the fermentation process. If after 2 days there are no signs of fermentation (foam, smell, etc.), you need to add yeast to the wort. We calculate the proportion according to the volume of the product: you will need about 60 grams of dry or 300 grams of pressed yeast in a briquette. If the yeast is not added to the mash, then it will deteriorate, turn sour, and it will not be possible to overtake it.

Alcohol will be ready for processing in about 10-16 days (but you should first check the mash for maturity, evaluate the color, taste and transparency).

Then the mash is removed from the sediment, passed through a filter of gauze and cotton wool and distilled in a distiller.

After distillation, the product is diluted exclusively with water, otherwise, if juice is used, a substance will appear on the surface of the drink that will resemble jelly. The drink will become cloudy, which will lead to the appearance of sediment and a change in its taste characteristics.

Redistillation

This process will help improve the quality of alcohol, make it stronger and tastier, processing will get rid of fusel oils and harmful impurities. For this reason, it is worth doing, although it will take about 2-3 hours.

Action algorithm:

1. After finishing the first distillation, let the moonshine stand for a while, then measure its strength with an alcohol meter and determine the total amount of alcohol in the distillate.
2. Then it is worth diluting the moonshine with water to a fortress of 20 degrees and cleaning it using any available method. You can use coal, but it is better not to use potassium permanganate, it will change the taste of alcohol.
3. Pour the drink into the apparatus and overtake again with separation into fractions, that is, cut off the heads and tails, which will improve the quality of the moonshine.

Put alcohol in the refrigerator and let it stand for 2-3 days. This will help stabilize the taste of the drink and its aroma.

To do this, put raisins in a jar, add 25 grams of sugar and 150-200 ml of water (birch sap), mix. After all, we are talking about a drink made from birch sap, the usefulness of which no one will dispute. The recipe for birch mash is popular in northern countries, where birch sap is extracted on a large scale. Unfortunately, it is impossible to preserve birch sap according to recipes without heat treatment.

After all, the juice season is just around the corner. Why is it interesting? I'll tell you in more detail: My boss is an avid summer resident, he lives in the country almost all year round. In the spring he collects birch sap, puts mash, makes moonshine. What's stopping you from picking up the juice, adding CKD and fermenting? Fermented a whole bottle of pure maple sap per chkd without adding anything. For long-term storage: father-in-law collects 50-60 liters of birch sap every season. He pours 5 liters of plastic down the throat, throws a handful of fried barley grains into each.

Birch sap brew recipes

Braga has been made since ancient times not only for the production of moonshine, but also as an independent alcoholic drink. The sweetest and purest juice is harvested high from the ground. An incision is made on the trunk or branches of a birch, from which moisture drips into a substituted container. We heat the juice to 40 degrees. Pour in a tablespoon of milk to lighten the mash during the fermentation process.

At this point, the product should be removed from the sediment and distilled into moonshine. The resulting concentrate is cooled and mixed with the poured juice, pour in raisins, which work as a fermentation catalyst and supply additional vegetable yeast. Theory. First, we will make young birch wine, and then carbonize it - add a little sugar and seal it tightly in bottles.

1. If there is no wine yeast, make raisin sourdough 3-4 days before working with juice. Boiling increases the concentration of solids in the juice and breaks down sugar into fructose with sucrose (inversion). As a result, the taste of birch champagne is more intense, the aroma is more pleasant, and the fermentation lasts less.

Recipes for alcoholic drinks from birch sap

Do you know how many birch nectar recipes exist? There are several easy-to-prepare and very healthy drinks made from birch nectar. Would you like to try making drinks yourself using birch nectar? Birch kvass is a very useful tonic drink, has healing properties and has a beneficial effect on the human body.

Therefore, the wort can be prepared from almost anything. The easiest option: sugar with water and yeast. The technology for making moonshine is simple: we set the wort to ferment and soon (the period depends on what the wort is made from) we get mash. This mash must be distilled through a moonshine still. Recipe for cognac from moonshine.

How to preserve birch sap

One of these recipes is the preparation of homemade cognac based on moonshine. And as a result, the drink will only benefit. You can beat off the smell of moonshine by processing with coal. To do this, you can use both activated charcoal from a pharmacy and wood.

We put all this in a funnel and put it directly under the drops of moonshine. But for the distillation, it is necessary to prepare the mash, and for this we add two hundred grams of yeast and three kilograms of sugar to thirty liters of warm water, then fermented jam. This device was invented in the Middle Ages. Moonshine from homemade wine is obtained as follows: wine is poured into a tank and warmed up evenly. Grapes are a wonderful juicy berry that is widely used both for food and for juicing and for distillation.

All this is mixed and put to prepare the mash in a dark place for a week. Then they distill and get 6 liters (on average) of moonshine from grape pomace. Some are distilled twice to improve quality. There are a lot of recipes for making moonshine at home: from fruits and berries to beets. As in any other recipes, good raw materials are the key to a quality product. Moonshine can also be made from potatoes.

If he doesn’t lie: Collects juice in a flask of 30 liters + sugar 9 kg + ordinary yeast 1 kg, after fermentation he drives on the most elementary apparatus - a can from a milking machine + a rubber hose + a stainless steel refrigerator. I think there is no "normal sensible" recipe. Everyone experiments.

The season for collecting apiary lasts only two weeks, the product is characterized by a high concentration of useful compounds and trace elements. Add sugar and stir until completely dissolved. We leave the wort in a warm place for two weeks, put on a medical glove with a hole previously pierced with a needle on the neck of the bottle.

Birch mash, video recipe

The stages of maturation of the mash can be observed by the behavior of the glove: in the active phase, it inflates under the influence of carbon dioxide, one of the fermentation products, and then falls off. This recipe can rightly be called "royal".

We place the mixture in a container with a water seal and leave it in a warm place until ripening is over (for 2 weeks). Next, we drain the mash and send it for distillation. Thus, you can get mash in two ways: traditional, with the addition of sugar and yeast, and without the addition of sugar, using only natural ingredients.

But birch sap recipes are famous not only for tonic drinks. By combining alcohol degrees and natural vitamin liquid, it is easy to get unusual drinks of varying degrees of strength. Therefore, it is necessary to remove excess water from birch sap and thereby increase the sugar content in it. To ensure active fermentation, pour 3 liters of juice, which will become a natural “sourdough”.

Of course, we are not talking about using store-bought juice generously seasoned with flavor enhancers. Collect it yourself, not forgetting about respect for nature:

1. Do not break off branches from a birch to collect natural nectar. If there are several such branches on one tree, the birch may dry out, losing the juice, because it will continue to ooze even after you leave, taking a container with you to collect it.
2. The best method is to bring along a small rotisserie and appropriately sized straws. After drilling a small hole, insert a tube and substitute a container to collect the juice. When you take no more than 5 liters (preferably 2-3) from one birch, plug the hole with a dry twig. Under the influence of juice, it will swell and reliably block the outflow channel.
3. Collect juice away from busy highways, landfills and hazardous production. Trying for yourself!
4. Do not disturb young trees. Choose those with a trunk width of at least 30 cm.

Attention. Sweet and pure juice flows from a channel made no lower than 1 meter from the ground.

But the higher, the sweeter. The tree makes a “glucose reserve” in autumn, and the higher the juices rise from the ground, the sweeter they become, dissolving the “reserves”.

Consider product features:

• collect birch sap from the beginning of sap flow and before the first leaves bloom (from May to mid-April);
• the shelf life of freshly harvested juice is a maximum of 2 days. During this time, it should be processed.

Juice brought home from a birch grove can be processed into very high-quality moonshine with virtually no fusel oils. With the right distillation, it is clean as a tear, soft, has the flavor of a spring forest in taste. Here are some popular recipes for mash and moonshine.

Sugar mash from birch sap

Birch sap can be fermented without adding sugar, but the yield is small - about 1 to 10 (that is, from 10 liters of juice - 1 liter of moonshine). For this reason, sugar is often added to it. You will need:

• 10 liters of juice;
• 3 kg of sugar;
• 100 g of pressed yeast or 20 g of dry;
• half cup of milk.

Mix slightly warmed (up to 25-28 ° C) birch sap with sugar. Let the yeast stand before adding (stir with water and wait until it rises). Add milk, which acts as a defoamer, as birch sap tends to produce a lot of foam during fermentation. Instead of milk, you can use cookies or crackers (crumble on the surface of the mash).

Fermentation should take place under a water seal (glove on the bottle), and fill the container - no more than 2/3. The process takes no more than two weeks.

Readiness for driving is determined according to the signs familiar to an experienced moonshiner:

• fermentation has stopped - the glove has fallen off, the water seal does not gurgle, the foam has subsided;
• the mash has self-lightened, at the bottom there is a small sediment;
• the taste is bitter, without a sweet note;
• a lit match brought to the surface of the mash does not go out.

Important. Braga on birch sap does not need additional feeding, it already contains enough nutrients to ferment intensively and quickly.

Distilling, divide into heads-body-tails.

Pure mash on birch sap

To make a clean mash, you will need:

• 30 liters of freshly picked birch sap;
• 200 grams of raisins;
• 1 tablespoon of milk or kefir as a defoamer.

Pour 3 liters of juice, throw raisins into it. Leave it warm, in a day or two signs of fermentation will be clearly visible. This is a leaven that stimulates fermentation.

Boil the remaining juice in a stainless steel or enameled bowl until it becomes a third less liquid. This is necessary to increase the concentration of sugars. From this amount, after fermentation, you can get up to 3 liters of moonshine with a strength of 40-45 °.

After the boiled juice has cooled, mix it with the fermented one and add it to the milk container. Do not throw away the raisins, the wild yeast contained on their surface will multiply and turn the sugars into alcohol.

Put Braga in a warm place, under a water seal (glove). When fermented, carefully remove from the sediment with a straw. Distill.

Moonshine production technology

To make moonshine made from birch sap healthy and tasty, better beat it twice.

1. For the first time, distill the ripened mash without separation into fractions, until the fortress in the stream drops to 30 °.
2. Dilute the resulting distillate to a total strength of not more than 30 °.

Reference. The low strength of the first distillate for the secondary distillation is necessary from the point of view of fire safety (so that an explosion does not occur). And also because in strong alcohol at the molecular level there are very strong bonds between ethyl alcohol and fusel oils, which must be selected as much as possible during the second distillation.

1. Purify the resulting low-grade moonshine with charcoal, milk, or your other favorite method.
2. Pour back into the alembic and heat until mist appears in the alcohol tube. Or, if the machine is equipped with a thermometer, up to about 60°C. And drastically reduce the heat.
3. The heads must be taken very slowly so that the distillate only drips. They make up approximately 10% of the expected amount of alcohol. That is, 100 ml of heads should be removed from each hypothetical liter.
4. Then add heat, substitute another jar and take away the body of the moonshine with a thin stream - what you will put on the table until the fortress in the stream becomes 40 °, or until the moonshine is burning. At first the flame is high and blue, as it approaches 40° it becomes red and less active.
5. Tails should be taken (naturally, in a separate bowl) up to 20 degrees in the jet. Further does not make sense.
6. The resulting distillate (body) must be further purified with charcoal, milk, soda or egg white and filtered thoroughly.

Such moonshine is drunk easily and does not cause a hangover.

Carefully. Both heads and tails have a high level of fusel oils, so you should not use them.

Heads or pervach are a solid poison, consisting of methyl alcohol, acetone and other muck. There is almost no ethyl (drinking) alcohol there. Heads cause severe hangovers and, with frequent use, alcohol addiction. It is best to pour them into the sewer.

The tails are rich in fusel oils, but they can be cleaned first, then added to the cube at the next distillation.

Recipe for birch mash for drinking

You can make not only moonshine, but also mash for drinking, although it can rather be called birch champagne. It is pleasantly sweet, fresh, filled with bubbles of carbon dioxide. Quite intoxicating and creates a festive mood.

You will need:

• 5 liters of birch sap;
• 1.6 kg of sugar;
• 1 liter of vodka;
• 2 tablespoons of yeast;
• 2 lemons;
• durable small barrel of 5 liters.

Boil birch sap with sugar until the amount is reduced by a third. Cool to warm, strain into a barrel. Add yeast, vodka and sliced ​​lemons (pitted) there. Leave 12 hours in the room. When you see that fermentation has begun, close the barrel and take it to the basement for 1.5 months.

Then strain, pour into champagne bottles, cork and secure with wires. Store in the basement in a lying position. And on a holiday, take out and solemnly open a sparkling drink.

How to make moonshine on birch buds (brunki)?

In addition to juice, swollen but not yet blossoming buds are very useful for the moonshiner. They will enrich the moonshine with healing properties.

Collect them by hand while the juice runs into the containers you set up. Although most simply cut off thin young twigs, they dry and thresh them at home. Brunki fall on the litter.

You can buy birch buds in a pharmacy. You can insist moonshine on fresh kidneys, only from a tree.

classic birch

For 3 liters of moonshine, take 50 g of dry birch buds. Pour them into a jar of moonshine, put them for 10-14 days in a dark place (locker in the room). After the time has passed, strain the tincture. It will be beige in color and have a pleasant "spring" taste.

The same recipe can be made medicinal birch, only 50 g of brunek should be taken not for 3, but for 0.5 liters of moonshine. If you insist on fresh kidneys, you will need 80 g.

Brunka spicy essence

You can add this concentrated essence of spicy taste to moonshine at your discretion. It is believed that it is enough for 10 liters of homemade alcohol.

Take:

• 40 g dried bruneks;
• 1 tbsp grated ginger;
• 1 teaspoon ground galangal;
• 0.5 tsp ground cinnamon;
• 0.35 liters of moonshine.

Mix everything in a liter jar, cover tightly with a lid and send it to heat out of the light for a month. Then filter carefully. Add the resulting essence to the purified moonshine. Take 30-35 ml of essence and a spoonful of sugar per liter.

Leave for 4 days before drinking so that the ingredients are thoroughly mixed and the taste stabilizes.

honey birch

For 1 liter of moonshine take:

• 30 g fresh or 15 g dried bruneks;
• 1-2 tablespoons of honey;
• 30-75 ml of birch sap.

Pound the brunki in a mortar, put in a jar and mix with honey. Add birch sap and let stand for half an hour. Fill with moonshine. Leave in a room out of the light for 10-12 days. Shake daily. Filter carefully.

In the spring, many people actively harvest birch sap, which they then use in its pure form or make lemonade and kvass from it. If the amount of juice is large enough, then prepare moonshine and mash from birch sap. This is not quite the usual way, but it allows you to get an excellent product. There are recipes for making such a mash at home, which are used by many moonshiners.

Juice for making mash is best collected high from the ground. In such places, birch gives it the sweetest and at the same time pure. This is easily explained. The birch is stored with a certain amount of glucose, the more the juice moves along the birch trunk, the sweeter the juice will become.

Birch sap is an excellent drink, but at the same time it is an excellent medium for mash, as it contains a large number of trace elements that positively affect the functioning of yeast. It is for this reason that mash based on birch sap never has problems associated with fermentation, and never needs additional introduction (feeding) of products that stimulate this process.

Such a mash is prepared without the addition of yeast and a portion of sugar. It turns out due to the natural fermentation of glucose, which is part of birch sap. The cooking process is not quite simple, but the moonshine, which is obtained at the exit, will please with its taste and quality. Only a part of moonshiners can confidently say that they have already prepared such moonshine.

Theory

In a liter of birch sap there is about 0.5 - 2.3% of granulated sugar. Under home-made conditions, the result is about 1-1.3 liters of high-quality moonshine, which has a strength of about 40 degrees. On average, to get 3 liters of moonshine from birch sap, you need to take at least 30 liters of juice.

Ingredients

• 30 liters of birch sap;
• 1 tbsp milk or kefir.

Cooking process

To obtain high-quality mash, the proportions of sugar and water are observed in a ratio of 3: 1. However, there is much more water in birch sap than necessary, so it becomes necessary to evaporate the excess liquid.

Three liters of juice are initially poured into a container, it is used as a natural starter. The remaining juice is poured into another container and heated on the stove, bringing to a boil. After that, the fire is reduced to a minimum and continue to cook until about 8-11 liters remain in the container. Next, the boiled birch sap is cooled to 25 °.

Boiled birch sap is mixed with that which was poured into another container. The mixed juice is poured into a container in which fermentation will take place, then kefir or milk is added. A water seal must be installed on the container and moved to a room where a warm temperature (18-28 °) will be maintained.

Attention! Natural yeast in birch sap may, for various reasons, not cause active fermentation, therefore, after two days, in this case, about 300 g of pressed or dry yeast are added in the amount of 60 g.

After fermentation is completed (after about 9 - 16 days), the mash must be drained from the sediment, after which it is distilled in a moonshine still.

As a result, they get about 3 - 3.5 liters of excellent moonshine and mash from birch sap. The recipe at home involves the process of carrying out additional purification using charcoal obtained from birch trees.

Video clip on the manufacture of birch mash

Moonshine on birch sap

Moonshine obtained on the basis of birch sap is called " princely". It is the replacement of ordinary water with birch sap that makes it possible to obtain a soft and pleasant-tasting drink, when compared with moonshine prepared according to the classic recipe. The technology for preparing such moonshine remains otherwise completely unchanged.

Components

• 3 kg of granulated sugar;
• 10 liters of birch sap;
• 1 tbsp kefir or milk;
• 100g pressed or dry yeast 40g.

Cooking technology

1. Birch sap is slightly heated (not higher than 30 °), granulated sugar is added and everything is mixed.
2. Yeast is dissolved in slightly warmed water, strictly following the instructions on the label.
3. The prepared syrup is poured into the fermentation container, then the yeast diluted according to the instructions is added to it. The container is filled no more than a third, so that the carbon dioxide released during the fermentation process has enough free space.
4. One tablespoon of kefir, sourdough or milk is added to the container, this will significantly reduce foaming.
5. The container is moved to a warm place where the temperature will be from 18 to 28 °. A water seal must be installed on the container.
6. After about 10-12 days, bubbles stop on the water seal, the liquid itself becomes significantly lighter and acquires a bitter taste. At this point, the mash must be removed from the sediment and distilled in a proven and acceptable way.

As a result of strict observance of all the conditions of the technological process, I get 3 - 3.5 liters of good moonshine, prepared on the basis of birch sap. Such moonshine has a fortress of 40 - 45 degrees. Moonshine from birch sap can be improved by purifying with charcoal, and the quality is also improved by repeated distillation.

When and where to collect birch sap

Unfortunately, the collection of birch sap is very limited in time, and there are no exact dates when the sap flow begins. Therefore, for a while, I turned into a young naturalist and tracked the following natural and weather conditions:
- the air temperature during the day has become above 5 ° C, but if after warming frost hit again, then the time to collect birch sap has not yet come;
- the first thawed patches appeared on the ground, we pay special attention to the land around the tree trunks;
- the buds on the birch trees are swollen, but have not yet begun to bloom.

Probably, it would not be superfluous to say that you should not collect birch sap in the city or in close proximity to the highway. We choose environmentally friendly places - forests and groves away from factories, plants and garbage dumps. And it is better to immediately monitor the signs of sap flow directly in those places where we are going to extract juice. Indeed, in settlements, for example, snow melts faster, thawed patches and swollen buds appear earlier than in the forest. So, having seen all the signs of sap flow in the city, having arrived in the forest, we run the risk of seeing birches waist-deep in snow without a single swollen bud.

Equipment for collecting birch sap

To be fully equipped by the time the birch sap comes out, we stock up on simple equipment:

- Empty plastic bottles. Clean, without any extraneous odors, best of all new or from under drinking water. The bigger, the better.
- Caps for plastic bottles. Two for each bottle. We will drill one lid and use it to collect birch sap, and close the second bottle when it is already full. In principle, you can take a separate large container and pour the collected juice into it, then you need exactly the same number of caps as bottles.
— Cocktail pipes. One for each bottle.
- Ropes about 50 cm long. One for each bottle.
- Self-tapping screws. One is required for each bottle, but since they have a habit of crumbling and getting lost, we take it with a margin.
- A screwdriver with a drill (the diameter must match the cocktail tubes) and a cross nozzle (for the size of self-tapping screws). If this is not available, then a drill and a screwdriver will help us.
- Scissors.
- Plasticine.

Preparation of containers for collecting birch sap

To begin with, we take exactly as many caps as we have bottles, and with the help of a screwdriver we drill small holes in them.
Insert a cocktail tube into each lid. We screw caps with tubes onto plastic bottles.
We tie a rope to the neck of each bottle and make a loop out of the rope. The container for collecting birch sap is ready! The photo shows only a part of my arsenal, in fact I prepared more bottles, because the more containers, the more effective the collection of juice.

How to collect birch sap

Collecting birch sap is best done in the daytime, when the air temperature reaches its daily maximum. You should lay a few hours for this lesson, so we stock up on strength, patience and warm clothes.

We take with us a screwdriver with a drill and a cross nozzle, prepared bottles for collecting birch sap and a second set of caps for them (or a large container for transporting juice), self-tapping screws and plasticine. We move towards the chosen birches.

To collect juice, we select the largest trees. Young ones will not give as much juice as a large birch can give, and wounds are more critical for them. Experts recommend collecting juice from the south side of the tree. If we have not acquired the habit of carrying a compass with us, we simply work with the part of the tree on which the sun shines.

Installation of containers for collecting birch sap

Before hanging all our bottles, we make sure once again that the sap flow has begun. To do this, we select a larger birch and use a screwdriver with a drill to make a hole in the trunk. The main sap flow occurs between the bark and the wood, which means that it is enough to drill a tree 2-4 cm. The sap should begin to drip almost immediately. If this does not happen, this may mean that: - we arrived too early; - we arrived too late; - we chose too young birch; - it is too cold outside, and the collection of juice should be postponed until warmer.
If the juice drips, then we take the first bottle, with the help of scissors we shorten the outer part of the tube to a convenient length and insert it into the hole in the barrel.
Then we fix the bottle on the tree with a rope, a self-tapping screw and a screwdriver. Due to my inexperience, the process of hanging bottles at first took a lot of time, but by the end I got the hang of it and quickly coped with this simple job.
We are waiting for the bottle to be filled with birch sap. How much juice can be collected from one birch depends on its size. From not very large trees, it is not recommended to take more than one liter of juice. Then we remove the bottle from the birch, cover the holes drilled in the tree with plasticine. You can use any other way to close the holes: cork from twigs or wax can also work for this purpose. This must be done so that the tree does not die. After that, we close the bottle with birch sap with a spare undrilled cap or pour the juice into a large container for transportation home.
Returning home, we filter the birch sap through cotton pads or several layers of gauze. It is recommended to store juice at room temperature for no more than a day. If we can’t immediately put the mash on it, then we put it in the refrigerator. But you can store it in the refrigerator for no more than seven days, so we will not delay it and as soon as possible we will move on to making moonshine on birch sap.

Moonshine on birch sap - a detailed recipe

Ingredients for mash The proportions are very similar to the proportions, only we take a little less sugar, since birch sap already contains sugar: for 1 kg of sugar, 4.5 liters of birch sap and 20 g of dry yeast (if alcohol yeast is used, then the amount is in accordance with package directions). In my case, have been mastered: 18 liters of birch sap 4 kg sugar 66 g alcohol yeast
Cooking Cooking mash on birch sap We pour a small part of birch sap into a separate container. We will heat this molded part in order to increase the temperature of the mixture before introducing yeast into it. The rest of the birch sap is poured into a fermentation tank. I poured 3 liters, 15 liters went into the mash bottle.
Add sugar to the juice in the fermentation tank, stir until completely dissolved. The resulting volume of sugar-birch syrup is calculated using. Mixing 15 liters of birch sap and 4 kg of sugar, I got about 17.5 liters of syrup.
Next, we heat the pre-cast birch sap on the stove. It must be heated to such a temperature that after pouring it into the fermentation tank, the total temperature of the mixture becomes 28-30 ° C. In my case, I had to heat 3 liters of juice and pour it into 17.5 liters of syrup at room temperature (about 24 degrees). With the help, I picked up the optimal temperature to which I had to heat the syrup poured in advance - 55-60 ° C.
After heating, pour it into a fermentation container. The temperature of the mixture must be controlled. If it is above 30 ° C, then the yeast may die. Therefore, if overheated, then we wait until it cools down.
We take from the fermentation tank about 0.5 liters. warm birch-sugar mixture. We introduce yeast into it, wait 10-15 minutes. The time it takes to activate the yeast depends on the type of yeast and may differ from what is indicated in this recipe. Carefully read the instructions on the package and follow it!
Pour the yeast starter into the fermentation tank, mix its contents thoroughly again, then close it with a water seal and wait for the mash to be ready.
Making moonshine with birch sap After the birch sap mash is ready, we need to overtake it. I acted in complete analogy with - I prepared for distillation and distilled it twice: the first time by simple distillation, the second time by fractional (fractional) distillation.
After the end of the distillation, we dilute the birch distillate to 40-42 degrees. To calculate, I recommend using another calculator from our website:. I highly DO NOT recommend filtering moonshine on birch sap with charcoal and subjecting it to additional purification - we will lose all the taste and aromatic qualities inherent in birch moonshine! After breeding moonshine on birch sap, you need to stand for at least a week. And then, try and evaluate! From the amount of ingredients indicated at the beginning of the recipe, I got about 2.5 liters of ready-made birch moonshine 42% strength.