An Antic Disposition

Spring is here. In the last two weeks I've seen the snowdrops and the crocuses bloom. Spring is here. But don't look outside. Forgot the newly-fallen snow. This is New England. Late snow fall is unwelcome, though not unusual. But in no case will it stop the season's first harvest.

Harvest?! What can one harvest in early April? Birch sap, my friends, Birch sap. The nectar of the gods. (Well, the sap of the gods at the very least). This is the only good reason to put one's boots on and tromp around the woods this time of year. The goal, as you might imagine, is to make birch sap wine. Here is how it is done.

First, find yourself a birch tree. I used a white (paper) birch. The paper birch doesn't have the highest sugar content, but will do. Black and yellow birches would be preferred, if you have them. You want a big birch tree, not some little twig of a tree. Bigger means more sap with less stress to the tree.

Second, plan to start collecting sap right around this time, earliest spring, when the sap rises from the roots. If you try too early you'll get nothing, and if you wait for the warmer weather, the sap gets cloudy. So there is a 2-week window, right around early April, that is perfect.



Next you need some basic equipment:

• A drill. I used a cordless electric drill.
• A spile. This is the spigot you tap the tree with. You can make one yourself, or purchase online. Search EBay and you'll find a variety. The ones used for maple syrup work just fine for birch.
• A rubber mallet. This is used for tapping in the spile without breaking it.
• Some food grade plastic tubing and a collection jug. I reused some brewing supplies for this, including a 5-gallon jug to collect the sap into.

Since my birch tree was 100-yards down a hill in the woods, by a stream, I packed the equipment into a sack and carried the jug down the hill. The rest is easy. Drill a hole with a 5/16″ bit, around 3-feet off the ground, angled slightly up. It doesn't need to be deep, only an inch or so. Then tap in the stile with the mallet, connect the rubber tubing and drainup so it drains into the jug. I ended up tying my jug to the tree with rope. I don't know why. Just habit. I don't think there is anything in those woods big enough to walk away with 5-gallons of birch sap, but too dumb to cut a rope.

The sap collects around a half-gallon a day. Since the temperatures were low, I didn't worry too much about spontaneous fermentation from wild yeast, though I did add some campden tablets every day or so as insurance, to keep it sterile.

After around five days my jug was full. Time to return it home. This was the weakness of my plan. Bringing a 5-gallon jug full of birch sap 100-yards uphill through dense brush was a significantly greater task than bringing the empty jug down the hill. I'll need to think this over more next time.

Once in the kitchen, I did some testing, confirming the sugar level with a hydrometer and refractometer. The sap was only around 1.5% sugar. This is about what I expected. Commercial birch syrup producers say it takes 80 gallons of birch sap to make 1 gallon of birch syrup. I don't need something that concentrated, but I do need to get to 20% sugar content or so for fermentation.

So what was the character of my raw ingredients? I'd describe it as having a sweet, warming, earthy smell, with a hint of wintergreen. My wife simply said, "It smells like dirt". De gustibus non disputandum, especially with one's uxor. I'll see what the winemaker's art can do to this unusual liquid.

So I transfer the sap into a 6-gallon pot and start it boiling, for most of an afternoon. Evaporation concentrates the sugar and the flavor. Once I got it down to gallon, I added a few sprigs of fresh spearmint for a little accent flavor and to restore some of the aroma that was lost from the long boil.

At that point I cooled the sap, remeasured the sugar content and added cane sugar to bring it up to a specific gravity of 1.085. This should result in an alcohol percentage of around 11% if it ferments dry. I also added some citric acid to put the pH where I want it (I could have added orange juice instead if I wanted) and then added the yeast. I'm using Lavlin V1116 "Montpellier" yeast, a strain which I've used successfully with fruit wines before.

The birch sap wine is fermenting now. If a few days I'll transfer to a carboy for clarification and in a few months I'll bottle it and set it sit another 6 months or so for conditioning. I have never done a birch sap wine before so I have no idea how this will turn out.

Labels: Wine

It was a good year for my berries. I have a 400 square-foot "berry patch", half of it for the Fragaria genus (Strawberries, Alpine Strawberries, Musk Strawberries) and half for the Rubus genus (Raspberries, Blackberries, Thimbleberries and the various crosses such as the Tayberry and Loganberry).

The strawberry harvest in June went well in spite of the unusually persistent wet weather we had in May. I normally try to garden organically, but with that amount of moisture coming after bloom, the conditions for Botrytis (grey mold) were too good, so I had to spray a couple times with Captan. In the end we had far more berries than we could eat, so I was able to take 10 pounds of fresh berries and made a few gallons of wine. This is cellaring now, along with the raspberry mead I started last fall, and a gallon of an herbal wine (spearmint, pepermint and lemon balm in a 2:2:1 ratio). I've never made an herbal wine before and the ingredients were improvised based on what had a pleasing smell in the herb garden at the time. So there is a non-zero chance that I will end up with a gallon of homemade mint mouthwash.

I've been picking the raspberries for around a month now. I have the usual red varieties as well as some yellow and black. My wife refuses to sacrifice any of these to my wine making exploits this year. I will comply with her wishes, but I do hope to be rewarded with a pie in return for my benevolance.

Last year I started another bed, this dedicated to members of the Vaccinium genus (Highbush Blueberries, Wild Lowbush Blueberries, Bilberries, Cranberries, Lingonberries and Everygreen Huckleberries). These all share a common need for acidic soil, so it makes sense to group them together. Since this bed is only a year old, the fruiting was negligible.

I'd love also to plant some Ribes genus plants (Gooseberries, Currants) but these are illegal to grow in Massachusetts. This is an argicultural restriction put in place back in the 1920's to prevent the spread of Pine Blister Rust, a serious and deadly disease of White Pines. The organism that causes Blister Rust does not spread directly from Pine tree to Pine tree but only via the intermediary of a Gooseberry or Currant plant where it completes part of its lifecycle. So when the government wanted to eliminate Blister Rust, they banned Ribes and so I have no Currants.

I also have various other berries and small fruit that don't fall into the above categories, including:

• A Medlar tree
  
• A Pin Cherry tree (hope to make some wine from the fruit this year)
• Grapes (American Vitis labrusca "Fox" grapes, like Concord, Mars and Remailly)
• Serviceberry
• Honeyberry (Lonicera Kamchatika -- native to Siberia)
• Elderberry
  

Some good sources of berry plants that I've used include Nourse Farms here in Massachusetts and Raintree Nursery in Washington state.

Good books for the home berry grower include:

• The Backyard Berry Book by Stella Otto
• The Berry Grower's Companion by Barbara Bowling
• Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden by Lee Reich

For New England growers, a subscription to the UMass Berry Notes newsletter is a must. Although it is targetted to the commercial grower, most of the information is applicable to the home grower as well.

Labels: Berries, Gardening, Wine