I’ve been checking the birches every few days the last few weeks. It’s that time of year again, when the sap starts to flow and the trees start waking up!

This can happen any time from late Feb to late March, even early April. It started quite late this year in this neck of the woods. Last week, the sap started flowing!

It’s easy to check the sap – I just push an awl an inch into the bark and remove it, then wait. When the sap is flowing, clear juice dribbles out of the hole and drips steadily in seconds.

If the tree has low-down branches you can also trim a bit of the end off a twig and wait.

I grabbed my equipment and headed up there.

You need:

2 litre plastic bottle

String (2/3 metres)

Drinking straw/plastic pen outer shell

Awl, cordless drill or hand drill with a bit the width of your straw/pen

The woods round here are religiously patrolled by keen volunteers who will even take down a child’s stick den if they find it, so I was careful to place my bottles on trees far back from the path and on the other side of the trunk, away from the paths.

(People will always wonder what a plastic bottle is doing hanging on the side of a tree, and as it is plastic they are likely to chuck it in the bin if they don’t understand that it’s a birch tap.)

1. Find a mature birch with a trunk of a least 25cm diameter.
2. Choose a spot 1 metre up from the ground.
3. Push an awl in 1 inch, upwards at a 45-degree angle (diagonally upwards).
4. Wait a few seconds to check the sap is dripping out.
5. Follow this with the drill, so you have a hole the diameter of your drinking straw/pen chamber. If using a pen chamber, make a hole in the other end with a skewer/corkscrew. Here I used a pen chamber.
6. Push the pen chamber or straw firmly into the hole. It should be tight in the hole.
7. Fix the plastic bottle underneath using the string. It needs to be close enough so the pen chamber/straw can be angled through the top of it.
8. I use three rounds of string. one goes underneath the bottle, so if it fills up and gets heavy it won’t fall down!
9. Check to see the sap is dripping out.
10. Leave for several hours, or overnight.
11. Come back and collect your sap! take everything home and use some of the tree’s own bark to plug the hole.

I left my first tap for about 3.5 hours and got this much…

Not a lot, it’s true…but it’s so pure it’s safe to drink it straight out of the tree. I trust the birch tree more than chlorinated water!!

It tastes like sweet mineral water. It’s full of vitamins and is great for cleansing your system of impurities, like, erm, alcohol. Or Coca-Cola. Or chocolate.

300ml of Birch sap contains:

• 130% RDA of manganese
• 95% RDA magnesium
• Polyphenol antioxidants (help the body combat oxidative stress)
• Phosphorus (varying amounts of following dep on soil, location, tree health etc)
• Potassium
• Zinc
• Copper
• Vitamin C

The second tap I left overnight. I got about the same amount (helped by some friends) but this time it had begun to ferment. That’s the thing with birch sap – it doesn’t keep for very long. I prefer to drink it straight, but if you get a lot you can simmer it down into birch syrup.

You get 1/10 syrup out of 9/10 sap, and it takes a while to simmer (NOT boil!) it all down.

You can also turn it into wine or mead. I haven’t tried this yet!

Personally I just neck the sap and avoid fuss!

You can also tap other trees such as maple and pine. They all have unique flavours. Just make sure it’s an edible tree!