[Dick]

My wife and I were talking about birch syrup yesterday and it got me thinking...

If you are in a survival situation in the spring, tree sap is a nutritious and tasty source of water for you to tap into (a pun!).

Generally, water is abundant in the spring, but you will still need to treat it for bacteria and other disease causing critters. Tree sap on the other hand should not require any purification.

I have blazed birch (yellow and white), maple (sugar and red), and aspen in the spring and found that they all release large quantities of sap.

You want to “tap” into them when the tree is just swelling it’s buds to sometime into leaf out.

So if you are on the move and need some water in a hurry, it’s something to consider, or if you are in a survival situation and every bit of sugar and nutrients count.

[Omega]

Do you use any special tools to tap for syrup? That's an interesting concept I'd love to try. Do you refine it in any way or just consume it fresh out of the tree? What kind of containers do you store it in and how long does it keep without preservatives? Thanks for sharing!

[crazydave]

early spring as the buds start to form is the best time as the trees stert to push nutrients up to the tips.

birch, maples and sycamores produce a sweetish drinkable clear fluid. to make syrup it really needs a lot of reducing.

one of the best drinks is spruce tip tea made with birch sap.

to collect it you cut a small notch in the bark down to the sapwood and make a peg to hold the cut open, the sap will drip into your pot. its best to drip through a cloth like a mossie head net to stop debris getting in.

I have seen a more destructive way which I gather is the commercial way and thats to drill a six inch hole with an auger and use a hollow stick to gather then hammer a wooden plug into the hole to seal and protect the tree. like us an open cut can cause infection so pressing or sealing the hole afterwards is a good thing to do.

[garret]

i used to do this when i was younger, i would then seal the cut with pine resin to keep out the infections

[Dick]

Originally Posted by Omega

Do you use any special tools to tap for syrup? That's an interesting concept I'd love to try. Do you refine it in any way or just consume it fresh out of the tree? What kind of containers do you store it in and how long does it keep without preservatives? Thanks for sharing!

It’s not actually something I’ve done, just something to think about. You could probably have a litre to drink in the time it takes you to set up a shelter.

I once blazed a yellow birch with a chain saw and the tree was pouring sap. So I put my mouth against the blaze and had a drink. I think it would have been nice if it weren’t for the saw dust and the chain oil!

We tapped sugar maple trees around the neighbourhood when I was a kid and boiled it down into syrup. We just drilled holes, inserted some surgical tubing, and hung a bucket.

Hopefully someone else will be able to answer your questions.

[garret]

we used a small post hole auger (about 1/2 inch) and a bit of hollow dowel, drain it into a small bucket then plug the hole with a solid wood dowel and cover in pine pitch, the trees we used to tap never got infected and we tapped them a couple of times per season.

you can drink the sap raw like water with sugar added, or add a teaspoon of cider vinegar and make it very refreshing, my nan used to boil it down and make pine nut taffy with it.

birch sap is also an excellent pick me up if you feel a little rundown

here is a youtube how to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bVqNzTNkGk

[JMJKD]

Nice guys!!!

[Hiline]

Ray Mears | Veoh

Here is a good video by Ray Mears and he shows tapping into a birch and drinking the sap. I want to try this but don't have any birch's nearby.