How to Tap a Birch Tree

Description

In this Video Fozz of Forrester Bushcraft demonstrates how to tap a birch tree to get fresh drinkable sap. The sap of the birch tree is watery and slightly sweet, containing sugars & amino acids.

When tapping the tree if you use the correct method you avoid harming the tree in anyway, however you can only extract the sap for about 1 month of the year, dependent on your location.

Tags: YouTube Editor,Betula Pendula (Organism Classification),Bushcraft,foraging,wild food,survival,spring,Camping

Video Transcription

Oh

hi everyone what I'm going to show you today is how to tap a birch tree so this is silver birch here you don't know how to identify the silver birch we check out the link just up here that I'll teach you how to do it so what would be today is we're going to try get some sat from the Hobart string really good for you really healthy makes a nice drink but bear in mind you only have a few weeks of the year to do this depends on where you are so here in the UK is the first of April today actually so early April for a few weeks when it starts when the temperatures start first starts to go up what happens is the tree takes all the nutrients out the ground it starts to surge up into the tree in the form of sap which has a little bit sugar in it quite a few different users you can boil it down to syrup turn its ice cubes you can drink it straight as it is you can even use it for cooking so it's really nice really ease the type of bird stream that you can do it with a drill if you want to get quite a lot of it I'm only after a little bit today so I'm just going to do a small hole using my knife what if I was using a drill I'd tap it quite low down in the tree and be prepared to pull that gap once I finish but I'm actually going to work just the pics there's a nice little patching the tree here to do that so what I've done is I'll just clean the area a little bit to make sure all these little tips don't get into my into my pot so they see all the little bits coming off there I'm just going to take my knife use one more a companion because it's got that nice drop point on it I put the point straight into the tree and I'm going to drill a small hole already that sack is coming out it really starts to surge out of it this time here I don't gonna take it too deep I don't want it damaged the tree there we go it's going to clean that hole a little bit and they don't whether you can see it's just starting to drip out now go get it on the camera do not start to go to put my life away I'm going to prep the whole to make you drip exactly where I wanted now the way I'm going to try and do that is I'm going to take a stick actually going to shun for the stick a little oops let me to break that then shuttle the stick ever so slightly flat on the top of it off just that I don't plug the hole keep breaking a stick it in the green or let's have a look here do it with this stick I'm just going to wedge it just in the hole then hopefully I will stay in place and guide that sack to where I want it so put that aside for now set up the it just yet put it on top of my pack and we'll take my pots I'm gonna tie the pot to the tree okay you really see there's quite a lot of sup cuento there so i put a little larks head in the pot quite excessive cord what i'm doing but i prefer to keep it long than short glass dripping in there nicely

into place stop it dripped on the handle this is a tricky bit you've got to get you caught exactly where you want it okay so much the guard you know what no bring a little higher there we go that's just them nicely into their no keep that in place just tie it off for the back burn in mind that as that pot starts to fill up it is going to get heavier so you can't just stick any old not in the back here I'm doing a few half hitches it's my favorite locks it's nice and simple arranged you so let's dip it in and then we just leave that but I say half an hour or so let it drip in where's my little stick now a lot of people when they're doing this plug sorry not clog they cover the top of the pot up with a piece of fabric which is absolutely fine to do so it's really good way of doing it however i'm actually going to once i've collected it i'm going to pour it through into another pot so I don't need to worry about doing that so much now so we'll get batching of it when that started to fill up it is already getting there so cool ok guys so we've left this for about an hour and a half now roughly nearly two hours actually I think close to two hours and we're going to take the take the pot down now it's got enough in it for thuy want just a bit of a drink and to demonstrate for the video before I take it down first one do I have cars a little bit of dowel here that's the same with this hole okay I'm just tap that in

stays nice and hot just so that tree then it's healed up okay so this is a piece of dry wood and that's got a bill it's slightly small on the whole because that is going to swell while the tree heals itself we don't want damage the tree so the next thing to do is to take this pot down very carefully not to spill stuff I've got in there down it comes I'll just show you how much we've gone okay so there's a lot of bits of stuff in there from when I was putting the whole in as you can see got a decent amount of stuff in there and it's actually already nice vaguely sweet it's pretty good actually I think I've got somewhere filtering this through to show you how clear it comes out just give me a moment I'll use a bandage anyone just have a look i'll use this little pot here that I've got and we'll pour some through the bunch hopefully this will work i'm not sure i'm just trying to it for the purpose of in the video somewhere here we go it's often a first aid kit it's just a calico bandage curtsy the pharmacy in my shop i know that's one of the girls who works dirt sold this to me so thank you very much for that so I'm just glad but that tightly over the top really all this works so we'll just pour this through I appear to have got the world's only waterproof bandage let's try it again that's unbelievable there we go some of its time to come through right now I have literally got a walk with baggage car by mine is that it's all that fluids in that bandage that's better smell a bit of it so we see it quits much clearer now that's what we like give it a minute put a bit of pressure on it there we go you see that's come out pretty clear so better try that pretty good to a tribe it Dave go update the cameraman it's just ever so slightly sweet it's really nice yeah it's not bad as it was your night any okay so pop that back in there put that on there and that is good to go Cheers watch