Birch tree water

 Birch tree water or birch sap is one of best juices you can drink. Birch water is the sap extracted from a birch tree, such as a North American Sweet Birch or a Silver Birch. 

The birch water is a slightly sweet, thin syrupy-watery liquid. The birch sap contains sugars (namely xylitol), proteins, amino acids, and enzymes. Birch trees have amazing healing properties, i.e. chaga mushrooms that grow on birch trees are traditionally used for many illnesses including cancer.

The birch juice is probably the best (birch sap has sugar content of about 2%) at the beginning of the juicing season and you can easily juice about 2 to 7 litres of the birch sap a day. The cut or hole in the birch tree will heal naturally so there is no harm to the tree in juicing them or any other trees (you can juice other trees such as maple, walnut, apple, cherry and other 22 trees that can be tapped for sap and syrup).

Tips to juice a birch tree:

1. Find a birch tree (harvesting the birch sap is time specific i.e. the first warm weeks of spring thaw – when the temperature is about 10C in March-April time – when the birch trees wake up from the winter sleep and then the birch trees can be juice for about couple of weeks). The juice flows best during day – midday – especially when it’s warm and on the warm, sunny side of the tree.
2.  Cut the end of one of the branches (another way is to drill a hole in the tree and attach a plastic tube or make a cut in V or Y shapes on the birch tree and attach a bottle underneath).
3.  Attach a plastic bottle to that branch.
4.  Wait until it fills in with birch juice (depending on the birch tree it might take a few hours or overnight to fill in the bottle).
5.  Drink the birch water or you can freeze it as ice cubes.

Make photos of your kid trying to get birch juice, upload to the App. Write whether you both liked the process and the taste of the birch water.