Go looking for birch beer these days and you’ll find sugary sweet soda with just a few drops of birch oil added. That wasn’t always the case, and real birch beer, alcoholic birch beer, has been brewed for 100’s of years. Birch beer, birch wine and birch mead were made just about anywhere in the world birch trees grow.
Birch sap runs later in the spring than maple when the temperatures are consistently above freezing. With all that warmth, it’s hard to keep birch sap from fermenting, so if you’re tapping birch trees, you might as well go with it.
The English make a birch beer with birch sap and sugar, and the Russians make a type of quick mead, called medovukha, from birch sap and honey. But why add other sugars?
Birch syrup is sweet and tasty, and birch sap is plentiful. Why not make a pure birch beer, more like a birch wine almost, with just concentrated birch sap?
The main reason most birch beers were made with birch sap and sugar is energy cost. Sacred Healing and Herbal Beers notes, “Most traditional recipes used sugar as an additive because of the labor involved in making birch sap sweet enough to provide enough sugar for fermentation by itself.”
A full gallon of birch sap boils down to roughly 1 ounce of birch syrup, and it’d take roughly 1 quart (32 ounces) of birch syrup to make a gallon of birch beer.
Finished birch syrup. This batch started at 6 gallons…and it boiled down to about 6 ounces (3/4 cup).
Concentrating 32 gallons of birch sap down to a single gallon for birch beer takes time and fuel. Nonetheless, I decided to give it a try.
Instead of making a full gallon, I’m going to make just a quart of wine using a mason jar fermentation kit. A quart of wine only needs about a cup of birch syrup, which I’ve made from 8 gallons of birch sap.
Since birch sap can be hard to come by, I’m hoping that this recipe will be easier to replicate at home with just birch syrup, water and yeast. If you’d like to try using birch sap, you can actually buy it bottled online. It’s been drunk as a health tonic in eastern Europe for generations, and it’s now being marketed as a new age superfood, like the next coconut water.
When I make small batch meads, I use between 2/3 of a cup and 1 whole cup of honey for a quart of mead, so likely this birch beer will be on the sweeter side with a full cup of birch syrup. Feel free to adjust down to as little as 2/3 of a cup of birch syrup for a one-quart batch.
While maple syrup has glucose as the main sugar, birch trees produce fructose like the fruit sugars in wine and cider. Older recipes, with added sugar, say that the sap ferments quickly and violently. I’d imagine then that birch sap has the necessary minerals and nutrients for supporting yeast, but I found that it fermented quite slowly on its own.
I filled a quart mason jar, then added a small amount of wine yeast and capped the jar with a mason jar fermentation kit.
Since it’s only a very small batch, it’s easier to skip the siphon process and wine bottles altogether, and just carefully pour the batch off, leaving behind the sediment. Then bottle in a flip-top Grolsch bottle.
Birch Beer ~ Small Batch Recipe
This small batch of birch beer uses just birch syrup, water and yeast to create a wild foraged ale with a lot of birch flavor.
Ingredients
- 1 cup birch syrup
- 3 1/2 cups water
- 1/4 packet wine yeast
Instructions
- Add the birch syrup to the bottom of a quart mason jar. Bring the water to a boil and pour it over the birch syrup. Stir to dissolve.
- Pitch 1/4 packet of wine yeast into a few tablespoons of water and allow the yeast to dissolve.
- Allow the birch syrup mixture to come to room temperature, and then pitch the yeast (add it in).
- Cap with a mason jar fermentation kit, and allow the mixture to ferment at room temperature for a few weeks until visible fermentation has stopped. If you're using white sugar and birch sap, it may be done in less than a week.
- Carefully pour the birch beer off into another container, leaving any yeasty sediment behind in the mason jar. Bottle in a simple flip-top Grolsch bottle and allow it to age for at least a few days, but preferably 2 weeks, before drinking.
Nutrition Information:
Serving Size:
1 gramsAmount Per Serving: Unsaturated Fat: 0g
Traditional Birch Beer Recipes
If you’re looking for traditional recipes, with added sugar, here are a few to try. The oldest recipe I can find for birch beer comes from Vinetum Britannicum, a brewing text from 1676:
“To every Gallon {of birch sap} whereof, add a pound of refined Sugar, and boil it about a quarter or half an hour; then set it to cool, and add a very little Yeast to it, and it will ferment, and thereby purge itself from that little dross the Liquor and Sugar can yield: then put it in a Barrel, and add thereto a small proportion of Cinnamon and Mace bruised, about half an ounce of both to ten Gallons; then stop it very close, and about a month after bottle it; and in a few days you will have a most delicate brisk Wine of a flavor like unto Rhenish. Its Spirits are so volatile, that they are apt to break the bottles, unless placed in a Refrigeratory, and when poured out, it gives a white head in the Glass. This Liquor is not of long duration, unless preserved very cool. Ale brewed of this Juice or Sap, is esteem’d very wholesome.”
Another recipe I found quoted in Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers. The notes say that it originally comes from Martha Washington’s Book of Cookery, from the revolutionary war era.
The author says he found it transcribed in A Sip Through Time, which is a catalog of historical brewing recipes. So this recipe is coming 3rd or 4th hand.
Keep in mind that modern “powdered sugar” has corn starch added as an anti-caking agent, so you’d be better off just using a fine sugar like caster sugar. In context though, it’s likely by powdered sugar she just means modern white granular sugar. Another thing to note, as she says that this is a “cure for the gravel,” that’s referring to kidney stones, and birch sap is still used as a traditional treatment for kidney stones.
“First make an incission & an hole through ye bark of one of ye largest birch tree bows, & put a quill therein, & quickly you shall perceive ye juice to distill. You may make incission into several bowes at once, which water ye receive into whatever vessill you pleas. It will continew running 9 or 10 days, & if yr tree be large, it will afford you gallons. Boyle it will, as you doe beer, but first put to every gallon, one pound of white pwdered sugar. When it is well boyled, take it of the fire, and put in a gilefate with yeast, as yu doe to ale or beere, & it will worke in the same mannor. After 4 or 5 days, bottle it up in the thickest bottles you can get, for fear of bursting. & then at 8 or 9 weeks end, you may drink it, but it is better if you keep it older. This drink is very pleasant and allsoe physicall, first for procuring an appetite, & allsoe it is an antydote against gravell and the stone. This liquor must be procurd & make up in March, which is ye onely time, and not at the later end of march neyther, for then the trees will not run soe well & freely as at ye beginning of the moneth.”
If you’re interested in traditional or historical brewing recipes, most of which involve wild plants and herbs, I’d strongly recommend the book Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers. The herbal academy also has a very comprehensive course on herbal and medicinal fermentation, if you’re more of a course learner.
Sarah
I can’t wait to make this! Great post!!
TONYA B
Very informative. Will be a nice project
Lynn C
Hi Ashley,
What kind of birch do you tap? We have a ton of black birch, but the Amazon birch syrup showed a picture of them tapping a grey birch, which confused me. I always thought that birch syrup came from black birch. Does black birch taste too much like wintergreen for it to be any good for syrup?
Lynn
Ashley Adamant
We tap yellow birch, but to the best of my knowledge, all species of birch are tappable.
Kellen McGee
This looks so interesting. I unfortunately do not have access to birch syrup. Would this recipe work with maple syrup?
Admin
Yes, you can definitely try it with maple syrup.
Billy
Ashley I enjoy reading your content and when I looked up birch beer I knew you’d have something to say. This winter I believe I’m going to make it out of leftover walnut syrup and walnut sap that has had some pectic enzyme in it. May make three batches, one just using walnut, one using honey and %4 sugar walnut sap and one again using the %4 sap but with white cane sugar. My question is would it be better to use a mead, wine or beer yeast
Administrator
Wine yeast was used in this recipe. Looking forward to hearing how this turns out for you.
ashok
Thanks For Sharing this amazing recipe. My family loved it. I will be sharing this recipe with my friends. Hope they will like it.
Administrator
You’re welcome. I am so glad your family loved it and I hope your friends do as well.
The Crunchy Urbanite
I have black birch I’ve been meaning to tap for years, but once again had too many other things going on this spring and missed my window. I know I can also make a birch tea from the young growth – any idea how I could modify this recipe to use young wood instead of sap/syrup as my base? Many thanks – you’re one of my big big faves out there!
Administrator
I’m not sure honestly. I would search the internet for beer recipes that use tea and see what you find. Then you can replace the tea in those recipes with your birch tea. Let us know if you decide to give it a try.
Peter Draper
In march 2021 I made birch wine for the second time,and by following an old wine book on other wines,tapped the tree,the first half gallon I heated ,added 1 bl of sugar ,1 Lemon ,1 Orange and then yeast when cooled.in a 3 gallon plastic bucket. On the second half gallon and so on ,I take from the tree and add straight to the brew with extra sugar,then manage with the use of a hydrometer adding a little extra sugar as the hydrometer drops close to zero bringing it back up to 1010 and so on.
This can make a very strong wine.
This tree I have had for thirty years and is around 2 feet across.
I am looking for other fruits that may go with the sap to give a drifferent taste.
I have now botted the wine in January 2022,
Administrator
I’m not sure what other fruits might pair well with the birch sap but if you discover some good combinations, please come back and share.
Peter Draper
Sorry I did not Mention ,after the collection of the sap I leave to brew in the bucket for 7 to 10 days adding sugar as needed,.Then siphon the brew into demijohns and fit the air locks .Then rack the wine in the normal way.
John Rhoe
Try pairing Quine apples with birch sap and us how it goes!
Justin
Thanks for the recipe! Just finished brewing my first batch and it turned out excellent 🙂
One thing that we did differently was carbonation! It’s real easy to do too. When it’s time to bottle, dissolve a bit of regular white sugar (for this recipe, about 8 grams) in some water and add to the bottle with the beer, then cap and age as usual. Make sure you use a bottle that can handle the pressure – the grolsch-style flip-top bottle that you can get from brewing stores work great. Or you can buy a bottle of beer in a grolsch-style bottle from the liquor store and reuse that.
Make sure you fill the bottle so there is a bit of head room – fill the bottle so the liquid is maybe 2 inch from the top (or just fill to the level that you see beer bottles in the store filled to)
Rather than white sugar, you can use brown sugar, honey, maple syrup… or even more birch syrup! I made a half-batch and used about 3 grams of birch syrup plus 2 grams of brown sugar. There are priming sugar calculators you can follow to get an idea of how much sugar to add, like this: https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/
It’s important to get the amount right. Too little and it will be flat. Too much and it will over-carbonate at best (ie: it will spray everywhere when you open it), or at worst the bottle will explode (though I think this requires you to REALLY over do it). But if you get the right amount, the yeast will consume the sugar and produce just the right amount of CO2 and then stop.
Anyway, hope that is useful to anyone that reads this 🙂 and thanks again for the recipe!
Tyler
We don’t have a lot of birch around here, got a recipe for using birch oil?
Administrator
No, I’m sorry. I don’t have a recipe for that. This recipe is made from the sap which is totally different than the oil.