Recipe for making homemade beer from birch sap. Birch juice. Berezovik. Recipes. Harmless birch sap recipes

From generation to generation, lovers of home winemaking have been producing alcoholic drinks from birch sap, the recipes for which have been improved over time. The technology and recipe are changing, but the fundamental methods of obtaining remain the same.

Birch sap is obtained in early spring during the swelling of the buds until the leaves are fully blooming. This natural liquid is created by nature, being cleansed through the roots and trunk of the tree. Therefore, it is very useful for the human body.

When combining alcohol-containing components and natural vitamin nectar, quite interesting home-made alcohol of different strengths is obtained. The most common drinks are braga, moonshine, wine.

Berezovitsa

The most ancient drink, created from fermented birch nectar, is called birch, birch, birch.

It includes the following components:

• fresh juice - 30 l;
• milk or kefir - 26 g.

Homemade alcohol can be prepared as follows:

1. Strain the freshly picked juice through several layers of gauze.
2. Pour off a small portion of the liquid separately. The rest must be evaporated over low heat until the volume is reduced by a third.
3. After that, mix everything by adding milk or kefir.
4. Sterilize a large bottle first, then pour the made birch.
5. Put on a thin medical glove on the container, put it in a dark room with room temperature for fermentation. The process should last until the glove falls off.

This method is considered classic. Braga at the exit becomes transparent, clean, without impurities.

Prince's Braga

As a result of processing and further distillation of natural nectar, you can get a large amount of high-grade alcoholic beverages, one of which is princely mash. It is characterized by high strength, softness and taste. That's why it's called that.

Ingredients:

• juice - 10 l;
• granulated sugar - 3 kg;
• baker's yeast - 250 g;
• milk - 1 tbsp.

The cooking method is as follows:

1. After filtering through a gauze cloth, heat the liquid in a large bowl to 30ºС over low heat.
2. Prepare a bottle, wash it well.
3. Mix the added sugar thoroughly. It needs to be completely dissolved.
4. Soften the yeast mass with a fork and dilute with milk.
5. Pour the warm mixture into a bowl, put under a rubber glove. The fermentation process is approximately half a month. There should be sediment at the bottom.
6. After that, it is necessary to overtake the resulting product several times through the moonshine still.
7. If desired, moonshine can be cleaned with activated charcoal tablets.

Birch vodka

How to make an alcoholic drink from juice if there is no moonshine at hand? For such a case, an easy recipe for obtaining birch vodka is useful:

1. Boil 10 liters of juice over low heat with the addition of 2 kg of granulated sugar until the liquid decreases in volume.
2. Cool, pass through gauze, pour a liter of vodka and softened yeast in an amount of 100 g. All ingredients are added in turn, mixed well until completely dissolved.
3. Cut the lemon into small slices and add to the alcohol.
4. Place the resulting mixture for 12 hours in a warm room, then in a cellar or refrigerator.
5. Alcohol is ready to drink.

It is better to store this product in champagne bottles. The cork must be secured with wire. Homemade alcohol comes out very strong, smells like birch and zest.

birch wine

An excellent, refined wine product is prepared from "birch tears". It is light and pleasant in taste, and the recipe is so simple that even a novice winemaker can use it:

1. Prepare and mix the following ingredients: 3 liters of birch sap, a bottle of dry white wine, 700 g of sugar, lemon slices.
2. Take a barrel and pour the mixture into it.
3. Put it in a cool place for several months.
4. At the end of the period, strain the contents, remove from the sediment, pour into bottles, cork.
5. In a few months the drink will be ready.
6. Experts recommend adding raisins, dried apricots, honey, port wine, even cognac.

Alcoholic drinks made from birch sap differ in strength, softness, and taste. Much depends on the desire and preferences of the amateur winemaker.

How many countries and states are on our planet, how many provinces, regions, states, cantons, how many cities in them - that's how many there are varieties and varieties of the favorite drink of many - beer. For many brewers, the process of making their iconic drink remains an incomprehensible mystery, while others know absolutely everything about their favorite beer, right down to the recipe and temperature regimes prevailing in beer production.

But if you are a true beer lover, at least once in your life the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bindependent, "home" beer production, which you can make yourself and impress all your friends with a branded drink with your own name on the label, also made by yourself. So, if you still muster up the courage and want to experience the unique taste and aroma of this drink, try to brew it yourself.

To begin with, a little educational program based on the repetition of the above. You already know that beer is brewed by the process of alcoholic fermentation, which takes place in the wort - beer sourdough. Wort, in turn, may consist of a mixture of the following components: barley malt, hops and water. All of the above beer components are basic, basic, on the basis of which you can fantasize and experiment further, which is what our Russian brewers offering to our court more and more new varieties of this amber drink.

Depending on the quantity, quality and type of beer components, the quality, taste, aroma, color, consistency and other parameters of beer can vary in the widest range. For example, barley malt may be substituted for rice, corn or barley flour in the manufacture of certain beers in order to give the beer certain qualities. Sometimes ordinary sugar is used instead of malt or flour.

In the very brewing process there are several main, mandatory stages: the production of barley malt, the production of beer wort and its fermentation with brewer's yeast, maturation or "fermentation", filtration and bottling. These stages beer making it is quite possible to perform at home, without the use of the latest modern technologies and sophisticated equipment.

The starch contained in grain products must first be converted into sugar, for which malt is used. Malt has the ability to dissolve starch and some other substances found in cereals into a soluble state, and this occurs under the influence of malt enzymes. Production of special barley beer malt, which is the main raw material in the production of beer, includes the following stages: barley cleaning, sorting, soaking, sprouting or malting, drying the germinated malt and cleaning it from the green sprouts that have appeared and, finally, malt resting. In other words, brewing barley malt is nothing more than germinated and dried malt.

At home, soaking grains of cereals is done in large-diameter enameled dishes. Rye should be soaked for 25-30 hours, barley - 50-60, and every 6-7 hours the water should be changed. When changing water, it is sometimes recommended to leave the grain without water for about 2-3 hours, since the oxygen present in the air is simply necessary to activate the life processes of grain activity. After the end of the lock, the grains are germinated in the same dish or in several low pots or baths at once.

The duration of grain germination at room temperature is as follows: rye - 3-4 days, barley - 6-7 days. In this case, the grain should be periodically sprinkled with water to moisten and ted. Sprouts should appear about a day or two after the start of germination, and by the end of germination, the length of the barley sprout should be 1.5-2 the length of the grain itself. The duration of storage of finished fresh malt should not exceed 2-3 days.

The finished dried malt has a sweetish taste and a characteristic aroma. Not only the most important beer characteristics, but also the very color of the future beer depend on the type, properties and quality of malt. Yes, for making light beer pale malt is used, and for dark - dark, caramel malt. In fact, all available beers are divided into light and dark, not only depending on the properties of the malt, but also on the methods used in the processing of beer components, as a result of which the beer acquires a light or dark shade.

Before you get directly beer wort, prepared malt must undergo further processing. To do this, it is polished, crushed and mixed with water.

A mixture of crushed malt with water in brewing is called mash, and the process of mixing small particles of malt with specially prepared water is called mashing. In the resulting mixture, which at this point in time is the future beer wort, while maintaining a certain temperature regime, many enzymatic processes take place. As a result, the starch contained in the malt is saccharified, and at the end of this process, the wort production proceeds to the next stage, in which it is fermented with the help of hops and brewer's yeast.

Further beer wort filtered, filtered, as a result of which the beer wort becomes transparent. To flavor and clarify the finished wort, it is boiled together with hops, which are subsequently removed from it. After that, the finished wort is cooled.

The next stage is must fermentation, which occurs with the help of specially grown brewer's yeast. In time, this process takes about a week. There is such a pattern: the longer the fermentation of sweet beer wort takes place, the less sugar remains in it and the more alcohol is formed in it. During this very fermentation, carbon dioxide and alcohol are formed in beer. But that's not all.

received "young" beer it is necessary to ferment, for which it is placed in special vessels. The fermentation process lasts longer - from 20 to 90 days, and it is at this stage that the beer becomes beer in the full sense of the word. It acquires its indescribable taste and aroma, carbon dioxide accumulates in it, and it is finally clarified. In industrial, factory, beer production, continuous and accelerated production methods are sometimes used, in which the terms of fermentation and post-fermentation of beer are extremely compressed. But often this negatively affects the quality of the drink itself and its main characteristics, and only a few large beer producers manage to avoid this or somehow level the resulting deviations in the properties of the drink.

After the fermentation process, the beer is freed from the yeast in it by filtration, and only after that the beer can be considered quite ready for consumption.

It is simply impossible to achieve absolute compliance with the standards and division of beer, and it is useless. Many beer makers, on the contrary, they strive to give their product a specific taste or aroma that would distinguish it from others and be remembered by the consumer, has become a kind of brand name of this variety. Therefore, you are both full and complete beer maker, which has already proven itself and its home-made products among friends, relatives, acquaintances and neighbors, you can give it an interesting flavor with the help of certain operations or small changes in the recipe of the drink. Perhaps it is you who, thanks to an innovation introduced by you into the brewing process or as a result of numerous experiments with beer components and the introduction of unexpected components, will forever remain in the history of brewing and in the memory of beer lovers.

You already know that dark or light beer has certain indicators of strength. The strength of the beer depends on the duration of the above-described process of fermentation of the beer wort, that is, the exposure: the longer it is, the stronger the beer drink will turn out. Remember that any beer must be transparent - this is the first check for the quality and correctness of all prescription and technological processes.

So now you're a little enlightened about main technological processes of beer production, so you can start preparing to open your own mini-factory, arranged from improvised means, and with the help of a simplified technology of your own design, start making your own brand of beer.

BEER ORIGINAL OLD

Stage one: preparation of raw materials for the preparation of beer malt. First you need to get malt flour. To do this, you will need grains of wheat, barley or corn, in case of emergency. By the way, it has been noticed that beer becomes tastier if you take not only one type of a certain grain for malt, but prepare a mixture of several different components. For example, you can make a mixture of corn, barley and wheat in the following proportions: corn - 1 part, barley or wheat (optional) - 1 part. You can use another version of the proportions: corn - 1 part, barley or wheat - 1.5 parts.

The selected grains or their mixture must be carefully sorted out and soaked in water at room temperature so that the water is poured about 3-4 cm above the level of the grains. The filled grain should be left for about a day in order for it to swell properly. The next day, drain the water, and transfer the swollen grains to a box or trough, where they are slightly compressed, pressed to the bottom and walls. Cover the trough tightly so that it becomes warm inside, and sometimes stir, after which the grain should be pressed again a little.

When the grains germinate, they should be separated from each other and dried by air drying, that is, in a way that is as close to natural as possible. Although instead of air drying, a stove can also be used for this purpose. Grind properly dried sprouted grains into flour.

The next step is direct preparation of beer wort. The recipe is as follows: for every 10 liters of water you need 4 kg of finished malt, hops to taste, 50 g of yeast, 100 g of sugar.

Heat the water to about 30 ° C and carefully, gradually pour the malt flour into it. You need to try not to get lumps, so constantly stir the resulting slurry with a wooden spoon or a special mixer. Gradually raise the temperature of the malt gruel until it reaches 70°C and keep it at that temperature for one hour. Then bring the malt mixture to a boil.

Sift some of the malt flour ahead of time and fry until dark brown in a skillet or on a baking sheet in the oven. Pour the fried flour into the mass boiling over the fire and also mix well so that flour lumps do not form. After that, the malt mass should boil for another 5-6 minutes. The main thing in this process is not to digest this mass, otherwise your work will go down the drain and you will have to do everything all over again. To check the state of the malt mass and whether it should still be boiled, lift a wooden spoon from it so that the malt liquid flows off it in a trickle. So, if this trickle is transparent, everything is fine, but if not, it is quite possible that you digested it a little.

The next stage is straining and filtering the finished malt. To successfully complete this process, you will need a special device that you will need to make yourself - this is a kind of environmentally friendly portable filter. It can be a basket woven from small, thin, and most importantly, clean twigs. Line the bottom and walls with ordinary wheat straw, which must first be thoroughly rinsed under running water, and then boiled.

Next, you will need a vat, cauldron or large pot, where, in fact, this divine drink will be brewed. In addition to this kitchen utensil, you will need another pot or food container, which should be larger in size than a wicker basket, since it (the basket) will have to be inserted into this container. Another trifle - the container into which the basket will be inserted must be absolutely clean and have a hole. If you can’t figure out why there are so many pots and what to put where, we explain: the first, lowest level is a vat or boiler where beer will be brewed, the second, that is, the one that is higher, is a vessel with a hole from which strained malt mass will flow out, and the third is a wicker basket inserted into a vessel with a hole. Thus, you will get a tower with which you will be able to strain the finished malt.

Insert a basket lined with almost sterile straw into a trough or pan with a hole, and strain the malt broth. By shifting the decoction in small portions into the basket, you will see that the pure malt liquid from the basket flows down to the hole and flows out of it into the vat standing below. From the container where the malt was brewed, scoop out the malt grounds with a ladle and put them in a basket, where the grounds should be slightly leveled so that the straining process occurs faster. So in small portions you scoop out the entire contents of the pan. If you do not have a suitable vat for brewing beer, you can strain the malt into any other vessel that is suitable in size, in which the entire malt mass will fit, and then pour the already filtered liquid back into the cauldron where it was brewed earlier. Just do not forget to thoroughly rinse this vessel before reuse so as not to spoil the filtered and pure malt.

Put the strained malt broth on a strong fire, wait until it boils, and then cook for 1-1.5 hours from the moment of boiling. After this time, add hops to the malt broth and boil everything for another hour. After that, remove the cauldron from the heat and set it aside so that the contents cool properly to about 20-25 ° C. Next, strain the broth through a sieve and pour it into a bowl in which it will ferment.

For fermentation, it is necessary to prepare in advance sourdough, which will consist of sugar and yeast. Dilute the yeast with a small amount of warm malt-hoppy broth, put sugar there and let the yeast rise well. When the starter is ready, put it in the already cooled beer broth and mix everything properly. After that, cover the boiler with the beer semi-finished product with warm material and put it in a warm place for fermentation. You just have to wait until the beer is completely ready, and this process takes about 2-3 days. During fermentation, foam will appear on the surface of the beer, which must be skimmed off. When doing this, do not forget to cover the beer again with warm material each time. By the way, you may not throw away the removed foam, as it can be used with the same success the next time, during the next brewing of beer, as yeast.

After 2-3 days, which you spent in lust and impatience next to the cherished, but not quite ready beer, you can breathe a sigh of relief: finally, the divine beer drink is ready! Invite your friends to your house, gather your family and announce the sensational news that has been kept secret for so long. Imagine how happy they all will be! And how proud they will be of you! You never even dreamed of such success, and it's all thanks to beer alone. But before you start tasting homebrew beer, do not forget to strain it, and preferably through a hair sieve, after which the beer should be briefly transferred to a cool place so that its temperature becomes suitable. Now it is ready, and you can start the beer holiday. By the way, beer becomes tasty and fragrant when its temperature reaches 10 °C.

It has long been noticed and proven that it is at this temperature that beer most fully manifests its rich and unique taste, all its qualities and aroma are felt. Therefore, if you decide to go to the bitter end, do not be too lazy to bring the finished drink to the right temperature in order to be sure that the invited tasters will be amazed on the spot.

Every year in the technology of making beer, including homemade, there are more and more new achievements, to which you can put your hand. Often, in the manufacture of beer, various preparations and natural medicinal additives are used, as a result of which beer acquires an unusual taste and unexpected properties that can be used for therapeutic or prophylactic purposes. The use of non-traditional raw materials in the technology of beer production is becoming a very interesting direction and an extensive field of activity in brewing, and especially in home brewing. Therefore, go ahead and experiment, and you will definitely succeed in everything as it should. Moreover, by doing home brewing, you provide yourself with an environmentally friendly and natural product that does not contain any harmful impurities or preservatives.

HOMEMADE WHITE BEER

The next beer recipe for home production and consumption is white beer. Compared to the previous recipe, this beer is made in a very simple and cheap way.

First of all, you will need a wooden barrel with a capacity of about 6 buckets. To make beer, you will have to redo the barrel a little: hammer a sleeve on the side closer to the bottom of the barrel and make a hole for the future tap, and on the opposite, upper, side of the bottom in the middle, make a hole that will be plugged with an ordinary sleeve.

After all the preparatory work, you can safely proceed to the very first stage brewing beer. To do this, you will need a boiler in which beer will be brewed. Pour 3 buckets of water into it, put it on fire and bring to a boil. After that, put 300-400 g of good, selected hops into the water and bring the liquid to a boil again. After boiling, let the contents of the cauldron boil for 5-6 minutes, then remove the cauldron from the heat. Strain the resulting hop broth through a canvas or a basket woven from a thin vine, lined with washed and boiled wheat straw from the inside. Put about 6 kg of sugar, 2 tbsp. ready-made brewer's yeast, after which the broth mix well so that the sugar dissolves completely. Pour the beer broth into a barrel prepared in advance, which should be moved to a warm place in order to start the fermentation process. The bushing should not be clogged.

You will notice that the liquid in the barrel began to foam very strongly, but in just a few days the foam will fall off. It is best to remove the remaining foam. If you decide to brew beer in the summer, the fermentation process will last approximately 3-4 weeks, and in the last two weeks the sleeve will need to be plugged. And that's not all: every two days, the sleeve should be opened and closed again.

Throughout this period, the taste of sugar should completely disappear from the liquid that is in the barrel, and if this does not happen, the fermentation process should be further extended. It is by this indicator - the presence or absence of sugar taste - that you can determine whether the beer has fermented enough or not. When the sugary taste is completely gone, drive the sleeve firmly into the barrel and leave the beer alone for 4-5 days. After this time, the beer will be completely ready for drinking, but first it should be poured using the tap attached earlier into separate bottles, which are tightly corked. Beer should be poured so that it does not deteriorate.

Since this beer is called white, it can be consumed in this form without any further transformations. But some will enjoy the tinkering with the preparation of beer, and therefore you can go further and with the help of some manipulations give the beer a pleasant shade for you. To do this, you can tint it with sugar color, which can be purchased at a pharmacy, or use your own dye, which can be burnt rye bread infusion.

BEER HOMEMADE WITH SUGAR

This recipe will help you get a delicious and nutritious drink that you will never want to part with under any circumstances. This is house beer just like the previous recipes, you can get it at home at any time of the year.

According to the recipe, you will need several buckets of boiled and settled water, for each bucket of water - about 1.2 kg of sugar, 1 glass of brewer's yeast. Pour hot water into a clean tub or barrel, add the right amount of sugar and stir until it is completely dissolved. In this case, the sugar solution should cool slightly to the temperature of fresh milk or to ambient temperature, if it happens in summer. After the liquid has cooled slightly, put 1 cup of brewer's yeast into it and mix well.

This solution must be left alone for about 2-3 days for fermentation, during which foam will float to the surface of the beer liquid, and it must be removed without fail. When fermentation is over, which you can tell again by the presence or absence of a sugary aftertaste, the finished beer should be strained and bottled clean. To add flavor to the beer, you can put a lemon or orange peel in each of the bottles.

After pouring the beer, the bottles should be tightly corked, the corks should be tied well, and stored in a cold room or in the cellar, but the beer should be constantly monitored so that it does not freeze - then it becomes unsuitable for consumption. That is, of course, you can drink it, but this drink can be considered beer only with a big stretch.

With a large amount of sugar or molasses, the beer acquires a sweet taste and a lot of foam, because the amount of alcohol and carbonic acid in sweeter beer also increases. Therefore, you can independently vary not only the taste of the future beer, but also its strength, color and alcohol content.

RASPBERRY BEER

To make this beer, you will need a large vat or pot in which to brew the beer, the larger the container, the better. Pour several buckets of water into the cauldron, boil. The water should settle and cool down a bit.

Pre-cook the raspberry syrup with sugar. Sort the ripe raspberries and rinse well in cold water, then remember with a wooden spoon or rub through a sieve. Sprinkle the pureed raspberry mass with sugar in the ratio of 1.2 kg of sugar per 1 kg of raspberries, and then add water - 0.6 l - and cook for 3-5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add raspberry syrup to a cauldron of hot water in the following ratio: for each bucket of water, as much syrup as is obtained from 1 kg of raspberries. By the way, raspberry syrup can not be filtered, but poured along with them, so that the berries later, when insisted, give even more raspberry flavor and aroma. When you have poured the syrup into the cauldron, mix the contents well and add ready-made brewer's yeast at the rate of about 2/3 cup of yeast for each bucket of liquid. Leave the cauldron with the solution and yeast alone for a few days (23 days will be enough). During all this time, fermentation will occur in it, the result of which is foam appearing on the surface of the beer. Don't forget to take it off.

After the beer has sufficiently fermented, strain it from the remaining raspberries and pour into individual bottles, which are tightly corked and stored in a cool place.

CHERRY BEER

Rinse ripe ripe cherries with cold water, pour into an enamel bowl and pour water at the rate of 2 liters of water per kilogram of cherries. When the cherry comes to a boil, do not reduce the heat and let it simmer for 3-5 minutes. Strain the resulting cherry juice and filter through a linen bag, mixing it with the remnants of juice squeezed from boiled cherries. Then add sugar to the cherry juice at the rate of 60 g of sugar per liter of juice.

Next, cool the cherry juice a little (to about 25 ° C) and dilute the yeast in it in an amount of 2-3 tbsp. l., which are pre-soaked in a small amount of warm water. When the wort ferments, it should be shaken every day and remove the emerging foam. After a week, strain the beer, pour into bottles, cork and store in a cool, dark place.

BIRCH BEER

To make this beer you will need fresh Birch juice, which is best to recruit in March, when the birch leaves have not yet unfolded, and the juices inside the tree begin to rise up. Sap is extracted from cuts on the surface of the birch, but care must be taken not to have many of them on one tree and so that they are not located too close to each other. It is advisable to collect birch sap from several trees at the same time, in addition, to make this type of beer, you will need a huge amount of it - several buckets. If you managed to collect 3-4 buckets of birch sap, this amount will be enough. Collecting juice in any vessel, it is immediately corked tightly.

Pour birch sap into a large vat or saucepan, put on high heat and bring to a boil, then let it boil. At this time, foam will appear on the surface of the juice, which must be removed. During cooking, gradually add sugar at the rate of 2 kg of sugar for every 8 liters of birch sap. To give a special flavor, add a little crushed lemon zest to the birch liquid. When the sugar dissolves, turn off the fire under the boiler and let the juice stand a little and cool, then carefully dilute half a glass of yeast in the boiled birch sap.

After that, birch beer should ferment for 5-6 days in a warm place, during which you need to constantly remove the foam that appears on the surface of the liquid, and also often shake the contents of the vessel in which it ferments. It is best if the birch beer is fermented in a wooden container: a tub or a barrel. When fermentation is over, strain the finished beer, bottle and cork tightly.

MAPLE BEER

Unlike birch sap, maple sap is much sweeter and has a pleasant specific taste and aroma. Maple sap should be collected in the same way as birch sap, only beer must be made on the exact day it was collected so that it does not have time to deteriorate and lose its properties. To make maple sap beer, you will need a large amount of maple sap - about four buckets.

Assembled maple with Pour the ok into a large cauldron and bring to a boil over high heat, then gradually add 3-4 kg of sugar. When it is completely dissolved, remove the cauldron from the fire. During cooking, do not forget to remove the foam that appears on the surface of the liquid.

Pour the boiled juice into a wooden barrel or tub and let it cool to 20 ° C, then dilute 2 tbsp. l. yeast. Beer must ferment in a warm place for 4 days, for which the barrel must be covered with warm material. Do not forget to remove the protruding foam. After this time, when the beer has been fermenting, do not completely cork the sleeve on the barrel and transfer it to the cellar or any other cold place for 4 weeks. As a result, you will get just a great and very tasty beer, which will need to be filtered, poured into bottles and corked well.

OLD RUSSIAN HONEY BEER

The recipe for this old beer has somehow survived to this day to our great happiness. After all, who today will be able to enjoy a real old drink, the technology of preparation of which involves the most natural processes. It is noteworthy that the preparation of this beer does not require any tricks and the use of brewing or even heating, so the technology of its preparation is so simple and understandable that even a non-professional can handle it. This natural drink is not only incredibly tasty, but also very useful from the point of view of medicine, so it’s a sin not to cook it.

Take the same amount of cherries and wild strawberries (you can use garden strawberries instead), sort and rinse thoroughly in cold water. Then mix the berries with the same amount of real bee honey. Dilute this honey-berry mixture with as much water as you think is sufficient. After that, put the last component into the mixture - this is a slice of rye bread, which was soaked for a short time in good brewer's yeast. Please note that for 3 kg of berries and 3 liters of honey there are 15 liters of water, 200-250 g of brewer's yeast and 400 g of rye bread.

Leave this mixture alone for about 2-3 weeks, during which time stir it occasionally. After this time, drain the liquid and pour it into a wooden barrel, which must be covered and put in a warm place to finish fermentation. In a week or two, this fabulous beer will be ready.

BEER HONEY ORIGINAL

Dilute 3.5 kg of light thick honey with 2 buckets of warm water, put on fire. Boil this mixture until it thickens, do not forget to remove the foam protruding from the surface. The longer you boil honey, the stronger your future beer will be. When you feel you have cooked enough, take the pot off the heat and let the honey cool down a bit.

Pour it into a wooden barrel and dilute 200 g of dry yeast in it. After that, the fermentation process begins. In order to stop fermentation, after a while, pour 1 glass of wine alcohol into the contents of the barrel. By the way, it will not only stop fermentation, but also purify honey, make it transparent and strong.

If desired, you can pour your favorite spices into it through the sleeve in the barrel during the fermentation of honey. Honey beer is considered fully prepared only after 3 months of aging.

About the benefits of birch sap.

It is not without reason that the birch is to some extent a symbol of the Slavs - one can say that the entire East Slavic culture grew right under the birch, drunk with birch sap.

Just think about it - they wrote on birch bark, they cut a torch from birch logs, it was impossible to do without birch tar on the farm, they took a steam bath and ground in the house with a birch broom, they were treated with decoctions from birch buds. And they drank birch kvass - a simple drink or low-alcohol and birch - a stronger drink.

And indeed - this birch sap is a very, very useful product.

The benefits of birch sap are that it is able to dissolve urinary stones, at the same time removing all kinds of harmful substances from the body - once, it is useful for the prevention and treatment of diseases of the gastrointestinal tract - two, it has proven itself well in the fight against pulmonary problems: cough, bronchitis, pulmonary tuberculosis - three.

In addition, with spring beriberi, what, if not freshly picked birch sap, can be used for the benefit of the body? It stimulates metabolism (a diet drink, by the way), regenerates tissues, has a tonic effect, including when applied externally, so to speak, that is, in cosmetology.

And all why? And because birch sap is rich in various useful substances: potassium, magnesium, calcium, organic acids - glutamic, nicotinic, malic.

Birch Recipes.

An old alcoholic drink made from birch sap was called "birch tree". And, as I understand it, it was not so much tasty as just intoxicating, which was what was required of it - to give it to the head. But this is not our way. Therefore, the birch tree recipes that are given here , somewhat, so to speak, "modernized" and simplified.

The first birch recipe.

The resulting fresh juice in the amount of five liters, a bottle of port wine and a bottle of vodka are poured into a vessel (best of all oak, a barrel, but you can also take a glass container), a kilogram of granulated sugar, a pound of raisins are added. All this is thoroughly mixed until the sugar dissolves. The vessel is tightly sealed and taken out to a cold place. If there is an opportunity to put it on the ice - perfect. Two months later, the finished drink from birch sap is bottled, which are even more carefully sealed (the corks are best fixed to the neck of the bottles with wire, like in champagne), taken out to a cool place, where they are stored lying on their side.

The second recipe for birch.

This method is more laborious, but closer to the historical roots of making a drink from birch sap.

The calculation is again for five liters of juice. We pour it into a basin in which we usually cook jam, pour one and a half kilograms of granulated sugar and begin to heat it, stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved. The foam that forms in this case must be removed.

Cook, cook over low heat until about a third of the contents of our basin is boiled down. Then we remove it from the heat, filter the syrup into the container that is intended for further harvesting (again, a barrel is better, but a glass vessel will do).

We wait until it cools down to about body temperature. Now it's time to pour in the pre-diluted two tablespoons of yeast and a bottle of vodka, and also throw in two sliced ​​\u200b\u200blemons - with a peel, but without stones.

Make sure that the vessel is not filled to the very top - there must be room for fermentation. And the birch will roam in a warm place for about twelve hours, after which it must be taken out into the cold for seven weeks. Then the drink should be filtered, poured into champagne bottles (collected during these seven weeks), corked with wire and stored in a cool place.

The third recipe for birch.

Five liters of birch sap, a liter of port wine, one and a half kilograms of sugar and two finely chopped lemons with a peel but without stones are mixed in a vessel that is taken out in a cold place for two months. Then the still not completely ready alcoholic drink is bottled and closed in a way already known to us. The bottles are again taken to a cool room, where the birch tree will “reach” for another three weeks. The bottles should lie on their sides, best of all on the sand.

Recipes for alcoholic drinks from birch sap.

According to these recipes, the use of wine and more sugar is provided, so what is obtained cannot be called birch. What kind of alcoholic drink is this - think for yourself - maybe you will call it birch balm, birch wine or birch liqueur.

The first recipe for a drink made from birch sap.

For four liters of juice, we take half a liter of dry wine, a glass of vodka, a pound of sugar and four hundred grams of raisins, which we pour after the sugar has completely dispersed. We close the vessel tightly and put it on ice - or in a very cold place for about three months. Then we pour what happened into bottles, cork and store in the sand, lying on its side.

The second recipe for a drink made from birch sap.

For the same four liters of birch sap, you need a bottle of dry wine, eight hundred grams of granulated sugar, one crushed lemon. We keep the carefully closed mixture in the cold for two months, then pour it, close it, take the bottles to the cellar or a cold cellar, where they lie on their side for another month. And then you can start tasting.

Beer from birch sap.

Either beer, or low-alcohol kvass is obtained. Rather the second than the first. Simple to primitive recipe.

From a two-liter bottle we pour out (in the sense of drinking) almost all the beer, leaving a glass there, add birch sap to the very cap, twist this cap and take it to a cold place - or to the refrigerator, if there is room - for two months. You will open - carefully, the volume of gases will accumulate enough. By the way, in the summer heat, such kvass can be added to okroshka - tasty, refreshing and unusual.

Harmless birch sap recipes.

1) Syrup from birch sap.

Fresh birch sap is long and persistently evaporated over low heat in a container without a lid until it thickens. At the same time, the sugar concentration in birch syrup is about 60 percent, the color is light yellow, even rather light lemon, and the syrup resembles honey in thickness. Store it in the refrigerator in a glass jar, adding it to various non-alcoholic and alcoholic cocktails. By the way, scientists have found that birch syrup can stop the development of caries! It’s just that it’s prepared for a rather long and expensive time: estimate how much gas you need to burn to evaporate water from birch sap!

2) Recipe

We heat birch sap (it can start to ferment) over low heat together with sugar (a glass of three liters), frozen berries of red (or black, or a mixture of them) currants - half a glass and broken slices of dried apples - about ten. For color, you can throw a little hibiscus. As soon as all the sugar has dissolved - remove from heat, filter, pour into bottles and put them in a cold place.

To prepare such birch kvass, you can use anything, in my opinion: something for sweetness (sugar, syrup, jam), something for sourness (citrus, lemon, sour berry), something for color (karkade , black tea, again a bright berry).

Do not believe it, but our ancestors prepared birch kvass long before the baptism of Russia. Such a drink was called birch. Later, in the 10th-11th centuries, slightly fermented birch sap was replaced with the familiar kvass. But the sediment remained. There are also recipes for kvass from birch sap. Here we will talk about them.

BEEREZKA (birch tripel)(Russia)

This is a new author's variety from the contract brewery "LaBEERint Brewery", which is headed by Vyacheslav Vetelev, well-known in the Russian beer world. As you understand, they do not yet have their own equipment, but they have the knowledge and desire to brew beers that differ from what is sold in the mass market. Moreover, there is already a decent experience. Before the variety considered today, they brewed at different breweries: Champagne beer Beryozka, Watermelon Blanche, Shadow Porter, Cutty Sark IPA, as well as several trial and collaborationist varieties. The most powerful spread was "Shadow Porter" in several versions, which was brewed according to the recipes of "LaBEERint Brewery" several times already.

Birch beer, as you noticed, is brewed for the second time. I will retell a brief history of the creation of today's "BEER-cut", which some of you may have already seen somewhere. Last year, the collected birch sap was taken to St. Petersburg, and beer was made there. Several round-trip trips to the cultural capital, as well as botched filtration, then made the experimental beer prohibitively expensive. Therefore, they decided to make a new version somewhere nearby. The choice fell on a private brewery "" in the village of Krasnaya Pakhra, Moscow Region, a report on a visit to which.

The guys in the spring collected more than a ton of birch sap. Part of it went to birch kvass, which was successfully and quickly sold out. And the rest was left for storage in a forfat at a brewery at a low temperature. It was not possible to immediately brew the beer due to the constant employment of the brewery equipment for the fulfillment of regular orders for the main types of beer. The opportunity appeared only on July 5, on this day, Vyacheslav and Antonina Vetelevs ("LaBEERint Brewery"), brewers and owners of "Stamm Beer", and some brewer Mikhail from an unknown "secret brewery" gathered at the "Stamm Beer" brewery :) Let's recalculate on the fingers of brewers known to us with the name Mikhail, and some of us will understand who we are talking about, and whose name cannot be named for ethical reasons.

So, it turned out that by the time of cooking the birch sap was sour, despite the low storage temperatures. However, it was decided to still use it. Beer was brewed from wheat malt with the addition of birch sap. After boiling and filtering the must, along with hops, birch buds ground in a hand mill were added for aroma. Why in manual? Because the kidneys contain a large amount of resin, and the automatic malt mill could not grind them, completely clogged with resin. A few days after the start of fermentation, meadow honey was also added to the beer. As a result, the beer turned out to be just over one ton, and the total fermentation and maturation time was about 35 days.

TTX - 8% alcohol at 22% initial density.
Ingredients: water, birch sap, wheat malt, Pilsner barley malt, meadow honey, hops, birch buds, Belgian yeast.

It is poured with a chestnut color, cloudy, light brown in the light. When pouring from the tank, the foam was actively formed. When I poured it at home from a bottle, I apparently got a little breathless due to loose capping, and I got the foam with difficulty. However, it is dense, fine-grained, and settled rather quickly, but this is normal for this alcohol content. And it does not interfere with the full enjoyment of the aroma.

The scent is sweet and refreshing at the same time. There is something confidently honey in it, rather chords of Suzdal mead mixed with birch sap (kvass), as well as the freshness of a birch grove. In addition, there is the aroma of wheat beer with its cloves and other spices. There is also a certain woodiness and resinousness - this, for sure, is the effect of crushed birch buds. The body is average. You can feel the high gravity, but at 22% beer initial gravity, it doesn't look like much. I think that the indicated 22% is the extract, taking into account the added honey. According to the oily and velvety sensations in the mouth, it looks like 17-18%, which is also drop dead. Carbonation is average, looks like mead.

The taste is sweet, wheat-malt, honey. At first, overripe banana and clove spices feel "wheat". But it is well flavored with oily woodiness, as if chewed on these birch buds and washed them down with wheat beer. I think it will be similar if you take some rich wheat beer and throw birch buds crushed in a garlic press right into the glass. But here, in the middle of the sip, birch kvass is also felt, it is he who gives a refreshing effect when drinking. At the finish, honey sweetness goes to the palate, and remains for a long aftertaste. There is also a light hop bitterness.

A very interesting product to find and try.

UPD.
While writing this text, Slava Vetelev confirmed in personal correspondence that the initial density of the wort without honey was 18%, and honey caught up with it up to 22%. You won't drink receptors :))