Ingredients
Sap
- 5 litresfresh birch sap
To ferment
- 200 gsugar
- 2 tbspraisins
- 1lemon, sliced
- 3 sprigsmint, optional
- 1crust dark rye bread, optional
Directions
- Tap the sap in early spring, during the two or three weeks before the buds break. A single hole 2 cm deep and about 1 cm across, drilled at a slight upward angle roughly a metre up a mature birch, will give litres in a day.
- Take from healthy mature trees only, take from a different tree each year, and plug the hole with a wooden dowel or a plug of moss when you have finished. A tree tapped repeatedly, or left open, is genuinely damaged and will bleed for weeks.
- Strain the sap through muslin as soon as you collect it, because it carries bark, grit and insects. It also spoils within a couple of days at room temperature, so use it fresh or refrigerate it at once.
- To drink it fresh, simply chill it and serve. It is barely sweet and faintly mineral, and this is how most of it is drunk in Belarus.
- To make byarozavik, warm about a litre of the sap just enough to dissolve the sugar into it, then stir that back into the rest.
- Add the raisins, the lemon slices and the mint, along with the crust of rye bread if you want a faster and more assertive ferment.
- Cover with a cloth and leave at room temperature for 2 to 3 days, until it fizzes when stirred and tastes lightly sour. The raisins carry all the wild yeast that is needed.
- Strain, bottle and refrigerate, leaving headroom in each bottle and opening them carefully for the first day or two, because it goes on producing gas even in the cold.
- Drink it within a week. At that length it stays a soft drink; left for weeks it keeps fermenting into something quite different.
Technique
- Collecting the sap is a rural rite of spring in Belarus, and the etiquette around not harming the trees is taken seriously.
- Fresh sap will not keep. Plan to use it the day you collect it or the day after.
- Two to three days is the whole ferment. This is a lightly soured soft drink, not a beer.
Substitutions
- Bottled birch sap, widely sold in Baltic and Polish shops, which works perfectly well for the fermented version.
- Barberries or dried cranberries in place of raisins, for a sharper drink.
Variations
- With dried fruit and a piece of ginger added to the jar.
- The Latvian and Lithuanian versions, often made with more sugar.
- Boiled down to birch syrup, which takes around a hundred litres of sap to make a single litre.
History
Birch sap tapped in early spring, drunk fresh or fermented; collecting it is a Belarusian rural rite of spring.
Frequently asked questions
What is Byarozavik?
Byarozavik is a drink from Belarus: lightly fermented birch-sap drink. Birch sap tapped in early spring, drunk fresh or fermented; collecting it is a Belarusian rural rite of spring.
How long does Byarozavik take to make?
Byarozavik takes 30 min plus 2 days fermenting of preparation and no cooking at all. The recipe makes 5 litres. It is rated easy to make.
What can I substitute in Byarozavik?
Yes, within limits. Bottled birch sap, widely sold in Baltic and Polish shops, which works perfectly well for the fermented version. Barberries or dried cranberries in place of raisins, for a sharper drink.
What is the most important thing to get right in Byarozavik?
Two to three days is the whole ferment. This is a lightly soured soft drink, not a beer.
