Freshly harvested birch sap is not recommended to be stored for more than two weeks. To prolong the shelf life of such a useful beverage, it is preserved or kvass is prepared on its basis.
Light, slightly sweet liquid secreted by birch, has no smell and a pronounced taste. Cooking kvass on it, you get a perfectly tonic soft drink. Folk healers claim that if in any kvass recipe, just replacing water with birch sap, you can get a healing drink.
Kvass from birch sap - general principles of cooking
• Birch sap is used to prepare both yeast and yeast-free kvass, on specially prepared sourdough or malt.
• The technology of preparing the drink is simple and includes simple steps: preparing the raw materials, combining the main components with birch sap and further fermenting the drink. It can last from a matter of hours to several weeks and depends on the recipe. After fermentation, kvass is filtered and cleaned for cooling.
• Any berries and fruits can serve as raw materials for such kvass, and not only fresh ones. No less tasty and useful to get a drink, if it is prepared with ice cream or dried berries or fruits. Often birch kvass is prepared with grain (barley) or on boiled buckwheat flour, which can also be replaced with rye or oatmeal.
• Despite the fact that the juice itself is sweetish, honey or sugar is added to any birch kvass to enhance the fermentation process. An exception to this rule is the drunken birch kvass on beer and the drink made with dried fruits.
• Unleavened birch kvasses, as a rule, are less carbonated and therefore, after filtering and bottling, several berries of raisins are put into it, which must be washed.
• Properly prepared kvass on such a basis, perfectly quenches thirst, but, in addition, it is also used as a fill for okroshka and beetroots.
Refreshing birch kvass with barley and mint
Ingredients:
• ten liters of birch sap;
• two glasses of sugar;
• half a kilo of barley;
• dried mint - 100 gr .;
• 800 gr. black “Borodino” bread.
Cooking Method:
1. Make bread from bread. Cut it into small pieces, centimeter thick, slightly dry and roast in the oven.
2. Pour the granulated sugar into a dry frying pan and, while constantly stirring, heat to brown.
3. Separately, lightly fry the barley.
4. Pour the birch sap into a large enamelled container, such as a bucket, and boil it over low heat. Boil the juice for no more than a minute and remove from the heat.
5. Then dip the mint and roasted barley into it. Add sugar with breadcrumbs, and, having stirred well, leave for three days in a warm room.
6. Strain the finished drink through a rare sieve or filter made up of 3-4 gauze folded and poured into prepared containers. Chill.
Simple kvass from birch sap, without sugar with dried fruits
Ingredients:
• 3 liters of birch natural juice;
• 200 gr. dried fruits (dried apricots, prunes).
Cooking Method:
1. Rinse dried fruits well, you can soak a little.
2. Then pour them with birch sap. Cover the container in several layers with gauze and remove for fermentation in the heat for two weeks.
3. Then filter and cool well.
Yeast birch kvass with hops - “Golden”
Ingredients:
• natural birch sap - 3 liters;
• 30 gr. pressed alcohol yeast;
• dark raisins - 25 gr .;
• 50 gr. Sahara;
• tablespoon white flour;
• 300 gr. crisp rye crackers;
• 40 gr. hop cones.
Cooking Method:
1. In a small bowl, pour 100 ml of birch sap and heat slightly.
2. Crumble the yeast in a separate bowl, add sugar to it and stir until the yeast has completely dispersed.
3. Add the yeast mixture to the warm juice, add the flour and stir well.
4. Lower the rye crackers into a large container. Add hop cones, water-washed raisins. Pour three spoons of sugar and fill all with hot juice (3 l.). 5. Cool well and add yeast mixture, mix. Stretch gauze on the neck of the container and put in heat for three days.
6. Strain and put the birch kvass in the refrigerator.
7. Add three spoons of granulated sugar to the remaining leaven and add a new batch of juice.
Unleavened kvass on birch sap - “Coffee”
Ingredients:
• 2.5 liters of freshly picked birch natural juice;
• 60 gr. dark raisins;
• refined sugar - half a glass;
• coffee beans - a small handful;
• 200 gr. crackers (rye).
Cooking Method:
1. Breadcakes well roast in the oven. You can simply take rye bread, cut it in small pieces and fry in a toaster.
2. In a clean three-liter jar place the fried crackers. Add sugar, washed dried raisins and coffee.
3. Pour all boiled juice and stir well to dissolve the granulated sugar.
4. Put a rubber glove on the neck and place it in a cool dark place.
5. When the glove is filled with air, after about two days, the drink will be fully prepared.
6. Strain and, bottled, remove for another two days, but in the refrigerator.
Cherry kvass on birch sap with rye bread crumbs
Ingredients:
• birch sap, fresh collection - 10 l .;
• 400 gr. sugar;
• fried rye crackers - 300 gr .;
• 350 gr. fresh or frozen cherries;
• 50 gr. dried dill stalks;
• pharmaceutical oak bark - 100 gr.
Cooking Method:
1. Put the crackers on a gauze, tie a bag and drop into the juice. Remove the container to a darkened warm place.
2. After three days, add dried dill stalks, oak bark and cherries. Transfer for further insistence in a cool room for fifteen days.
3. Then filter and use as directed. Use as a chilled drink, or use as a fill for okroshka.
Birch kvass in raisins
Ingredients:
• twenty liters of birch, natural juice;
• dark raisins - 100 berries;
• one kilogram of granulated sugar. Cooking Method:
1. Put the gauze folded in three layers into a funnel or on a sieve and strain the juice through it.
2. Add the whole measure of sugar and stir it, ensuring the dissolution of the crystals.
3. Then put in the raisins and leave for up to 4 days.
4. Strain the ready drink, pour it into tight-fitting containers and place in a cool, darkened place.
5. Kvass can last up to 4 months, but usually is drunk faster.
Honey kvass from birch sap
Ingredients:
• 5 l of birch sap;
• two large lemons;
• 50 gr. fresh baker's yeast;
• 100 gr. liquid honey;
• raisins.
Cooking Method:
1. Crumble the yeast and dissolve it in fifty milliliters of warm water.
2. Rinse the lemons and dip for two minutes in hot water. Then cut each lengthwise, in half, squeeze the juice and strain it through a sieve.
3. Pour diluted water yeast and filtered lemon juice into birch sap. Add honey and stir so that it is well dispersed in the juice.
4. Pour the liquid into the bottle. Add five raisins and, tightly closed, place in the cool for a few days.
Drink birch kvass on beer
Ingredients:
• 500 ml of light live beer;
• 2.6 l. birch, natural juice.
Cooking Method:
1. In a clean three-liter bottle, pour in the beer and bring the volume to the neck with filtered fresh juice.
2. Close the capron lid tightly and store for two months in a cool room or refrigerator.
3. At the end of this time, the intoxicating birch kvass on the beer will be ready.
Kvass from birch sap on bread sourdough
Ingredients:
• 700 gr. rye crackers;
• two glasses, “with a slide”, sugar;
• a tablespoon of bread sourdough;
• a small piece of orange peel;
• ten liters of fresh birch sap.
Cooking Method:
1. Place the rye crackers on the roasting pan and dry in the oven.
2. Add all the sugar to the juice, stir well, and pour them dried crackers. 3. Add a tablespoon of sourdough bread, orange zest, stir again and leave to heat for 4 days.
4. Next, strain the already almost ready drink from sodden rusks and pour into bottles. In each add a pinch of raisins, close tightly and place in a cool, if possible without light, place for 3 days.
5. After this short aging, you can drink kvass made from birch sap.
Birch kvass with malt on buckwheat flour with lemon
Ingredients:
• one glass of powdered kvass malt;
• small lemon;
• a tablespoon of honey (buckwheat);
• a small handful of dark raisins;
• a glass of buckwheat flour;
• a handful of crimson leaves;
• two liters of birch sap.
Cooking Method:
1. Sift buckwheat flour into a bowl, pour in one and a half cups of boiling water, pound and stir, leave to cool completely.
2. Raisin well, rinse and grind with a meat grinder with lemon. Rind with a lemon cut is not necessary.
3. Raspberry leaves, rinse, wipe dry and chop with a knife.
4. Mix the components twisted in the meat grinder with raspberry leaves and honey.
5. Add steamed buckwheat flour and malt. Stir well and fill with birch sap.
6. Wrap the container neck with a bandage or gauze and clean for 4 days in a fairly warm room.
7. After that, drain the finished birch kvass from the sediment and strain.
8. Leaven, which will remain at the bottom of the tank, it is quite possible to reuse.
Apple kvass on birch sap with ginger and mint
Ingredients:
• two liters of birch sap;
• five medium sized apples;
• 40 grams of fresh ginger root;
• teaspoon light honey;
• three tablespoons of raisins;
• half a lemon;
• high-speed yeast - 0.5 tsp;
• eight leaves of mint;
• 100 gr. sugar.
Cooking Method:
1. Wash and scoop mint leaves, raisins and place everything on a towel.
2. Do not peel the apples off the apples, cut them into medium-sized slices, remove the seeds and cover with birch sap. Put the pan with apples on a small fire and boil for three minutes after boiling, cool. 3. In half a glass of warm broth dissolve the yeast. Add sugar (1 teaspoon) to the mixture, stir and place in a quarter of an hour in heat.
4. In the cooled broth, pour the approached yeast. Add the remaining sugar, honey and squeeze the juice from the lemon. Dip the grated ginger, chopped mint leaves and raisins.
5. Stir thoroughly, cover with several layers of gauze and leave to stand for up to 12 hours.
6. Drink be sure to strain and cool well.
Kvass from birch sap - cooking tricks and useful tips
• Juice secreted by a birch tree is harvested in the spring when abundant sap flow begins.
• In the bark of an adult tree, the girth of which is more than 20 cm, make a hole at a depth allowing it to reach the wood and insert a tubule into it. That is where the juice will stand out.
• The diameter of the hole must correspond to the diameter of the tube inserted into it, otherwise the juice will stand out.
• For convenience, you can use the tube from a medical dropper. One end is inserted into the hole in the tree, and the other into the hole in the nylon cover, which is worn on a three-liter jar. When filling capacity, it is replaced by another. Juice collected by this method is obtained clean, without any admixture of forest debris.
• Freshly harvested juice before cooking kvass must be filtered from accidental trash.
