How do you collect birch juice?

Answer 1

you go to the birch grove in early spring and cut a little hole in the birch tree - the juice will start pouring right out

The time for doing this is rather narrow, few weeks in spring. You can start, when nature has woken up, basically, when ice and snow is gone, at least in Latvia. Find a birch tree, as wide as a man. Drill a hole in it, a bit wider as a thumb and to the middle or two thirds of the diameter. Height as it is easiest for you, I do it at my stomach height. Best side is south. And drill it a little bit upwards, just a degree so it can easiest run out. Then hammer a stick with a little hole in the middle. It will drip actively out. One tree gives 15 liters or more daily. So you have to check up according to your collecting container size. And you have to protect all that from rain. When you are done, close the hole with a stick, so the tree can live, or else you have killed a tree.

Fresh birch juice tastes like water, but contains lots of good stuff. If you hold it in cold place, or even hold it buried underground, you can use it all summer. When you hold it inside, at room temperature, it will turn sour in a week or so. That is not bad, some like it sour, some don't. If you add sugar to it and pour in a champaigne bottle and secure it very tight, after few weeks it will turn to sparkling, weak alcoholic drink.