Champagne from birch sap: 5 recipes

In recent years and even decades, truly high-quality alcoholic drinks can hardly be found on sale. It is especially easy to run into a fake when it comes to champagne. For this reason, home winemaking in Russia is literally experiencing a rebirth. There is a special demand for drinks made from natural products. It’s not difficult to make champagne from birch sap at home. And the taste of the resulting drink will please both the female and male half of humanity.

How to make champagne from birch sap

The main ingredient for preparing this amazing, refreshing drink in any weather is birch sap. This natural elixir of health can be obtained in just 2-3 weeks a year. But this does not mean at all that champagne can be made from it only in early spring in a very short time. Birch sap canned in cans is also suitable for making champagne.Moreover, for light varieties of the drink it is better to use juice collected and then preserved with your own hands. But if the decision was made to make stronger champagne with the addition of vodka, then there is no particular difference which juice will be used to prepare champagne. You can also use the store-bought version.

To prepare champagne from birch sap, sweeteners are necessarily used, most often ordinary granulated sugar. To increase the usefulness of the resulting drink, you can also use honey. It also usually serves to give a deeper, richer hue to champagne. Especially if dark varieties of honey are used, such as chestnut, mountain or buckwheat.

As a starter for champagne, you can use either industrially produced wine yeast or homemade yeast from raisins.

As a rule, homemade starter is prepared several days before the start of the champagne preparation process. This is necessary not only so that the starter has time to ripen. Recently, almost any raisin found on sale is treated with sulfur for better preservation. Such raisins are completely unsuitable for making wine starter. Therefore, raisin starter is made in advance in order to experiment with different varieties of dried fruit. And as a result, determine which of them is really suitable for fermentation.

The process of making wine starter at home is as follows:

1. In a clean glass jar, mix 100 g of necessarily unwashed raisins (to preserve the “wild” yeast on the surface of the berries), 180 ml of warm water (or birch sap) and 25 g of sugar.
2. Mix well, cover with a piece of cloth (a clean towel) and leave in a warm place without light for several days.
3. When foam appears on the surface, accompanied by a slight hiss and a sour smell, the starter can be considered ready.

In a tightly sealed jar, it can be stored in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 weeks.

Fresh lemons or citric acid are often used to make champagne from birch sap at home. For recipes without the use of wine yeast or, especially, other alcoholic beverages, such an additive is mandatory. Since birch sap contains practically no acids, and they are needed to stabilize the acidity of the wort. Without this, the normal fermentation process will not occur.

Recipe for champagne from birch sap with raisins

To obtain a light and at the same time rich and very tasty sparkling wine (champagne) from birch sap you will need:

• 12 liters of juice, preferably fresh;
• about 2100 g granulated sugar;
• 1 large lemon (or 5 g citric acid);
• pre-prepared homemade wine starter from 100 g of raisins;
• 50 g dark honey.

The process of making champagne from birch sap with raisins according to this recipe consists of two stages: preparing the wine itself and saturating it with carbon dioxide by adding sugar and ensuring secondary fermentation in sealed conditions.

Manufacturing:

1. In a large enamel container, mix birch sap, 2000 g of sugar and citric acid. Simply squeeze the juice out of a fresh lemon, carefully removing the seeds.
2. Heat everything until it boils and simmer over low-moderate heat until only 9 liters of liquid remain in the pan.
   
   Comment! This process makes the taste of the drink more rich and interesting.
3. Cool the liquid to room temperature (+ 25 ° C) and add raisin starter and honey, melted if necessary in a water bath until liquid.
4. Mix thoroughly, pour into a fermentation container and place a water seal on it (or a latex glove with a small hole in one of the fingers).
5. Leave in a place without light with a stable warm temperature (+ 19-24 ° C) for 25-40 days.
6. After the end of the fermentation process (the disappearance of bubbles in the water seal or the fall of the glove), the wine from birch sap is ready to be saturated with carbon dioxide.
7. The wine is carefully drained from the sediment through a straw and poured into prepared, clean and dry bottles with tightly screwed caps, leaving about 6-8 cm of free space at the top.
8. For 1 liter of volume of each bottle add 10 g of sugar.
9. The bottles are hermetically sealed with caps and placed again in the same place for 7-8 days.
10. After just a few days, bottles with future champagne need to be checked and the gases slightly released, opening the hole slightly.
11. Or take them out for storage in a cold place, otherwise they may simply burst from the accumulated pressure.

The strength of the resulting champagne is about 8-10%.

Champagne made from birch sap without boiling

If you want to preserve all the beneficial properties of birch sap in champagne, then you can use the following simple recipe.

You will need:

• 3 liters of juice;
• 900 g sugar;
• 300 g unwashed raisins;
• 2 oranges;
• 1 lemon.

Manufacturing:

1. Oranges and lemons are thoroughly washed with a brush, dried and the zest is cut off. Squeeze the juice out of the remaining fruits through a strainer to separate the seeds.
2. Birch sap is slightly heated to a temperature of + 40-45 ° C and all the sugar is dissolved in it.
3. In a fermentation container, birch sap is mixed with sugar, citrus juice and zest, and raisins are added.
   Comment! It is necessary to be completely confident in the fermentation properties of the raisins used, using the techniques described above, otherwise you can ruin the entire preparation.
4. Install a water seal or glove and place it in a warm, dark place for 30-45 days.
   
5. Next, proceed in the standard manner, already described in the previous recipe. Only instead of sugar, add 2-3 raisins to each bottle and also seal it hermetically.

Champagne turns out to be even lighter and more unsaturated in taste. But it still has a degree, and it drinks well, especially in hot weather.

Champagne made from birch sap with wine yeast

Wine yeast is used when there are no suitable raisins for fermentation, but you want to be guaranteed to get a tasty and effervescent wine.

The entire manufacturing technology is absolutely identical to that described in the above recipes.

The ingredients are used in the following ratios:

• 10 liters of birch sap;
• 1600 g sugar;
• 10 g wine yeast.

Homemade champagne made from birch sap with the addition of dry wine

The technology for preparing champagne according to this recipe also resembles the traditional one described above.Grape wine adds the beneficial properties of grapes, its taste and color to the finished drink.

You will need:

• 12 liters of birch sap;
• 3.2 kg granulated sugar;
• 600 ml white wine;
• 4 lemons;
• 4 tbsp. l. wine yeast diluted in water according to the accompanying instructions.

Manufacturing:

1. Birch sap, as usual, is evaporated with sugar to 9 liters.
2. Cool, add all remaining ingredients and keep in a warm place until fermentation is complete.
   
3. Then it is filtered, bottled with tight lids and kept for about 4 more weeks in a cool place.

How to make champagne from birch sap with the addition of vodka

You will need:

• 10 liters of birch sap;
• 3 kg sugar;
• 1 liter of vodka;
• 4 tsp. yeast;
• 4 lemons.

Manufacturing:

1. The first stage, traditional, is boiling birch sap with sugar until its volume is reduced by 25%.
2. Then the juice, boiled and cooled to room temperature, is poured into a wooden barrel of suitable volume so that there is room in the upper part for fermentation.
3. Add yeast, chopped pieces of lemons, freed from seeds, and vodka.
4. Stir, cover with a lid and leave in a warm place for a day, then transfer the container to a cool room (cellar, basement) for 2 months.
5. After this period, the champagne is bottled and tightly corked.

How to store homemade champagne from birch sap

Homemade champagne must be stored in the cold, at a temperature from + 3 ° C to + 10 ° C and without access to light. There may be some sediment at the bottom of the bottles. The shelf life under such conditions is 7-8 months. However, a drink with the addition of vodka can be stored in similar conditions for several years.

Conclusion

Champagne from birch sap can be prepared at home in several ways.And in any case, you will get a tasty and moderately strong sparkling wine with an incomparable taste, which is not a shame to present for any festive feast.

Recommended Posts

Wine from grape leaves at home

Viburnum tincture with vodka: recipe

How to make wine from homemade pears

Homemade wine from plum jam: a simple recipe

Homemade plum wine

Homemade pumpkin wine

Homemade wine chacha recipe

Cherry wine at home

How to infuse moonshine on nut partitions