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Drink

To Make Birch-Wine

Birch wine is a fermented beverage made from birch sap, sugar, yeast, raisins, loaf sugar, isinglass, and ale.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Birch-Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil birch-water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add brown sugar and boil for 45 minutes, skimming the surface.

  3. Pour into a tub and let cool completely.

Ferment

  1. Add yeast and aerate 3-4 times a day for 4-5 days.

  2. Transfer to a cask with raisins, loaf sugar dissolved in part of the liquor, and new ale.

  3. Mix well in the cask for 5-6 days.

  4. Seal the cask and let it stand for a year before bottling.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Birch-water
Forms the liquid base that the sugars and yeast work in.
Brown sugar
Supplies the sugar that yeast converts into alcohol during fermentation.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Malaga raisins
Add sugars, body and fruity flavour to the wine.
Loaf sugar
Adds extra sugar that feeds fermentation and adds sweetness.
New ale
Introduces additional yeast and fermentable material to restart fermentation.

The step that matters

Add yeast and aerate 3-4 times a day. Yeast needs oxygen early on to multiply before it turns sugar into alcohol. Aerating during the first days keeps it active, and a weak start can leave the wine sluggish or sweet.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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