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Drink

Birch Wine

Birch wine is a fermented beverage made from birch sap, honey or sugar, hops, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Birch Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Collect the sap

  1. In March, tap each birch tree with a hole large enough for a faucet and place a vessel underneath to collect the sap for 2-3 days.

  2. Once you have enough sap, plug the holes with pegs.

Make the wine

  1. In a pot, combine the birch sap with honey or sugar and boil for 1 hour, stirring well.

  2. Add cloves and lemon rind for flavor if desired.

  3. Stir in the hops and work the mixture with yeast.

  4. Transfer to a fermentation vessel and refine with isinglass.

Bottle and age

  1. After 2 months, draw off the wine and bottle it.

  2. Let it age for another 2 months before use; it will improve with time.

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. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Honey + clovetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together736 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Honey + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Clove + hopstop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + hopstop 40% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Birch sap
Forms the liquid base that the wine is made from and carries all the flavor.
Honey
Supplies the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and adds sweetness.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Isinglass
Fining agent that helps clear the wine by settling out suspended particles.

The step that matters

Boil the sap with honey or sugar for 1 hour. Boiling dissolves the sugar fully and sterilizes the sap, reducing wild microbes that could spoil the wine before the yeast takes over. Stirring well keeps the sugar evenly distributed.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, lemon, hops):

  1. Gingerfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, lemon, hops. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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