April is the month when you can go out and enjoy birch sap directly in nature. Birch sap can be tapped from the tree in several ways – the first method is the gentlest on the tree. Tapping must take place before the tree puts out fresh shoots or very shortly after. Once shoots have appeared, it won’t be long before the opportunity is gone. Look for a tree with a large crown, because if you choose one that is too small, you risk killing the tree with your tapping. Empty the containers every day as the tree easily produces between 5-15 liters per day.

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Drill a hole up to 1 cm wide and about 10 cm deep. Drill the hole at an angle and as close to the ground as possible to ensure strong “sap pressure.” Rinse the hole afterward to avoid sawdust and other dirt from, for example, the drill. My drills tend to leave some black material, and it’s not pleasant to get that in your sap. Insert a straw or tube into the hole, and it should ideally match the diameter. Lead the tube down into a container where the entry hole also matches the tube’s thickness. If you don’t have a tube, you can also use a drinking straw, but again, the sap flow will be less.

• The sap contains 99% water. The rest is glucose, fructose, fruit acid, amino acids, vitamin C, and the minerals iron, sodium, zinc, manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, and potassium.

When you have finished tapping, it is important to close the hole again. Take a branch and carve a plug that you hammer into the hole. If you make too many holes in the tree and tap it many times in the same year, the tree can, in the worst case, die. For the next two years, tap other trees so you don’t “stress” the one you just tapped.

Remember that besides drinking the birch sap, you can also make syrup from it. By boiling down 5 liters of sap, you can make about 50 ml of syrup. Be patient as it takes three to five hours to boil the birch sap down to syrup. In the final phase, you need to be very attentive because if the syrup caramelizes, you have to start over... which is a bit frustrating after so much work.

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When you have finished boiling down the birch sap and turned it into syrup, you can advantageously bake a stack of pancakes and enjoy the syrup with them.