Making Sweet Water Instead of Waste
If you enjoy coconut water, as we do, you may also want to look for and try some tree water. Also called “sweet water”, and “sap on tap”, tree water is growing in popularity and can now be found in health food and specialty stores as well as on Amazon.
Some of the commercially sold tree water is the runoff water from the syrup extraction process. With the laborious maple syrup boiling process, the sap is reduced to 1/40th of its original volume!! So… funneling the tree water into bottle to sell as sweet water or tree water is an excellent conservation of this precious tree elixir.
The most popular of the tree waters is currently birch, which is also used in cosmetic products.
Tree Water – a Health Elixir
Tree water is very different from syrup. It has an earthy refreshing flavor with sometimes just a hint of sweet. In fact, tree water is traditionally cast off in the gallons in the syrup distillation process per quart. One tree water company got started when the founder was disturbed to see the amount of tree water that was wasted during the maple syrup distillation process.
That was the beginning of Asarasi.
About Asarasi Tree Water Company
Asarasi (Ah-Sir-Ah-See) is Latin for Maple and here’s the origin synopsis from their website.
“Looking for a warm, fun activity to do with his daughter in the middle of a Vermont winter, Founder Adam Lazar decided to attend a maple syrup open house. As the farmer went through the production process, Adam witnessed him pouring thousands of gallons of pure water down the drain. After talking about it with the farmer, it was realized that maple producers use only 3% of the saps they collect for syrup and maple products. The remaining 97% is pure tree water that is not utilized and discarded. The idea was born that that this was a new source of incredibly pure water that had never been “tapped”!“
SOURCE: Asarasi.com
Tree water tastes clean with a refreshing earthy flavor and the occasional hint of sweet.
Tree Water Businesses
If you’re looking into home businesses you can do from your homestead, you may be interested in reading more on this. We found it intriguing, and while we don’t expect to go into the tree water business… you never know, and at the very least, tree water is another benefit to enjoy from our own trees!
By Brian Barth on Modern Farmer[1]https://modernfarmer.com/?s=maple+entrepreneurs
A new wave of maple entrepreneurs are skipping the laborious syrup boiling process—where sap is reduced to 1/40th of its original volume to create the beloved pancake dressing—and marketing the pure watery sap as a health drink instead.
The first maple water companies emerged over the last few years in Canada, but the idea has now infiltrated the American market. The drink is primarily found in health food stores in New England, but distribution is ramping up and this year’s maple water harvest should hit stores across the country in the coming months.
You may enjoy this clip from Dragon Den featuring the entrepreneurs of Seva Maple Water.[2]https://business.financialpost.com/2015/01/26/seva-maple-waters-dragons-den-deal-in-limbo-as-treliving-chilton-walk-away/?__lsa=7dd5-87ccThis is where we learned of the anticipated growth into a billion dollar industry by 2025.
If you were ever stranded without water, tree tapping, is another survival skill to know.
Tree Water Health Benefits
Europe and Asia have used tree water as a health elixir for centuries. In South Korea, it’s traditional to drink maple water, called Gorosoe.
Good for the Bones
Excerpt from the New York TImes article: Drinks Are on the Maple Tree, by By
HADONG, South Korea — At this time of year, when frogs begin stirring from their winter sleep and woodpeckers drill for newly active insects, villagers climb the hills around here to collect a treasured elixir: sap from the maple tree known as gorosoe.
For centuries, southern Korean villagers like Mr. Park have been tapping the gorosoe, or “tree good for the bones.”
Unlike North Americans who collect maple sap to boil down into syrup, Korean villagers and their growing number of customers prefer the sap itself, which they credit with a wide range of health benefits.
In this they are not alone. Some people in Japan and northern China drink maple sap, and birch sap has its fans in Russia and other parts of northern Europe. But no one surpasses southern Koreans in their enthusiasm for maple sap, which they can consume in prodigious quantities.[3]https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/world/asia/06maple.html?_r=0
Birch Tree Water Benefits
There doesn’t appear to be definitive American studies on the nutritive or medicinal benefit of birch and other tree waters, however it has been used therapeutically for centuries in Europe and the East. Knowledge of the vitamins, minerals amino acids and other beneficial nutrients are enough to tell us that this simple sap water delivers more than water.
Low in calories and sugar, birch water is high in nutrients like magnesium and manganese, phosphorus, potassium, folic acid, vitamin C, and copper. Birch water also provides small amounts of amino acids and large amounts of polyphenol antioxidants, which help fight oxidative stress in your body.
One 10.2-ounce (300-ml) bottle contains:
- Calories: 9
- Carbs: 3 grams
- Sugar: 3 grams
- Calcium: 2% of the Daily Value (DV)
- Magnesium: 95% of the DV
- Manganese: 130% of the DV
- Zinc: 3% of the DV
NUTRITION RESOURCE: Healthline.com
If you have certain plant and tree allergies, it may be that birch water may actually help alleviate your allergic reactions. Of course you need to proceed with caution, as did Petra Ossowski Larsson. [4]https://www.cybis.se/craft/birch/
Birch tree sap or birch tree water as it’s more commonly called commercially, is also associated with detoxing the kidneys and liver and flushing toxins from the body.
Nutritional and Medicinal Uses
From Wikipedia.com
Birch sap contains heterosides (betuloside and monotropitoside), amino acids including glutamic acid, as well as minerals, enzymes, proteins, betulinic acid and betulin, antioxidants, sugar (xylitol, fructose and glucose) and vitamins B & C.
Birch sap is commonly known for its detoxifying, diuretic, cleansing and purifying properties. Heterosides present in birch sap release methyl salicylate by enzymatic hydrolysis which is analgesic, anti-inflammatory and diuretic. The activation of diuresis helps eliminating organic wastes such as uric acid and cholesterol. Birch sap is also known for helping with joint and bone health, loss of hair, arthritis, and weight loss, as well as hyperuricemia, hypercholesterolemia and to treat kidney stones.[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_sap
Harmless Tapping of Tree Sap
Naturally, some of us are tree lovers concerned about any possible harm or damage to the trees. Fortunately tree tapping is relatively harmless if done right.
As we wrote on one of the Gardens All Facebook threads:
“Like you, we LOVE trees. Live deeply amongst them in the woods, and built our home by hand cutting only what absolutely had to be cut to build, then of course used that wood for heating. So we’re with you in love of trees and compassion for all living things.
But there is another side to trees. Trees are also a plant, essentially, and serve in so many ways. One of the many gifts of trees is as crops, of which there are many different kinds.
With the syrup and tree water industry, while a “wound” is created in the trunk, studies show[6]https://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc/wilmot_taphole.pdf that that wound is akin to a wound in our body. It develops “scar tissue” around it, then carries on as normal.
Relative to the sapping of its resources… if we sweat and get dehydrated, we drink more water. Similarly, as tree water is extracted, the tree simply pulls more water from the soil through its own filtering system which then contributes more nutrients to the water.”
WISDOM FROM NATURE: Trees teach us how to adapt: they just keep on growing, no matter what!
The study cited and linked here says:
For sugaring [and tree water] to be a viable industry, it must be sustainable and not lead to the decline of our trees. Drilling a taphole does make a wound, but with proper tapping procedure and sensible tapping guidelines, (as can be found in the new North American Maple Syrup Producer’s Manual),[7]https://www.agmrc.org/media/cms/Maple1_74116E2C32052.pdf we can be assured that these wounds are minor, and that the tree will be able to repair itself, or can function well without the small volume of wood with non-functional vessels. With proper care in sapling collecting, as well as in many other aspects of forest management, our maples trees can last for many generations of future sugar makers.[8]https://www.prvnimiza.cz/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/wilmot_taphole.pdf
For examples of excessive tapping to avoid, you may be interested in this research by the Forest Service US Department of Agriculture Northeastern Forest Experiment Station, Broomall, PA.[9]https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_ne47.pdf