If you had told me two years ago (or five or ten) that I’d be brewing alcohol as hobby today, I wouldn’t have believed you. But given my broad and ever-deepening interest in fermentation, it was only a matter of time before I grew more intimate with humanity’s good friend Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
I came across the idea of Juniper beer while researching a mystery. It started when I bought a bag of dried juniper berries at the herbalist’s for an Italian braised pork recipe I made with my sister. The recipe turned out so well, I started looking for other ways to use juniper berries in the kitchen. A quick Google search for fermented juniper berries turned out many blog posts, mostly from bloggers in the United States, describing experiments making a Bosnian fermented juniper berry drink called smreka.
Smreka is a recipe for a fermented juniper soda found in Sandor Elliz Katz’s The Art of Fermentation. Here is what Katz has to say about the drink:
Smreka is a wonderful light juniper berry soft drink from Bosnia that I learned about from Luke Regalbuto and Maggie Levinger, who traveled around Eastern Europe seeking hands-on education with traditional fermentation methods […] Luke and Maggie encountered smreka at a particular establishment they happened into in Sarajevo. “Smreka did not seem to be widely consumed around Bosnia,” they wrote to me. They believe the place where they had it was Muslim-owned because the “smreka was served in lieu of any sort of alcohol.” The smreka they were served was cold out of the fridge, with a heaping spoonful of sugar […] “When we inquired about the beverage and its contents they just kept saying ‘smreka’ (which means juniper berry) as if that was the only ingredient, which seemed preposterous to us, as it tasted so dynamic and delicious”
I made smreka on a few occasions, and it is indeed delicious, which prompted me to sleuth around for more information. Its recipe as it appears in The Art of Fermentation, I found, has been reproduced widely across the web, in the process muddying, as the Internet tends to do, the truth about the drink’s origins. I found nothing written about the beverage in other European languages, let alone in Bosnian or Serbian, and a search through academic publications also turned out nothing as well. I was mystified.
Although most online sources tout smreka as a “fermented drink from Bosnia,” it seemed it might be more accurate to say that smreka is a “fermented drink from one eatery in Sarajevo”, a chance finding rather than a cultural heritage*.
I did, however, come across during my research an article from the Journal of Ethnobiology titled “Juniper Beer in Poland: The Story of the Revival of a Traditional Beverage”. My curiosity was instantly piqued. I found the article and read it from start to finish, then immediately got out my calculator and scaled down one of its recipes to a trial batch of two litres (half a gallon). My excitement propelled me back to the herbalist’s, where I purchased a large quantity of dried juniper berries. Let the experiments begin! I thought, as I starting crushing the fragrant berries with my granite pestle.
*I was glad to see this issue addressed by the Juniper Beer article in its overview of traditional uses of juniper in Europe: “juniper beer, called smreka (after the local name of the plant), is served in at least one traditional restaurant in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Katz 2012), though we have not found any other records of its use in Bosnia”. Nail in the coffin, until further notice.
A Plant and a People
Let us zoom in our lens on the Polish region of Kurpie, a land characterized by poor, arid soils, in the northeastern portion of the province of Mazovia (Masowswe). This particular geography is critical to our story, because on the one hand, it made its people vulnerable to famine, as well as inventive with and well-versed in the wild flora of their land, and on the other, it favoured the growth of juniper shrubs and trees, which thrive on the acidic, sandy soils of dry habitats.
Lithograph of Juniperus communis from Stephenson and Churchill’s 1831 monograph Medical botany
Juniper (Juniperus communis, and other species of the same genus) is a coniferous shrub that grows in cool temperate swaths of North America, Europe and Asia. The “berries” are not in fact true berries, but instead the fleshy and highly-aromatic female cones of the shrub, which grow amidst the needle-like leaves like tiny Christmas baubles. These pseudo-berries contain a large quantity of sugars (30-40%), mostly glucose and fructose, and resin (up to 10%). In addition, they are rich in essential oils, chief of them α-pinene, a terpene which exhibits mild antibacterial activity.
The practice of making juniper beer probably developed in times of scarcity, when fermentable grains and sugars were in short supply. The people of Kurpie turned to the only sources of sugar available in the local landscape: honey and juniper berries. Both their high sugar content and their antiseptic, bacteriostatic properties, not to mention their beautiful resinous fragrance, made juniper berries ideal candidates for fermentation.
A Polish Tradition
Juniper beer therefore started out as a beverage of the poor and became part of the fabric of tradition to the people of Kurpie. Ethnographic accounts from the early twentieth century tell us that the beverage was mostly served at communal celebrations such as weddings, baptisms, and funeral parties. In the 1930s, when local bishops forbade the production and consumption of vodka, juniper beer enjoyed a rise in popularity, as an alternative source of alcohol, albeit a much lighter one, that could be made easily at home.
Fast forward to today and juniper beer is enjoying a revival in Kurpie culture. It is known as psiwo kozicowe in the local dialect and as piwo jałowcowe in standard Polish. True to its origins, the beverage has not been mass-produced and cannot be bought from shops. It is instead made at home, upon request for cultural events and special occasions, or to serve to tourists who visit the area. The main difference is that whereas before World War I, sugar was hard to come by, now, it is the juniper berries that are growing scarce. With fewer bushes to pick from locally, brewers must rely increasingly on specialized collectors and herbalist shops to procure the berries.
Making Juniper Beer
To make juniper beer at home, you will need:
- a glass container (I used a half-gallon jar)
- something to cover the container, that keeps unwanted particles out but allows the buildup of carbon dioxide to escape. A few options include: 1) a coffee filter of a piece of cheesecloth, fastened with an elastic band, 2) a loosely-fastened lid or 3) a specialized airlock system.
- A fine-mesh strainer
- A mortar and pestle, or something to crush the berries
- Airtight bottles for storage
Juniper berries and hops, the two flavouring ingredients in this recipe, can be found in certain specialized food shops, brewing supply shops or herbalist’s shops. I bought mine from Simple Remedies, in Victoria, BC.
Joëlle
Yields 2 litres
Serves 4-6
A refreshing probiotic and lightly alcoholic drink from Poland, made from fermented juniper berries and honey, with a hint of hops. Na zdrowie! (Cheers!)
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Ingredients
- 2L water
- 100g juniper berries
- 200-250g honey
- 1tbsp hops
- 2g beer or wine yeast
Instructions
- Pound juniper berries in a mortar and mix them with water in a half-gallon glass jar. Let sit overnight (or longer, if you want a stronger juniper taste).
- Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve lined with cheesecloth. Discard the solids.
- Bring strained mixture to a boil, remove from heat and stir in the honey. Pour liquid into a clean half-gallon jar.
- In a small saucepan, bring 1/2 cup water to a boil. Add hops and simmer for 10 minutes. Strain the mixture and add to the jar.
- Once the liquid has cooled to room temperature, mix in yeast and cover the jar with a coffee filter, cheesecloth or an airlock.
- Taste every day. When you are happy with the taste (it should take 2-5 days), transfer liquid to airtight bottles and store in the fridge.
- Juniper beer is quite bubbly, so be sure to release the pressure from the bottles every day! Juniper beer keeps well in the fridge for a few weeks. Keep in mind that it will keep fermenting, so the taste will change over time. Na zdrowie! (Cheers!)
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References
Katz, S. E. (2012). The art of fermentation an in-depth exploration of essential concepts and processes from around the world. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publ.
Madej, T., Pirożnikow, E., Dumanowski, J., & Łuczaj, Ł. (2014). Juniper Beer in Poland: The Story of the Revival of a Traditional Beverage. Journal of Ethnobiology, 34(1), 84–103. doi: 10.2993/0278-0771-34.1.84
Stephenson, J., & Churchhill, J. M. (1831). Medical botany, or, illustrations and descriptions of the medical Plants of the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Pharmacopoeias; comprising a popular and scientific account of all those poisonous vegetables that are indigenous to Great Britain (Vol. 3). London: John Churchill.
