Boilo Project – Pottsville Republican Herald

Colleagues John Nonnemacher and Michael Gaizick didn’t win the first time they entered their boiler in a competition at the Schuylkill County Fair; but being accountants, they did some research.

Excluded from the 2023 fair, the two men became determined to better cook Boilo, an intoxicating holiday drink that immigrant miners from Poland and Lithuania are believed to have developed a century or more ago in the coal region.

“I thought it would be a fun project,” Gaizick said as he sat with Nonnemacher in the office of Snyder and Clemente accountants and consultants where they work in Sugarloaf Township. On the conference table was a bottle of Four Queens Blended Whiskey, the base of the 151-proof Boilo.

In addition to the Four Queens, their original recipe called for ginger ale, pounds of honey, caraway seeds, cinnamon sticks and bags of oranges and lemons, so many that Nonnemacher scratched the zest of his ‘a finger with a potato peeler.

Citrus seeds are bitter, the men learned, so Gaizick began separating the seeds from the juice he extracted from the fruit.

Supermarket citrus fruits have a coating of wax that men have removed by hot soaking them.

They also tinkered with the recipe provided by Tony Licsky of Barnesville, the stepfather of one of Nonnemacher’s children.

Ditching the caraway seeds, they changed the ratios, added a little Everclear grain alcohol – from a 151-proof bottle legal in Pennsylvania, not the 190-proof variety sold elsewhere and suitable for disposal rust – and a secret ingredient, which remains… . well… secret. Nonnemacher admitted to learning about the unnamed substance from a friend who added it to homemade wine.

This year at the fair, with their improved recipes, the men won five of the nine ribbons awarded by judges who choose the top three in the categories of traditional, apple cider and other bouillos.

While some people like to pass a cloudier, pulpier broth through a coarse strainer, as their original recipe called for, Nonnemacher and Gaizick now let the ingredients settle and siphon off the liquor.

“I heard Boilo call it the poor man’s NyQuil,” said Nonnemacher; but when he considers the cost of the ingredients, he says the end result is expensive.

For the apple cider broth, the men boil real apples — “We almost make applesauce,” Gaizick said — with brown sugar and cinnamon sticks instead of the powdered cinnamon that shines on the top.

Nonnemacher’s Creamsicle Boilo keeps the oranges from the original recipe but removes the lemons, replaces the ginger ale with cream soda, and adds vanilla extract that her daughter made by steeping vanilla beans in vanilla bean. vodka. It placed second in the “other” category and became a favorite among their friends and family.

On Sunday after church, Nonnemacher at Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Slovak Catholics in Hazleton and Gaizick, of St. Michael Byzantine Catholic Church in McAdoo, prepared enough Creamsicle hot water bottles for everyone on their Christmas lists .

In Nonnemacher’s kitchen in Hazleton, with polkas on the radio and kielbasa on the snack table, they brought the ingredients to a slow boil in a pot for 15 or 20 minutes before adding the alcohol, which has a lower boiling point and evaporates more quickly.

Cooking, tasting and cleaning up – “If you want to have a happy marriage, you have to clean the floor and do the dishes,” Nonnemacher said – takes about four hours, leaving them with a half-dozen Four Queens bottles and countless jars filled with their concoction.

Gaizick likes to open his around Christmas Eve at his Sheppton home, “especially late at night, maybe while watching a Hallmark movie.” A half-cup of Boilo placed in a microwave is great for a cold and “puts you to bed,” he said.

Nonnemacher said his family will come from as far as Virginia to taste bouilo at Christmas, but as the new year approaches, he plans to continue a private tradition.

Carrying his camp stove, kielbasa and a prayer book, he will climb Mount Pisgah near Jim Thorpe, fry kielbasa with eggs and “talk to God and plan for the next year in my spiritual life,” a- he declared. “Boilo helps lubricate the process.”

Basic hot water bottle

A holiday drink, Boilo also became a home remedy to treat colds caused by coal dust in the throats of the miners who cooked it. It comes from a honey liqueur called krupnik in Polish and krupnikas in Lithuanian. Some recipes add spices like anise, nutmeg, peppercorns and cardamom. Other cooks have created flavored hot water bottles ranging from apple cider to peach to Creamsicle. Beginners need not worry, as Amy Dougherty of Orwigsburg says in the title of her book, there is “no wrong way to boil.”

Here is a basic recipe:

3 large oranges 1½ lemons 1½ – 2 pounds honey 1 quart ginger ale 3 cinnamon sticks 1 fifth bottle Four Queens blended whiskey In a large saucepan, combine the juice of the oranges and lemons with the peels, but not the seeds. Add the honey and ginger ale, spices. Boil 10 to 20 minutes, adding whiskey during the last few minutes. Cool. Filter and enjoy hot.

Originally published: December 16, 2024 at 1:20 p.m. EST