How to brew mauby

Those of you who showed up to last night's meeting sampled a new beverage I recently discovered called mauby. It's a Caribbean soft drink that was originally fermented, if only for carbonation, though I'm sure you can let the gravity drop a few more points to make things a bit more fun.

The following recipe I obtained from an old book about native Haitian plants and vegetables used for medicinal purposes. Maby, as the Haitians call it, was implanted from Jamaica and was one of the earliest fermented beverages drank in Haiti, before the importation of English beers in the late 1800s under the administration of President Boisrond-Canal. Similar in flavor to a ginger beer or root beer, maby can be occasionally served with white rum or gin.

The units of measurement in the recipe were rather arbitrary, so I'll list the measurements the recipe called for and what I actually measured out are in parentheses.

Mauby bark - 6 finger-length pieces (approx. 5 grams)

Chewstick - 3 pieces the same length (approx. 25-30 g)

Ginger - 3 grated legs/branches of the root (approx. 3 TBSP grated)

Melegueta leaves - 1 TBSP

Lime peels - 3 whole peels

Cinnamon - a strong pinch (1/2 tsp)

Star anise - a strong pinch (1 tsp--the star anise wasn't ground so after pulverizing it a bit, I settled on 1 tsp rather than 1/2 since most of the scoop was still empty space)

Raw brown sugar - 1 1/2 lbs to 2 lbs (I used 2 lbs)

1 gal water

This recipe makes a 1 gallon batch. Just dump everything into the pot and boil for about half an hour. There are plenty of solids from the spices so I definitely recommend using a mesh bag as it'll make filtering at the end easier. The recipe shows that maby was traditionally bottle fermented, so I just used a simple rehydrated dry ale yeast and let ferment at room temperature for a day or two in 22-oz bottles or larger. As this is being bottle fermented, I wouldn't recommend using 12-oz bottles as they may not be able to withstand the pressure.

Finding the ingredients can be tricky, but thankfully Chicago's wonderfully diverse with plenty of ethnic grocers and markets. Most Caribbean and West Indian markets will have the mauby bark and chewsticks available. I found mine at Rogers Park Fruit Market on Clark St. between Touhy and Howard. Raw brown sugar can be found at any Hispanic grocer sold as piloncillo.

The only ingredient I couldn't find during my hunt were the melegueta leaves. Aframomum melegueta, produces the spice more commonly known as grains of paradise. However, this recipe doesn't require the seed, but rather the leaves. I was fortunate enough to have family in Queens who mailed over a couple packets of the leaves for me. If anyone knows where to find this in Chicagoland, please let me know!