Boilo

I read about this Schuylkill County coal miners drink called Boilo in Punch last week. Schuylkill County is only a couple hours east of our home in State College, PA so I thought I’d ask all my lifelong Pennsylvanian friends if they knew about the legend of Boilo or had a recipe they could share with me.

But no one had.

Not my friend from Williamsport, which is even closer to Schuylkill County. Not my mother from the Philly area. No one.

And yet, this is a drink that gets made so much this time of year that the residents of Schuylkill County are the only reason why the main component of Boilo, Four Queens whiskey, is still being produced. And that’s the really neat aspect of Boilo to me, is how hyper-localized it seems to be.

So I scoured the web, found a few recipes, and then set out on my own. There are ingredients that are the same in most recipes, and I wanted to make sure they were all present in mine, but I tweaked quantities and made a substitution or two just to suit my own preferences. I would in no way claim this to be an authentic Boilo recipe, but the backbone is there and the end result is the same. Boilo is a hot, bracing winter beverage with plenty of potency.

 Ingredients:

• 3 oranges
• 3 lemons
• ¾ cup raisins
• 12 oz honey
• 1 ¼ t cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, caraway, anise seed
• 2 cups raspberry ginger ale
• 8 oz dark overproof rum
• 12 oz Four Queens whiskey

Directions:

Peel oranges and lemons, leaving behind the pith. Turn heat on medium under large pot. Cut fruit in half and juice into pot. Add peels to pot. Add raspberry ginger ale. Lightly macerate raisins and add them to the pot. Add spices and honey while stirring constantly to incorporate the honey into mixture before it scorches. Keep stirring on medium heat for about twenty minutes. Do not let the mixture get to boiling point. Strain the punch and add your booze. You can keep your punch on the stovetop to keep it warm while you’re serving it, but the alcohol will slowly cook out if the punch gets above 173 degrees F.