Mavi Boncuk |An alcoholic drink, weak (1% and below), made by grain fermentation. While widely discarded in public and used to deem s.o. redneck and ignorant, its superb qualities appeal to virtually everyone. Due to its weakness and sweet taste, one can drink as much as his stomach allows him to, throw up, do the same again and again and still not get drunk, making it the ideal substance for an eternal booze - the mead used in Valhalla is probably not as suitable as Boza. Boza is easily ruined by heat but has a signifficant nutrient value, making it the perfect food supply for guerillas and infiltration squads in cold climate environments. Rumours are that Boza is an essential component in Black Magic of the Balkan region. Boza, also bosa, is a fermented beverage very popular in Bulgaria. It is a malt drink, made from wheat or millet. It has a thick consistency and a low alcohol content (usually around 1%), and has a slightly acidic sweet flavor. It is reach in carbohydrates and vitamins. Together with banitsa, it is a part of a traditional Bulgarian breakfast. If you are looking for a twist, try it with cinnamon and roasted chickpeas.
Boza
1070 [OldTR] buχsı/buχsum pişmiş buğdaydan yapılan bir bulamaç, darıdan yapılan ekşi içki Bulgarian: боза.
1312 boza = Fa būza/buχsum Persian use is possibly from Turkish.
Attempts then were made, unsuccessfully, to tie “booze” to “busa/bousa”, the name for various types of fermented drink from the Middle East and Africa: I’m 95 per cent sure they’re NOT linked, not least because the earliest Dutch examples of the ancestor word for “booze” look too early for any contact by Dutch explorers with the places where busa/bousa was drunk (Turkey and Egypt, mainly), but I’ve always felt they should be linked: bloody facts, inconveniently getting in the way. Anyway, a propos of “busa/bousa”, one source I found (Food Reviews International, Volume 18 , Issue 1) tied “busa/bousa” into the “Persian” (that is, Farsi, I guess) “buze”, meaning, it was claimed, millet, via Turkish “boza, “a traditional Turkish beverage made by yeast and lactic acid bacteria fermentation of millet, cooked maize, wheat, or rice semolina/flour”. Any Farsi/Turkish experts about, and able to confirm/refute this derivation?
Incidentally, I was surprised to see from the OED how recent the use of “boozer” to mean “place where one boozes, pub” is (1895, and a search in Google Books appears to confirm this) compared to “bouser, boozer, one who boozes, drinks alcohol” (1611).
by 1821, perhaps 1714; probably originally as a verb, "to drink a lot" (1768), variant of Middle English bouse (c.1300), from Middle Dutch busen "to drink heavily," related to Middle High German bus (intransitive) "to swell, inflate," of unknown origin. The noun reinforced by name of Philadelphia distiller E.G. Booze. Johnson's dictionary has rambooze "A drink made of wine, ale, eggs and sugar in winter time; or of wine, milk, sugar and rose-water in the summer time." In New Zealand from c.World War II, a drinking binge was a boozeroo.
Beer (n.) Old English beor "strong drink, beer, mead," a word of much-disputed and ambiguous origin, cognate with Old Frisian biar, Middle Dutch and Dutch bier, Old High German bior, German Bier. Probably a 6c. West Germanic monastic borrowing of Vulgar Latin biber "a drink, beverage" (from Latin infinitive bibere "to drink;" see imbibe). Another suggestion is that it comes from Proto-Germanic *beuwoz-, from *beuwo- "barley." The native Germanic word for the beverage was the one that yielded ale (q.v.).
Beer was a common drink among most of the European peoples, as well as in Egypt and Mesopotamia, but was known to the Greeks and Romans only as an exotic product. [Buck] They did have words for it, however. Greek brytos, used in reference to Thracian or Phrygian brews, was related to Old English breowan "brew;" Latin zythum is from Greek zythos, first used of Egyptian beer and treated as an Egyptian word but perhaps truly Greek and related to zyme "leaven." French bière is from Germanic. Spanish cerveza is from Latin cervesia "beer," perhaps related to Latin cremor "thick broth." Old Church Slavonic pivo, source of the general Slavic word for "beer," is originally "a drink" (cf. Old Church Slavonic piti "drink"). French bière is a 16c. borrowing from German.
Central Asian Turks began to make boza in the 10th century. In the 16th century boza was banned by Sultan Selim II because of the opium used in the mixture. Also in the 17th century, boza got its share from the alcoholic drinks prohibition of Sultan Mehmet IV since excessive fermentation caused a higher alcoholic level.In the 17th century Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi reported that boza was largely drunk by janissaries in the army and it contained a low level of alcohol. So, it was tolerated due to its warming and strengthening effect for the soldiers. In the 19th century, the sweet and non-alcoholic version became popular at the Ottoman Palace, and also in society. Hacı Sadık Bey is the founder of today’s most well-known boza brand Vefa. In 1870 he immigrated from Albania and settled in the Vefa district in Istanbul. He reinterpreted the thin and sour boza. His version was thicker, less tart, and became a brand in 1876. Today the brand still produces boza between October and April. SOURCE
(flour instead of millet)
Ingredients
5 litters water
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup boza (here's the trick, you can't make boza without boza). However, read on for our easy solution.
Preparation
Bake the flour until salmon pink, watch out for overcooking and burning it. Stir while baking. Add a little cold water to it. Add the mixture to the pot with the rest of the water, add the sugar and stir until it starts to boil. After bringing to a boil, stir for another 5 min. Remove from heat, cool it down and add the cup of boza or a cup of the mixture you can use instead (look below for directions how to make it). Keep in a warm place for the next 2-3 days until it ferments. Store in bottles in the fridge after that. Consume cold.
Here's what you can use for the fermentation process if you don't have previously made boza.
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon sugar
Bake the flour until pink, add the water and the sugar. Leave in a warm place for 2-3 days until it ferments. Stir occasionally.