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 nine ribbons awarded by judges who choose the top three finishers in categories of traditional, apple cider and other boilo.
While some people like a cloudier, pulpier boilo run through a coarse strainer, as called for in their original recipe, Nonnemacher and Gaizick now let the ingredients settle and siphon off the liquor.
“I’ve heard boilo called the poor man’s NyQuil,” Nonnemacher said; but when he considers the cost of ingredients, he said the end-result is pricey.
For the apple cider boilo, the men boil down real apples — “We almost make applesauce,” Gaizick said — with brown sugar and cinnamon sticks instead of powdered cinnamon that gloms on top.
Nonnemacher’s Creamsicle boilo keeps the oranges from the original recipe but deletes lemons, substitutes cream soda for ginger ale and adds vanilla extract that his daughter made by seeping vanilla beans in vodka. It placed second in the “other” category and has become a favorite with their friends and family.
On Sunday after church, Nonnemacher at Ss. Cyril and Methodius Slovak Catholic in Hazleton and Gaizick at St. Michael’s Byzantine Catholic in McAdoo, made enough Creamsicle boilo 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 ingredients to a slow boil in a soup pot for 15 or 20 minutes before adding the alcohol, which has a lower boiling point and evaporates faster.
Cooking, tasting and cleaning — “If you want to have a happy marriage you have to mop the floors and do the dishes,” Nonnemacher said — takes about four hours, leaving them with a half dozen Four Queens bottles and countless canning jars refilled with their concoction.
Gaizick likes to open his around Christmas Eve at his house in Sheppton, “especially late at night, maybe watching a Hallmark movie.” Half a mug of boilo placed in a microwave is great for a cold, and “it puts you to bed,” he said.
Nonnemacher said his family will come from as far as Virginia to sample boilo at Christmas, but as the new year approaches he plans to continue a private tradition.
Packing his camp stove, kielbasa and a prayer book, he will climb Mount Pisgah near Jim Thorpe, fry up kielbasa with eggs and “talk to God and plan next year in my spiritual life,” he said. “Boilo helps lubricate the process.”
Basic Boilo
A holiday drink, boilo also became a home remedy for treating colds to coal dust in the throats of miners who cooked it. It stems from honey liqueur called krupnik in Polish and krupnikas in Lithuanian. Some recipes add spices such as anise, nutmeg, peppercorns and cardamon. Other cooks have created flavored boilos from apple cider to peach to Creamsicle. First-timers need not worry, as Amy Dougherty of Orwigsburg says in the title of her book, there’s “No Wrong Way to Boilo.”
Here’s a basic recipe:
3 Large oranges 1½ Lemons 1½ — 2 Pounds honey 1 Liter ginger ale 3 Cinnamon sticks 1 Fifth bottle Four Queens Blended Whiskey In a large pot, place juice of oranges and lemons with rinds, but not seeds. Add honey ginger ale, spices. Boil 10-20 minutes, adding whiskey in the last few minutes. Cool. Strain and enjoy warm.