Indian Lemonade from common sumac

This stuff is super good….I have made it serveral times over the years.

First and important, be sure you using common sumac berries and not those of poison sumac. Once you locate sumac in the berry stage, pick what you need according to this recipe and remove the berries from the cluster…

1 quart of sumac berries
1 gallon water
maple syrup or honey (to taste, optional)
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How to make it:

Bring water to a boil
Place sumac in a large teapot or non-metal container
Pour boiling water over the sumac
Steep for 20minutes – 2 hours
Strain through cheesecloth or a coffee filter
Enjoy over ice

Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. The sumac is either in the flower stage or setting berries right now in this area and I am on a search.

Could you show the difference in plants?
Shawn

Do a search on Shaghorn Sumac and Poison Sumac to see the difference. Poison Sumac is not super common around our area or yours. The Shaghorn Sumac is that which you’ll see growing along country roadsides and along highways and is the one you want to look for. They like hillsides where mowing or other cutting doesn’t disturb them and they prefer full sun.

The plants’ leaves turn red in the fall and the berry clusters are a deep red. They’ve just flowered around here so the berries will show up soon.

Do a google search on indian lemonade and you’ll find a ton of info on this. We make several batches of this each year and enjoy it immensely.

Thanks. I know what to look for know!
Shawn

Here’s a good website. http://poison-sumac.org/
I had no idea what and where the poison sumac grew. Sounds like you couldn’t find it if you wanted to and it looks nothing like the good sumac. I may try this recipe.

Tom,
when can you start doing this? I see fuzzy berries on the local sumac but not sure how much they need to mature before harvesting. Thanks.

Now Mike.