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Soft drinks from Turkey, Bulgaria and other countries of the Balkans

Bozaboza

Boza is a thick, sweet-sour cereal drink. Ground millet, maize or wheat is cooked into a porridge with water, sieved, sweetened and fermented for about a day by lactic acid bacteria and yeasts. A lab-made boza reached 0.79 % alcohol after 24 h, and the drink is drunk mostly in winter.

Fully documentedSoft drinks26 h

Recipe

Boza, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: FoPen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceThe registered recipe for Velimeşe Bozası, a Turkish geographical indication; the cereal shares are average proportions of the grain mix. Other bozas use other grains.
Millet, ground to semolina size25 %[velimese]
Maize, ground to semolina size, or maize flour70 %[velimese]
Wheat flour5 % (when needed)[velimese]
WaterTwice the grain for soaking, about 5 times for boiling, then 2.5 times to thin the porridge[velimese]
White sugarAbout 20 % of the mass of the raw boza[velimese]
Starterspontaneous in the registered Velimeşe recipe (no old boza or starter culture is added)

Total time across the recorded steps: 26 h

Start
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Close-up: water moving into a grain30 °C

What changes: The ground millet and maize soak overnight in warm water

Step 1 of 6
Mix the ground grains and soak overnight
Time
Left overnight
Set
Temperature
30 °C
Set
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
L. paramesenteroides
L. mesenteroides
L. sanfranciscensis
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Boza is a thick, sweet-sour cereal drink. Ground millet, maize or wheat is cooked into a porridge with water, sieved, sweetened and fermented for about a day by lactic acid bacteria and yeasts. A lab-made boza reached 0.79 % alcohol after 24 h, and the drink is drunk mostly in winter. Made in 6 steps over 26 h. The longest step, ferment, takes 24 h (TÜRKPATENT 2021) and runs at 25 °C (TÜRKPATENT 2021). In a lab-made Turkish boza of maize, wheat and rice flours, Leuconostoc paramesenteroides (25.6 % of LAB) and Leuconostoc mesenteroides and In the same lab-made boza, Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis (21.9 % of LAB), L. coryniformis, L. fermentum do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step24 hSet[velimese][hancioglu1997]Ferment
Temperature25 °CSet[velimese]Ferment
AciditypH 6.1 → 3.5Measured[hancioglu1997]Ferment

What makes this one different

Boza is a cooked, sieved and sweetened cereal porridge fermented for about a day. Egyptian bouza is a stronger, beer-like drink made from wheat bread and malt.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Velimeşe BozasıRegistered Turkish geographical indication from Ergene and Çorlu (Tekirdağ); millet and maize, no starter added.
  • Egyptian bouzaWheat bread loaves and malt; stronger in alcohol; see bouza-egypt.

Safety

The registered Velimeşe recipe gives boza a best-before of up to 10 days and requires cool storage away from sunlight.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

According to the TÜRKPATENT sheet, Velimeşe Bozası was made in Velimeşe, in Çorlu. It drew the interest of passengers once it began to be sold on the trains between Edirne and Istanbul. Demand grew, and production later became widespread in the Ergene and Çorlu districts. It has been known by the name Velimeşe Bozası since the 1960s.

  1. [velimese] TÜRKPATENT, Velimeşe Bozası, geographical indication registration No. 721 (mahreç işareti), registered 13.04.2021, registrants Ergene District Governorship and Ergene Municipalityspec
  2. [hancioglu1997] Hancıoğlu O., Karapınar M. 1997, Microflora of boza, a traditional fermented Turkish beverage, International Journal of Food Microbiology 35:271–274 (abstract)paper
  3. [osimani2015] Osimani A., Garofalo C., Aquilanti L., Milanović V., Clementi F. 2015, Unpasteurised commercial boza as a source of microbial diversity, International Journal of Food Microbiology 194:62–70 (abstract)paper