3 Ways You Can Enjoy Posca at Your Next Roman Event

In the last few years, vinegar-based beverages had made a triumphant return to the culinary scene. Appearing in the bar menus in the West Coast food scene, filling the bottles of athletes, and now being marketed to a broader audience with numerous name brands. Vinegar drinks are in baby. Sometimes sold as "shrub" or the popular "Apple Cider drink." We see companies such as Bragg, or Fire and Cider (a local company) selling their brand in supermarkets (Whole Foods you know you do) and farmer markets everywhere. Right now shrub is competing with kombucha as the hippest new drink (I am waiting for kumis to make a triumphant appearance in the U.S.) Right now, the market is advertising what living historians and previous generations for millennia have already known; vinegar drinks are delicious. But reenactors and living history presenters have been making and drinking it before it was cool (in fact my first job as a living historian, the farmers were always consuming shrub on the farm). Today I am going to share my recipes for the Roman soldier's best friend. Posca, a delicious vinegar-based drink, extremely popular amongst the Romans (It is like shrub but Roman). Posca is an easy recipe and requires minimal ingredients and preparation. While references to Posca are made in A.Cornelius Celsa's "De Medicina", Plutarch's "Parallel Lives", Vegetia's "De Re Militari"a and the "Historia Augusta", no known recipe for posca exists. Lucky for us Roman food and drink was based on personal taste, and so the posca can be customized to your palate. A soldier's posca (what Hadrian and Cato liked consuming) only has two ingredients, vinegar, and water. The specific type of vinegar itself is not named (red wine or white wine), so you can go with the vinegar you enjoy. Myself personally I do enjoy using an aged white wine vinegar, it has a less acidic tartness to it, that other vinegar may have.

If you are like me and do not like very acidic tastes, I recommend mixing a ratio of 2 ounces of vinegar (roughly two big spoonfuls) for every 8 ounces of water. If you want to get more tart flavor, you can have a higher ratio of vinegar to water, 3:8 or 4:8 vinegar to water. For you sports drinks fans, you can always add a dash of sea salt of electrolytes. Posca is a fabulous drink for hydration while on the march, and according to the craftsman in Fabri Cacti, goes great with their Roman leather drinking skins.

A variation of Posca I also find delicious (albeit there is no actual reference to it. But we can infer from Roman cuisine that it is a possibility) involves the basic posca recipe but adding honey and spice to it for more flavors. For this recipe, I recommend stirring 2 ounces of vinegar, and 8 ounces of water into heatedey, until it is completely dissolved. You can simply drink this sharp and sweet posca as is or you can add some spice. While some people (such as Pass the Garum) recommend half a spoonful of crushed coriander seed, I believe in adding fresh mint (or a half ounce of dry) and stir well. Fair warning this particular recipe may not do well in a soldier's waterskin, so a pitcher is the best way to store and serve this Posca recipe.

Posca is one of those recipes that every Roman reenactor should know, and try out. It is simple and easy to make. And common within the Roman army (as their inventory should vinegar rations). Next time I will show you how to make an easy meat dish, that pairs well with Roman wine (and Posca). Until our next correspondence. Vae Victus! Marcus Cestius Pullus