Home › Lemon and Lime › Bran Lemonade
Bran Lemonade
Pour two cups of cold water over one fourth cup of bran and let stand over night. In the morning strain and add the juice of one lemon. Serve cold.
A cold-infused bran water sharpened with lemon, from the era when drinks like this were served to invalids as much as to the thirsty. Two things decide whether it is pleasant: the bran you buy and how well you strain it.
- What bran means herePlain unprocessed wheat bran ‑ the loose, flaky miller's bran sold in bulk bins or health-food aisles. Not bran cereal, not bran flakes, both of which are usually sweetened or malted in a way that does not suit this.
- Soak it cold, in the refrigeratorThe original was written for a cooler pantry than most kitchens now provide. At around 70F a wet grain slurry left standing that long can begin to sour or ferment. Cover it and refrigerate.
- StrainingA fine mesh sieve lined with a double layer of cheesecloth or a coffee filter gives a clear, faintly nutty liquid. A coarse strainer leaves suspended bran that settles into sludge in the glass.
- Do not press the solidsSqueezing the bran through the cloth pushes fine particles into the drink and makes it gritty and slightly bitter. Let it drip.
- YieldTwo cups of water plus one lemon makes a single tall glass or two small ones; the bran absorbs a little, so expect somewhat under two cups of finished liquid.
- SweeteningNone is specified, and unsweetened it is austere ‑ the lemon is the only flavor with any force. A teaspoon or two of sugar or simple syrup stirred in while the water is still cold is an easy correction.
- Fiber expectationsAlmost all of the bran's insoluble fiber stays in the sieve. What you get is a mineral-tasting infusion, not a fiber supplement, whatever the period claims for it.
This comes from a Prohibition-adjacent genre: collections of soft drinks assembled to prove that a household could be sociable without alcohol, and On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon ‑ the title itself a play on "being on the water wagon" ‑ belongs squarely to it. Bran water was familiar to American cooks from a different direction, as a sickroom drink, sitting alongside barley water, toast water and rice water in the invalid-cookery chapters of nineteenth-century domestic manuals; the technique is the same cold or tepid steeping of a grain to draw out a faint sweetness and a little mineral flavor. Adding lemon juice, and filing the result under "Lemon and Lime" rather than under invalid drinks, is the small move that turns a nursing remedy into a beverage. Bran was also cheap and widely available, a by-product of roller milling, which may help explain why thrift-minded recipes of the period find uses for it.