Barley Water

flyinglentris

flyinglentris

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Barley Water? What is it? Do I want to drink it? Do I want to gift it to somebody I don't like? What's it taste like? Can it be used as a cleaning solvent?
 
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I googled and found a Barley Water Wiki.

It seems this stuff has been around for a long time in various names and deserves a mention in Nostalgia Foods. I suppose I would have, if I had known what the blue blazes it was.

I had also read that it can have some wanted and unwanted side effects.
 
You can buy it here - lemon or orange flavoured. Its a sweet soft drink and it was popular when I was a kid. Maybe not so much now. You can make it at home:

Orange and lemon barley water | Tesco Real Foodrealfood.tesco.com › recipes › orange-and-lemon-barle...

It was first used as a sort of tonic for fevers - don't know if you can see this image clearly enough. Its from Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper - Sunday 17 May 1891

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flyinglentris said:
I googled and found a Barley Water Wiki.

It seems this stuff has been around for a long time in various names and deserves a mention in Nostalgia Foods. I suppose I would have, if I had known what the blue blazes it was.

I had also read that it can have some wanted and unwanted side effects.
Click to expand...

I just got a memory jolt. When my parents lived in Puerto Rico, there was a beverage there called Malta. Basically the same as barley water??? It tasted nasty, IMO, but people there liked it. It has been a long time since I tasted it, but I remember it being somewhat sweet, and very heavy.

CD
 
caseydog said:
I just got a memory jolt. When my parents lived in Puerto Rico, there was a beverage there called Malta. Basically the same as barley water??? It tasted nasty, IMO, but people there liked it. It has been a long time since I tasted it, but I remember it being somewhat sweet, and very heavy.

CD
Click to expand...

Malta is not Barley Water, but more like a non-alcoholic Beer, brewed from Barley, Hops and Water, but without fermentation. Barley Water on the other hand, is the strained fluids left after boiling Barley, with Sugars and Fruit Juices added to it.

I don't imagine that a non-alcoholic Beer would taste very good to a kid.
 
flyinglentris said:
Malta is not Barley Water, but more like a non-alcoholic Beer, brewed from Barley, Hops and Water, but without fermentation. Barley Water on the other hand, is the strained fluids left after boiling Barley, with Sugars and Fruit Juices added to it.

I don't imagine that a non-alcoholic Beer would taste very good to a kid.
Click to expand...

I was actually in college when I had Malta for the first time. Not sure if that was what you meant by "to a kid."

So, it seems I have never had barley water. Get some and tell us what you think of it.

CD
 
We had this when I was growing up. Us kids called it 'baldy water' because there was a picture of a man on the label with a bald head. He might have been the founder of the drinks company who made it. It was quite nice actually, but we only had it on Sundays - on the remaining days of the week we just drank water. I don't remember being given it for medical reasons - we had Lucozade and other drinks for that.
 
The famous one in the UK is Robinson's Barley Water, which has been around since the 1930s and has been associated with tennis for a very long time (especially Wimbledon). It's now owned by the giant Britvic, but was independent before that.

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