Mauby – mabí in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic – is a bittersweet Caribbean drink made by boiling the bark of the mauby tree (Colubrina elliptica or the related C. arborescens) with spices such as cinnamon, clove and star anise, then sweetening it. It’s drunk cold, often poured over ice so it foams. In Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados it’s often drunk unfermented, made from bark or a bottled syrup; in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, mabí is often left to ferment for a day or more, which makes it fizzy and slightly sour.
What It Tastes Like
First bitter, then sweet and spiced – often compared to root beer with a bitter edge. The bitterness comes from the bark; the balance between bark and sugar is a matter of household taste. Chemists have isolated bitter triterpenoid saponins called mabiosides from the bark (Oulad-Ali et al., 1994), – saponins are natural foaming agents, which likely explains the foam.
Mauby and Health
Mauby is traditionally said to “bring down pressure”. A small University of the West Indies pilot study gave 28 people with high blood pressure bottled water, coconut water, mauby or a mixture of the two for two weeks; systolic blood pressure fell significantly in 40% of the mauby group and 43% of the mixture group (Alleyne et al., 2005). With seven people per group, that’s far from proof, and mauby isn’t a substitute for blood pressure medicine.
Warfarin: a published case report described a patient on warfarin whose INR rose sharply after he started drinking mauby, a probable herb–drug interaction (Sorbera et al., 2017). If you take warfarin or another blood thinner, talk to your doctor before drinking mauby regularly.
Fermented mauby’s microbes haven’t been studied, so there’s no evidence it’s a probiotic drink. Enjoy it for its flavor.
To Ferment or Not
- Unfermented: make the spiced, sweetened bark tea and chill it – ready the same day.
- Fermented: add a starter (a few spoonfuls of a previous batch, a little ginger bug, or a pinch of bread yeast) and leave it at room temperature for 1–3 days until fizzy, then bottle and refrigerate. Like other wild-fermented sodas, it can contain a small amount of alcohol, which rises the longer it ferments – don’t assume a long-fermented batch is alcohol-free for children or in pregnancy.
Sealed bottles build pressure. Use plastic soda bottles or swing-top bottles made for carbonated drinks, check them at least once a day while they’re at room temperature, and refrigerate once they’re firm.
Tips
- Too bitter? Use less bark or simmer for a shorter time, and dilute with water and more sugar.
- No fizz? Move it somewhere warmer (24–29°C / 75–85°F) or add a fresher starter.
- Too sour or dry? It fermented too long; refrigerate sooner next time.
- Where to buy bark: Caribbean and West Indian grocery stores and online, as dried reddish-brown strips; bottled mauby syrup is diluted with water to taste.
Other Caribbean and Latin American fermented drinks: Caribbean ginger beer and Mexico’s tepache; for another homemade fizzy drink, try water kefir soda.