Now that the summer heat is in full force, we’ve all been craving some good cold lemonade here at the resource exchange. So in keeping with our environmental mission, we decided to make some lemonade from some native staghorn sumac berries!

We gathered some berry clusters from a staghorn sumac shrub, then we soaked them in cold water for a few hours. After convincing our interns that “yes we did pick these in Fairmount Park” and “no the lemonade is not poisonous”, they helped out in the process. Everyone grabbed a cluster and squeezed the berries so that the juice would release into the cold water.

After letting the berries soak for a little while, we were ready for the final step. Sumac berries are full of a very citrus-like lemon flavored juice that is high in vitamin C. While the juice of the berry is great tasting and good for you, the skins are high in bitter tannins and the berries have large pits. In order to filter out these undesirable parts of the berry it is important to strain the juice before drinking it.

After straining out the berries, sit back and relax with some awesome pink lemonade!

And the lemonade was great! I definitely recommend it!

…well it’s great as long as you like sour things. Maybe next time we should add a sweetener for the interns…