By: Gavin Schweiger, Follow South Jersey Assistant Editor
BRIDGETON, NJ — Magic Witchballs, a store located in Shoppes at Dragon Village in Bridgeton, hosted an event where participants made fire cider on Saturday, January 17.
Fire cider is a recipe using apple cider vinegar along with onions, ginger, garlic, cayenne pepper, honey among other ingredients to create a pungent and spicy tonic. Herbalists and those in natural medicine claim that it has many health benefits, including helping to remedy colds and flus.
It comes from herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, who taught students how to make it and then published the recipe in the 1980s.
Magic Witchballs is a small store started by Amy Miller, who created the space to spend more time with her daughter. The store sells jewelry, herbs, candles, and other items including the titular witch balls, which are glass balls from the Victorian era originally used to ward off evil spirits, according to Britannica.
Miller put on the fire cider event as part of a “Witch History and Crafts” workshop series she runs monthly.
Miller taught the recipe’s history and then let the guests make their own.
While the recipe for fire cider is less than 50 years old, using vinegar for health has a much older story, with use at least as long ago as 400 B.C.E. Hippocrates (the father of medicine) prescribed it mixed with honey to treat wounds.
Some debate if fire cider is that beneficial given limited research, but many believe it to be healthy because of the individual ingredients. For example, apple cider vinegar can help with controlling blood sugar, and honey can soothe sore throats and reduce coughing.
The potential lack of benefits hasn’t stopped the recipe from becoming popular, and the eventgoers from enjoying making it.
For eventgoer Chris Wolf, making the cider was fun and artistic, making for a nice night out.
“It’s interesting because you get to see how to do it and what the result is when you do certain things like putting the beetroot in turns it a beautiful shade of red,” Wolf said.
Collene Albertson, another Dragon Village business owner, also had fun during the event, and liked being able to curate it for her and her family’s health needs.
“It felt good because you know, that you’re, at the end of the day, you’re making something that’s curated to you, that’s going to make you feel good, but you can also share if you need to,” Albertson said.
Miller’s recipe includes chili peppers, turmeric, lemon, rosemary, thyme, mint, and optional beet root powder, nettles and raspberry leaf among others.
Another sheet that Miller gave out gave “magical properties” of the ingredients. For example, ginger has “healing, abundance, luck, love, protection.”
Magic Witchballs plans to continue putting on events, including a five-week hypnosis workshop happening from the end of January to the end of March.
While the fire cider was the main draw, Miller looked forward to spending time with the people the most.
“We have fun, we learn together, we chat, we laugh, it’s always hysterical,” Miller said. “I just love having everyone come together.”
Hear more about fire cider in the video below.
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