Since the current owners of the Postum trademark aren't showing any interest in bringing Postum back, you may be better off making your own. Some imaginative people have done just that. You'll find two different recipes to make something "like" Postum below, followed by recipes that call for it. In order to make the latter recipes, you will first either need to find a jar of Postum (if available) or make your own using one of the homemade Postum recipes. I found all of these recipes in various places on the net and I really can't tell you where. I supposed I could search for them again but even I found them, would the places I end up be the original sources? All I can say is that I am not the original source of any of this — I just compiled it into a single source.

Homemade Postum Recipe One

Ingredients:

• 1 quart fine ground wheat
• 1 pint coarse ground corn meal
• 1/2 cups molasses or dark syrup

Mix the wheat, corn-meal, and syrup. Rub them in the palms of the hand until it is well mixed. Put it into shallow baking pans and brown in a slow oven until it is a rich dark brown. It must be stirred often for even browning. Don't try to hurry the process or it will burn. When it is done, cool and store in a sealed jar or canister. Use like any cereal coffee. Use 2 tablespoons coffee for each cup and a half of water. It may be boiled or it can be made in an electric coffee-maker.

With hot milk this makes a nice evening drink.

If you can't buy ground wheat, you can sort whole grains of wheat and grind them in your blender. However, take them out before it grinds them into a flour.

Homemade Postum Recipe Two

Ingredients:

• Preheat oven to 300 degrees F
• 4 cups wheat bran
• 2 cups cracked wheat
• 1 cup black strap molasses

The cracked wheat should be ground in a coffee grinder to corn meal consistency. Grind before mixing with molasses so it doesn't gum up the grinder.

Combine all of the above ingredients in a bowl and mix well with your hands. Make sure the grain and bran are well combined and that the molasses is thoroughly mixed into the grain/bran mix. This will take about 5-10 minutes to make sure there are no pockets of molasses and that it looks like dark, very damp sawdust. Spread this mixture on two baking sheets with rims and put it in the oven. Stir mixture every 20 minutes for about 5 hours, or until the mixture is a very deep dark mahogany. Don't try to toast this in a hotter oven because it will burn. This is a recipe that requires patience in order to caramelize the molasses, and not burn it. When you open the oven to stir it you will notice a very slight smokiness during the last hour and a half. This is normal.

Remove the baking sheets from the oven and cool on wire racks stirring occasionally to release heat faster.

To prepare: This is not instant and needs to be brewed the same as coffee, or steeped as you would tea. The ratio is 2 Tablespoons mix per cup of water.

If you need to make this for the Carob Postum Cooler (below), you should make a cup of this mix and put it into a sauce pan and reduce it on high to medium high heat until there are about 2 tablespoons left in the pan. Keep a close eye on it and be ready to put in an ice cube if you reduce it too far. It will bring it back to the amount you need and cool the mix at the same time. Swirl the cube around the pan a couple of times until you have the amount you need.

Carob Postum Cooler

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon carob powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Postum
• 2 tablespoons boiling water
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon dark molasses
• 4 ounces cold vanilla soymilk
• Ice cubes as needed to fill mug

Put the boiling water in the bottom of a large coffee mug. Stir in the carob powder and the Postum. Add the molasses and stir until dissolved. Add the soymilk and ice cubes to fill the mug. Add water if needed. Makes one serving.

Optional: Throw the ice cubes and soy milk in a blender to crush the ice and then mix it all together in a mug.

Dainty Lady Cake

Ingredients:

• 6 eggs, separated
• 1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar, divided
• 4 tablespoons of water
• 1 1/2 cups of cake flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon of salt
• 3 tablespoons of Postum
• 1 can of prepared cream cheese frosting

Preparation:

Beat the egg yolks until they're very thick. Add half of the sugar and continue beating until mixed. Add the water and all the dry ingredients that have been sifted together three times. Fold gently. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites combined with the remaining sugar.

Bake the mixture in two greased 9-inch cake pans at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 to 35 minutes. Let it cool completely before frosting the cake with the cream cheese frosting.

Total Time: 1 hour
Makes: 10 slices of cake
Serves: 8-10 people

Russian Black Bread

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• 1 cup rye flour
• 1 1/2 cups of unbleached white flour
• 1/2 cup of oat bran
• 1 teaspoon of brown rice syrup
• 1 teaspoon pf salt
• 1 teaspoon of Postum
• 1 teaspoon of minced dried onion or 1/2 small raw onion, finely chopped
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa
• 1 tablespoon of vinegar
• 1 cup of water
• 2 tablespoons of caraway seeds

Place all ingredients in a bread machine. Use dough setting. At the end of the dough cycle, remove the dough to a non-stick bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Set the dough in a warm, draft-free place to rise until nearly doubled in bulk. This may take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.

Prepare a baking sheet or loaf pan, sprinkle with cornmeal. Punch down the dough and on a floured board, shape it into either a loaf or dome. Let the bread rise once again until almost doubled in bulk.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees F and then lower the oven to 350 degrees F and bake an additional 30 minutes, or until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

Healthy Drinking and Healthy Eating

Now that you've read about some healthy drinking recipes (if you consider Postum healthy), you need to take a look at some healthy eating recipes to complement them.

After all, healthy drinking and healthy eating is what this is all about, right?

Similar Articles:

• What is Postum?
• Coffee or Postum? You Decide
• Alternatives to Coffee, Postum and Camel Piss (Monster Energy Drink)
• See How Easily You Can Prevent Diabetes with Maple Syrup
• Five Most Commonly Sold Drinks

A better question would probably be "What was Postum?", since Postum is no longer being manufactured. The name of the product should give you an idea of the name of the person who was behind the development of the product.

I have some Postum-related articles on another blog and I believe it's more appropriate to move them here because Postum was a popular coffee alternative. This is just one of the articles I wrote — the only changes are the reformatting. I moved another article from a different blog (it was the only one on the subject) and it has already been here on this blog for some time.

Postum History

Postum started as a caramel cereal coffee that was being brewed at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan while Charles William Post was a charity patient there. Post found the recipe when he was snooping in the kitchen and obtained it from Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of the corn flakes breakfast cereal. Kellogg gave the recipe to Post willingly, having no way of knowing it would be the start of a major corporation.

C. W. Post founded the Postum Cereal Company in 1895, which was headquartered right there in Battle Creek, Michigan, with Postum as his first product. It was a powdered, roasted grain beverage made from wheat bran, wheat, molasses, and maltodextrin from corn. Post and Dr. Kellogg both believed that caffeine was unhealthy and Postum was marketed as a healthy alternative to coffee.

Postum became very popular with the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Mormons, or the Church of Latter Day Saints. The people of both religious groups didn't drink hot, caffeinated beverages and didn't suffer from the jittery side effects that coffee gave some people. According to the director of the estate of an Adventist co-founder, Post himself was not an Adventist.

Postum Cereal Company changed its name to General Foods Corporation in 1929 after acquiring other food brands and merged with Kraft Foods in 1989. Kraft Foods spokeswoman Laurie Guzzinati told Taashi Rowe of the Adventist News Network that the company stopped making Postum in the fall of 2007 because the demand for it was so low that manufacturing it no longer made sense.

Postum Future

There are people attempting to revive Postum in one way or another. I'll be adding some of that information to the other posts I'm moving over here.

Similar Articles:

• Coffee or Postum? You Decide
• Alternatives to Coffee, Postum and Camel Piss (Monster Energy Drink)
• Homemade Postum Recipes and Recipes Requiring Postum
• See How Easily You Can Prevent Diabetes with Maple Syrup
• Breaking the Sugar Addiction