Episode 62: Rattle Skull

  • 12 ounces porter beer

  • 1 1/2 ounces dark Caribbean rum

  • 3/4 ounce lime juice

  • 1/2 ounce brown sugar syrup (1:1, sugar:water)

  • Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg

Add all ingredients to a large beer mug and stir gently to combine. Sprinkle with freshly grated nutmeg over the top before serving.

Colonial Americans drank very differently from the way we drink today. Cocktails weren’t exactly a thing just yet, but on special occasions punch was about as close as they got. Most of the time most people drank much more simply: Cider, beer, wine, or maybe straight spirits, like rum or whiskey, served room temperature. If they were feeling really fancy they might add some water and maybe even some sugar to their spirits, or sometimes they’d mix things together.

Flip, Bellow-Stop, Yard of Flannel, and Stone Fence were all common tavern drinks that combined spirits with beer or cider. Another popular colonial era concoction mixed beer, in this case a porter, with dark Caribbean rum (sometimes they’d use brandy or applejack), a little sugar and nutmeg, and sometimes some lime juice if they had it. This common colonial era beverage was called a Rattle Skull, which was a British slang term for someone who talked too much. It basically meant that if you drank a Rattle Skull you’d be spilling all the tea at the local tavern.

Episode 45: Early Colonial Rum Punch

Makes about Four 5oz servings

  • 1 cup green tea (hot)

  • ¼ cup jaggery or other dark raw sugar (demerara or muscovado)

  • ¼ cup fresh squeezed lime juice

  • 1 cup aged Jamaican or Caribbean rum

  • Fresh grated nutmeg

In a bowl or pitcher, pour tea over sugar and stir to dissolve. If using jaggery, you may need to break it up with a muddler in the liquid to help it dissolve faster. Stir in the lime juice and rum and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Ladle or pour into punch glasses and grate a bit of fresh nutmeg over the top before serving.

Alcoholic Punch was still in its infancy in the 1670s, so recipes from that era are hard to come by. This recipe is not exactly an “authentic” Colonial American punch recipe, but rather a twist on a 1668 recipe shared in David Wondrich’s book, “Punch”. The oldest recipe included, it predates the popularity of oleo saccharum. Instead, it simply calls for lime juice but no zest.

This recipe was written down in England and contains several Indian & Indonesian ingredients that would have been hard to come by in early colonial America, so to try to approximate a punch similar to what might have been consumed in America in the 1670s, some substitutions and tweaks to this recipe were necessary.  

In place of Batavia Arrack, dark Caribbean rum is used instead. A raw sugar called jaggery is used to try to recreate the dark, raw, funky flavor of colonial era loaf sugar. Raw sugars such as demerara, muscovado, or “Sugar in the Raw” could be used in its place.

 For authenticity’s sake, the recipe is not served with ice, but keeping it cold in the refrigerator is fine. The recipe has also been scaled down for a smaller serving size but could easily be scaled back up. For more information, please listen to Minisode 40 on the history of punch.

Episode 40: Fish House Punch

Lemon simple syrup

  • ½ cup sugar

  • ½ cup hot water

  • Peels from 2 lemons (try to avoid white pith)  

Combine ingredients together in a heat safe jar. Cover and let sit for at least several hours before using.

Fish House Punch

  • 2 oz brewed black tea, cooled

  • 2 oz amber rum

  • 1 oz cognac

  • ¼ oz peach brandy

  • ¾ oz lemon simple syrup

  • ¾ oz lemon juice

  • Garnish: Freshly grated nutmeg & a lemon wheel

Combine everything in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake just enough to combine, strain into a glass over ice. Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg and a wheel of lemon.

Fish House Punch.jpg

Punch was almost always served at any festive occasions in Colonial America, and they were often made with rum and usually flavored with some kind of citrus. They were also often diluted with brewed tea to add more flavor that water.

 The Fish House Punch is probably one of the most famous punches in American History. According to David Wondrich, the Philadelphia Fish House Punch “deserves to be protected by law, taught in the schools, and made a mandatory part of every Fourth of July celebration.” It was invented at a private fishing and social club in Philadelphia called the State in Schuylkill Fishing Corporation, popularly known as the Fish House.

We don’t know exactly when it was created, but it was legendary for its flavor and potency. Rumor has it that George Washington even drank some in 1787. He wrote in his diary that he was going to dine at the Fish House Club as an honored guest, and after that his diary remained uncharacteristically blank for the next three days.

This would have been a very fancy drink at the time, because so many of the ingredients were imported. Jamaican rum, French cognac, peach brandy from the south, British black tea, and lemon and nutmeg which were also both quite expensive at the time.

Traditionally a large batch of this punch would be flavored with Oleo-saccharum, an infusion of lemon zest and sugar, but to scale this recipe down to a single serving, we went with a simple syrup infused with lemon peels.

Episode 39: Colonial Stone Fence

  • 2 ounces of dark rum

  • Hard cider (tart, dry, funky cider is best) *see note

  • Garnish options: lemon, sliced apple, or fresh herbs

Pour rum over ice in a tall bar or collins glass. Top off with cider and garnish with a lemon twist, a slice of apple, or a sprig of mint if desired.

*Note: This will produce a Stone Fence similar to the one Colonial Americans might have enjoyed. If you prefer, feel free to substitute a sweeter, fruitier cider for a more modern flavor.

stonefence.jpg

In the 1770s, The Catamount Tavern, in what is now Vermont, was Ethan Allen’s home bar and also served as the headquarters for the Green Mountain Boys militia group that he commanded.

Legend has it that the night before their pre-dawn capture of Fort Ticonderoga from the British in 1775, Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold and the Green Mountain Boys were drinking round after round of Stone Fence cocktails. This colonial new England classic gave them the liquid courage needed to take the fort by surprise.

The Stone Fence is probably named after the primitive stacked stone fences surrounding farmland all over New England. In the days of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, it was made with tart hard cider and dark molasses-y New England rum.  Over the years though, the drink evolved. About a century later, when Jerry Thomas published a recipe, his Stone Fence was made with sweet nonalcoholic pressed cider and bourbon whiskey. While the Jerry Thomas version is undeniably delicious, this recipe is closer to the original 18th century version.

Episode 13: Colonial Ale Flip

  • 12 oz brown ale *see note

  • 2 oz dark rum (or brandy)

  • 1 oz molasses

  • 1 whole egg

  • grated nutmeg for garnish

Pour the ale into a saucepan and heat over low to medium low heat until warm and steaming, but don’t bring it to a boil.
Meanwhile, in a small pitcher or measuring cup, combine the rum, molasses, and egg and beat vigorously with a fork or whisk until it’s a little frothy looking. Pour the beer into the rum and egg mixture in a slow steady stream, beating with a fork the whole time to prevent the egg from heating too quickly. 
Serve in a large mug (or two smaller mugs) and garnish with a sprinkle of nutmeg. 

*note: If you can find English style brown ale or Nut brown ale, it’ll be sweeter and less bitter and hoppy than American style brown ales. This is much more similar to what they would have been drinking 300 years ago. We used a beer called Rouge Hazelnut Brown Nectar with a nutty sweetness that was perfect for this drink if you can find it. If you can only find American brown ale, it’ll be fine but you may want to add a touch more molasses to combat the bitterness of the hops. 

colonial ale flip.jpg

Flip first appeared sometime in the 1690s, and it was wildly popular in colonial America for the next century. George Washington was said to be a big fan. 

Flip was made in a metal pitcher and whipped until warm and frothy with a red hot fire poker (called a flip-dog). They’d usually be served in ceramic mugs or sometimes in special flip glasses.

Sometimes they were poured back and forth between two mugs to make sure they were creamy and well blended. This pouring back and forth gave Flip the nickname “Yard of Flannel” but they also went by the names “Bellow-Stop”, “Hotch-Pot”, and “Crambambull”.