Hot Rum Punch

Here’s a Jamaica rum punch with arrack I’m working on—tasty but maybe in need of fine tuning. I used tea to heat it, which did the job within tolerance but could’ve been hotter going in.



Hot Rum Punch

• 1 1/2 oz Jamaica rum (Smith & Cross)
• 1/2 oz arrack (Batavia Arrack van Oosten)
• 1/2 oz lemon
• 1/4 oz rich simple syrup
• 4 oz strong black tea
• lemon peel
• about 15 allspice berries

Boil water to make tea and heat a mug. Pour boiling water over tea, the yellow part of the peel of a lemon and allspice berries. While tea is steeping (4-5) minutes), heat mug, then discard hot water. Combine spirits, lemon and syrup in mug. Strain tea into spirit mixture and stir briefly.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

I made the tea in an open vessel, and now see that I should’ve worked a little harder to keep the warmth in it. The spirits and stuff cooled it more than expected, though it was still quite drinkable. I’m also thinking I might’ve bruised the allspice berries a little too. But the housemate and I both enjoyed it. Well worth doing again. The Smith & Cross rum I used gave the right funk for the 18th-century feel of this.

Fogged In Sangria

This Fourth of July, I volunteered to command the grill, so I had my punch ready two days in advance—an opportunity to play with maceration. I went for sangria this year, and used the peels from the citrus and some sliced red plums, all of which I strained out the morning of the party.



Fogged In Sangria

• 2 bottles Rioja
• 12 oz gold rum
• 4 oz curacao
• 4 plums
• 4 oranges
• 2 lemons

Remove the colored part of the orange and lemon peels with a sharp vegetable peeler, avoiding the white pith. Set in large bowl or jug. Add sliced plums, juice of oranges and lemons, rum and wine. Store in the refrigerator for a couple of days, then strain. Serve with ice and a bottle of soda on the side. Guests can dilute the sangria to taste.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

This had plenty of citrus oil on the nose, as you might expect, and some tartness and fresh fruit notes from the plums that went very well with the wine. Nice and dry, and good with the food. (I was double fisting in the smoke and the heat with a Sierra Nevada, and it went OK with that too.)

Christmas Punch

Unfortunately, there was no time for a photo of the punch before it was gone. That’s OK—I don’t feel like bothering with the camera when we have this anyway. It’s served at the end of the caroling at the high point of my housemate’s Christmas party. While he has most of the company gathered around the fireplace in the front of the house, a couple of my homies and I are in the kitchen singing along with them (sort of) and making this punch.

The recipe I use is adapted from one for English Christmas Punch I first found in John Poister’s New American Bartender’s Guide, one of the first things I read on mixed drinks. The original recipe calls for flaming the rum in the sugar, which sounds amazing but too much to manage in a narrow San Francisco house packed to the rafters with guests and antique Christmas decorations.

English Christmas Punch

• 2 bottles dry red wine (Chianti)
• 750 ml dark Jamaica rum
• 3 c strong black tea (5 bags English Breakfast)
• 1 lb sugar
• juice of 2 Valencia oranges
• juice of 2 lemons

Melt the sugar in the red wine on the stove. Add the rum. It takes a while to get it to the desired warmth while heating it gently. (I’m always trying to time this to coincide with the end of the caroling, and I just never know.) Combine juice and tea in a heat-proof punch bowl. Pour booze mixture into the tea and citrus and serve immediately.
SOURCE: ADAPTED FROM JOHN J. POISTER, THE NEW AMERICAN BARTENDER’S GUIDE

Philadelphia Fish-House Punch

There’s old magic in the legend of Philadelphia Fish-House Punch and the Colony in Schuylkill. It is woods and water and smoke. It is the Fourth of July, and canoes, wet bathing suits and homemade pies. It conjures the spirit of the old republic.

The first time I made this, I used the adjusted recipe from David Wondrich that calls for brandy-based peach liqueur in place of peach brandy from peaches. Since then, a great artisanal Indian blood peach eau-de-vie by Kuchan has come on the market. Either way, the effect is quite similar: sweet and heady, subtly perfumed. This is the taste of the past. The flavors are rich and very old fashioned, though the water helps keep it light. My friends and I find that we can drink it all afternoon long in a pleasant haze.

I pretty much stuck to the proportions of the old recipe, rounding only slightly down on the sugar and up on the water for easy multiplication.



Philadelphia Fish House Punch

• 1 pint lemon juice
• 4 cups sugar
• 3 pints mixture (1 1/2 cups peach eau-de-vie, 3 cups cognac, 1 1/2 cups Jamaica rum)
• 1 gallon water

Make a block of ice for the punch bowl by freezing water in a metal or cardboard container overnight. (Do not use glass, which will break with the expansion of the ice.) Now for the lemons. Squeezing a pint of lemon juice with a small hand press takes some patience and about 3 pounds of lemons. Before you squeeze, take off only the yellow part of the peel of 3 lemons with a sharp vegetable peeler. Muddle the peels well with the sugar.



Start squeezing lemons into a strainer over a measuring cup. Heat a quart of the water to the boiling point and pour over the sugar, stirring to dissolve. Fish out the lemon peels. Wondrich says to add the rest of the ingredients at this point and chill the whole thing, but I find that making a great vat of the stuff for a barbecue means competition with other comestibles for real estate in the refrigerator.



So I cooled it with another quart of the water, added the lemon juice, and chilled the booze mixture and remaining water separately. Assemble the punch in a large bowl over the ice block.
SOURCE: DAVID WONDRICH, IMBIBE!, AFTER A RECIPE IN THE POSSESSION OF CHARLES G. LELAND, ESQ. PUBLISHED BY JERRY THOMAS, 1862

MxMo XLVII: Punch

Warm thanks to Mike at Hobson’s Choice for a theme for Mixology Monday that’s a personal favorite. The thought of punch makes me smile. It makes my eyes light up. It makes my mouth water. If you saw me like this with a knife in my hand, you’d probably run in terror unless I was holding a lemon in the other. Punch!

I have a sense of déjà vu cuz my January MxMo post was a punch too. But that one was a tiki, and this is more of an 18th- or 19th-century punch, at least in general outline. Here I use aquavit for the base, and a flavorful one, North Shore Distillery Private Reserve. It’s a great spirit—slightly funky and a lot of fun. The distinct cumin note works surprisingly well in punch.


Aquavit-Blood Orange Punch

• 2 parts Aquavit (North Shore)
• 2 parts black tea (English Breakfast, steeped 3 minutes)
• 1 part blood orange juice
• 1/4 part lemon juice
• 3/4 part simple syrup (1:1) or to taste

This recipe is given in parts: make an individual glass or expand for a jug. I guess you could do a bowl, though that’s a ton of blood oranges.

For an individual glass of punch, combine everything in a shaker with ice. Stir briskly and strain into a chilled glass with a stem.

For punch in quantity, refrigerate everything in advance and combine in a jug. Keep chilled until serving. Serve in suitable glasses or punch cups with a little ice.

Rowen, Fogged In Lounge