Bardwell’s Ferry Flip
For this flip, I took post-Civil War technique and style and applied it to pre-Civil War ingredients. As we saw with our At Loggerheads a few years back, flips in the eighteenth century were ale-based and served hot. But the Gilded Age brought ice and shakers into the equation and, though beer-based versions did exist (especially with porter), fortified wine as well as spirits took over as the most common base. I love the flavor of this drink, the walnut adds this really pleasant bitterness to the whole thing; it kind of tastes like melted pumpkin ice cream with walnuts on top.
Conway Inn Cock-tail
Spirit-forward drinks were exceedingly popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century–from Bumbo to Slings, Toddies, Cock-tails, and Black Strap, they’re all just variations on sweetened, diluted spirits. The Cock-tail, of course, is the one with bitters in it. I love maple and walnut together and it works beautifully with the sherry base. Though this recipe features a complex “Improved Cocktail” structure (which dates to later in the 1800s), it could very well have existed during our period of interest!
Pumpkin Hollow
I always like to include a beer cocktail when we travel to this time and place because they were so incredibly common, it’s almost lying not to have one! Beers brewed with a pumpkin base (once known as pompion ales) originated in the years before the Revolutionary War and pumpkin ales line shelves every fall to this day. This autumnal beer cocktail is named for the original town center in Conway, Massachusetts, which is also the name of this month's theme. This drink is, then, sort of like a title track!
Pine Hill Punch
This is an imagined punch that might have been from the early republic with favorite products of the period, all of which would have been available for purchase in olde New English taverns. Aged rum and brandy is just about a classic eighteenth-century punch base as you’ll find and the sherry gives it this wonderful nutty, oxidized flavor. There’s a noble history of using oranges in punch and I really like what it’s doing here! And I really love orange with maple, it’s such an autumnal combination for me; this combo is also featured in my most popular BA recipe ever, the Applejack Sour. And in fact, we’re doing this with apple brandy instead of rum at Gigantic this fall, and it’s delicious both ways!
Mint Sling
What’s a julep before it becomes an iced drink? Why, a Mint Sling, of course! During the eighteenth century the eastern seaboard was awash with minty, rum-based slings that also traveled under the name julep. Because we are used to chilled beverages (especially with juleps on the mind), I decided to give this tavern drink the batch-n-freeze treatment; the result is a very pleasing pour that tastes like an aged rum mojito sans ice and soda.
Snap-dragon
Also known as flap-dragon, this Elizabethan game involves trying to pick dried fruit and nuts out of a bowl of flaming brandy. Yes, it’s dangerous and, yes, it was played by children (as well as adults) from the sixteenth century through the Victorian period. It’s closely associated with the Christmas season and, in the United States, it also became a common amusement on All Hallows’ Eve.
Calibogus
One of many ale-based proto-cocktails popular in eighteenth-century American taverns, I like to think of the Calibogus as the piney cousin of the Rattle-skull. The original Calibogus would have been a simple mixture of rum and spruce ale (a popular antiscorbutic for sailors), possibly flavored with lime juice and a sweetener like molasses. I decided to adapt this recipe by using ubiquitous, hoppy IPA for the ale component and an apple brandy base because it marries nicely with the ale and citrus.
Montague Mull
Shrubs were a popular method of preserving fruit in New England during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Though almost all apple cider in those days was fermented, I saw an opportunity here to build a non-alcoholic drink reflecting this month’s historical milieu with sweet, non-alcoholic cider, cranberry shrub, and our ginger-molasses syrup, with lemon juice to bolster the acid and salt and cayenne to liven things up.
Black Strap
Sometimes called Black Stripe, this drink is a toddy-like mixture of rum, molasses, and hot or cold water that comes from the same seafaring roots at Calibogus (and, indeed, early versions at sea contained spruce ale). Blackstrap was one of the most popular tavern drinks of the late eighteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries in rural New England. Our version uses nineteenth-century techniques to revive this forgotten Rum Old-Fashioned ancestor.
Hot Apple Toddy
This drink is another that was emblematic of American culture in the days of the early Republic but has since been forgotten. Popular in winter, as they were traditionally served hot, Apple Toddy recipes, including the one in Jerry Thomas’s 1862 book, typically call for mixing apple brandy with hot water and baked apple, and topped with nutmeg. Our version is a little more complex, with notes of cranberry, vanilla, spices, and ginger.
The Cock-Tail, or Bittered Sling
The drink from which so many have sprung–the Cock-Tail originated in the late eighteenth century and, by 1806 was codified as a “bittered sling,” i.e. a combination of spirit, sugar, water, and bitters. The method of preparing the cocktail without ice yields a cool but not ice-cold drink, allowing the character of the Holland gin (genever) or French brandy (Cognac) to shine.
St. Nick Sangaree
I love the classic idea of having nuts, chocolate, and dried fruit with coffee and port after dinner. For this recipe, I leaned on the idea of Sangarees and Cobblers, layering flavors over a tannic base and drying the whole thing out with a half-ounce of rye. Pebble ice and a very Victorian garnish make this one quite festive indeed.
Conway Milk Punch
Milk Punch–the kind we now differentiate as “clarified”–goes back to at least the early eighteenth century. It’s made by curdling warm milk in a punch mixture then straining it and, thanks to the magic of science, the milk solids make the mixture clear (hence the term “clarified”). Ours has aged rum, Madeira, lime, green tea, sugar, spices, and, well, milk.
Hilltown HBR
Hot Buttered Rum is a drink that has, blessedly, survived into the twenty-first century thanks in large part to its popularity around the holidays. At its most elemental, it’s just rum, sugar, spices, butter, and hot water. I didn’t want to make this variation too overly complicated, but the walnut liqueur, as well as the pumpkin and miso flavors in the syrup, amp up all the best parts of this simple classic while giving it a bit more dimension.
Stone Fence Collins
The Stone Fence is a much-mythologized olde Yankee drink consisting of aged rum and hard cider. Supposedly Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys drank a ton of Stone Fences before storming Ticonderoga. In this simple mix of ingredients, I saw the opportunity to play with a bit of anachronism and apply a nineteenth-century template (the Collins) to this eighteenth-century classic.
Proto-Daiquiri
This drink is one of my “cocktails that might have been,” i.e. a drink that could have existed even if it doesn’t survive in the historical records. My Proto-Daiquiri seeks to summarize the rum-based punches and drinks that were consumed at sea, many of which used the Caribbean trifecta of rum, lime (or citrus more broadly), and sugar. Eventually, this combination of ingredients gave us the Daiquiri.
Portsmouth Punch
Tavern culture was deeply tied with ports, in part because some of its most notable drinks were born at sea, but also because so much of taverns’ stock was imported. The combination of rum and brandy was a common one in eighteenth-century punches, and Madeira was a wildly popular imported wine. Our punch is flavored with a plethora of other valuable imports: spices, ginger, lime, and tea.
Rattle-Skull
The flip began as a sailors’ drink and swiftly infiltrated the taverns of England and “British America.” There, it became a hot drink ー a mixture of ale, spirit, egg, sugar and spices, and sometimes other ingredients. Flips were warmed and frothed by submerging a hot iron poker, called a flip-dog or loggerhead, that had been heated in the tavern hearth. If you’re “at loggerheads” with someone, try offering them a mug of this ー ‘tis hard to stay angry with such a comfort in hand.
Medford Bumbo
Bumbo, or “Bombo” is a rum sling sweetened, diluted spirit flavored with spices. Rum was a major force in eighteenth-century life, whether it was imported from the Caribbean (that was the best stuff) or produced locally in New England from molasses, the most famous of which was produced in Medford, Massachusetts. Like the whole toddy-sling family, Bumbo is among the nearest antecedents of the capital-C Cocktail.
At Loggerheads
The flip began as a sailors’ drink and swiftly infiltrated the taverns of England and “British America.” There, it became a hot drink ー a mixture of ale, spirit, egg, sugar and spices, and sometimes other ingredients. Flips were warmed and frothed by submerging a hot iron poker, called a flip-dog or loggerhead, that had been heated in the tavern hearth. If you’re “at loggerheads” with someone, try offering them a mug of this ー ‘tis hard to stay angry with such a comfort in hand.