Fish House Punch

The name is self-explanatory. It must be a house punch at a restaurant named Fish House, right? I was a little mystified by the ingredients. It teeters between a rich dark rum punch of colonial times and a fresh, bright summer punch for beach drinking.

In practice, when you add as much water as dark rum and basically make lemonade in the punch bowl, you are making a summer punch that is very drinkable and more than a little suggestive of summer peaches.

• 2 liters dark rum (Pampero used)
• 1 liter cognac (Martell VS used)
• 4 oz. peach brandy (Bird Dog peach whiskey used)
• 1 liter lemon juice
• 2 liters bottled spring water
•  peach slices

Add sugar, lemon juice, and spring water to a large punch bowl. Stir to dissolve the sugar, then add rum and brandies. Refrigerate at least an hour before serving. Then add large block ice and peach slices for garnishes.  

Apple Annie's Fruit Punch

This punch was delicious, fun and easy to make. It is the perfect punch for summer afternoons and picnics. I was afraid at first that it would be too strong for my guests, but it was very balanced once the sodas were added. The fresh fruit is also a nice touch. In addition to oranges, lemons, apples and raspberries, I added farm fresh blueberries.

The spirit I used here was Laird's Applejack 86. It was strong enough to taste under all the juice, but a real apple brandy and not some jacked cider, weak with no taste.

• 1 bottle or 1 liter apple brandy (Laird's used)
• 3 oz. raspberry liqueur (Chambord used)
• 10 0z orange juice
• 8 oz. grapefruit juice
• 2 oz. lemon juice
• 1 liter ginger ale
• 1 liter sparkling water or lemon lime soda
• 1 apple sliced thin
• 1 lemon sliced thin
• 12-15 raspberries

Combine applejack, raspberry liqueur and fruit juices in a large punch bowl and stir well. Refrigerate for an hour and add a large block of ice before serving. Add the sodas and fruit just before serving and stir again. Serves 20.

Eggnog / Baltimore Eggnog

When it comes to this winter drink, there's Eggnog and then there's Eggnog. I mean that everyone has their own recipe for choice of spirits or batch sizes. You can make a standard whiskey eggnog to order (a single serving) or you can make a huge batch. And whatever recipe you settle on will be pretty good, more or less. It's really a matter of taste.

In Baltimore they do it this way:
Baltimore Eggnog

•  2 oz. brandy (cognac please)
• 1 oz. dark rum (Kopper Kettle chai spice rum recommended for eggnog flavors)
• 1 oz. Madiera
• 6 oz. half-and-half
• 1 whole egg
• 1 tsp. sugar
• grated nutmeg

Combine all ingredients except nutmeg in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a Collins glass and sprinkle nutmeg on top.

This recipe is especially festive. It has all the colonial imports and local spirits used from the days when Baltimore was a new coastal town involved in the rum trade. It is strong and awesome! Virginia Kopper Kettle chai spiced rum actually provides the traditional spice component found in eggnog.

The general accepted spirit for eggnog time out of mind has been brandy. Brandy was the strong stuff in the U.S. back when the only thing you could get locally was beer or cider (see General Harrison's Eggnog for an example of one of these colonial low ABV drinks.)

So brandy or cognac was necessary to thin the eggnogs of colonial balls without making the drink too watery or warm. These old eggnogs were served like punches with ball-goers scooping out a serving into punch glasses. It is thick and creamy and must be kept chilled.

This recipe serves 25:

• 1 bottle (750 ml) brandy
• 1 1/2 quarts of milk
• 1 pint whipped heavy cream
• 1 cup sugar
• 12 eggs
• freshly grated nutmeg

Separate the egg yolk from the whites and beat the yolks in a large punch bowl with sugar to combine. Stir in milk and whipped cream and add brandy. Refrigerate for at least an hour. Before serving whip the egg whites stiff and fold into the eggnog.

Artillery Punch

This is a trial run of the Artillery Punch, a big bowl of punch that I intend to make for a holiday party soon. It is a good idea, when trying a punch for the first time, to make a scaled down version of the punch to test it and see if it needs tweaking. This 1/32 scale punch was excellent and supports my judgement that a good punch needs a little bit of a spice kick to counter the sweetness and citrus of all the fruit juice.

I was attracted to Artillery Punch because it uses nearly a bottle of rye and half of a bottle of dark rum. It seems it is a counter to those old Navy Punches you come across in old cocktail manuals or seafaring tales. It is strong and quick to lay you low, but easily drinkable when it comes down to finishing the bowl amidst rowdy spectators. You can see a bunch of artillery men egging each other on to drink another from the bowl, perhaps stirring it with loggerheads.

A few modifications need to be addressed. I went with port instead of red wine for a richer body for winter. Spiced rum seemed appropriate and with it I used a spiced black tea as one of the four tea bags to brew the four cups of black tea, the other three bags were Irish breakfast for their strength and blackness. Peach schnapps is an ok and noticeable substitute for apricot brandy, which you might not detect underneath everything else, but you might want to back off the proportions slightly.

Below I've included the proportions for the drink, but be warned, it is no small matter to drink this one with fewer than six people.

• 4 cups rye (Catoctin Creek Roundstone rye used)
• 4 cups red wine (ruby port used)
• 2 cups dark rum (St. Croix spiced used)
• 1 cup apricot brandy (peach schnapps used)
• 1 cup gin (Bombay Sapphire used)
• 4 cups black tea (Irish breakfast used plus one bag of Republic Of Tea Comfort & Joy)
• 2 cups orange juice
• 4 oz. lemon juice
• 4 oz. lime juice
• 1/4 cup sugar
• several slices of lime and lemon and star anise

Combine liquid ingredients in a large punch bowl and stir to dissolve the sugar. Refrigerate for several hours before serving. Serve on ice with pieces of fruit and garnish glasses with star anise.

Myrtle Bank Punch (Tiki version)

As punches go, this is pretty typical for a rum punch. The thing that sets it apart is that it calls for an all 151-proof rum dose. No other rums, like in the Planter's Punch or Zombie, are used, so the only rum flavor comes from aged overproof rum.

What's 151-proof rum? It's really strong rum that's not proofed-down, or watered down for sale. It comes off the still at 75% alcohol and is aged a short while before being bottled.

Why can't I get Bacardi 151 anymore? It is so strong that Bacardi has opted to pull the product in the face of lawsuits from restaurant guests who get burned from flaming desserts and drinks. In steps Cruzan 151, which has no flame guard and a smaller warning label. I'm not sure this is a safe thing, and I am a little intimidated to drink it. It turns out that my caution was necessary. I had only one 151 cocktail and it was quite enough even for me.

But I think it is too soon to ignore the benefits of 151-proof rum. A cocktail like this can have so much more juice and other flavors and use so little a proportion of rum and still be very strong. 151-proof rum is also tasty when mixed, unlike blended down white rums. Try this drink and see for yourself.

• 2 oz 151-proof rum
• 1 oz. maraschino liqueur (I used Luxardo and a little cherry wishniak I made a while ago.)
• 1 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1 tsp. grenadine
• 1/2 tsp. sugar

Combine all ingredients in a blender with ice. Blend until smooth. Pour into a chilled highball glass. Note: this drink looks really boring in a clear glass with no garnishes. Get out an angry tiki mug and top it with mint and a cherry. I used a vodka-soaked cherry so that the flavor fits the overall cherry flavor of the cocktail.

Brighton Punch

I'm not sure what about this drink signifies the city of Brighton or even what it is referring to. What I did notice was that it was perfectly sized to fit in a tiki mug like Artie, here. This was a very bourbon and brandy cocktail. I made B & B by combining equal parts Benedictine and Courvoisier VS. So Brighton Punch is very rich and strong.

• 2 oz. B & B (Courvoisier VS and Benedictine used)
• 1 1/2 oz. bourbon
• club soda
• 1 oz. orange juice
• 1 oz. lemon juice
• orange slice

Combine B & B and bourbon, orange juice and lemon juice in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a grim faced tiki mug and top with crushed ice and soda. Garnish with orange slice.

Navy Grog

This punch was a pretty daunting task. Faced with the winter season and lack of store-bought ingredients, I went out of my way to make the tamarind syrup necessary to give the sweet, tacky flavor that holds the whole drink together. Without the tamarind syrup, this would be almost too limey to stand. That's what I love about tikis--they are tacky!--and they contain ingredients that most drinkers can't identify by themselves. Many times I've gone to the grocery store to buy fresh guava or tamarinds and the cashier has never seen anybody purchase these things before. By themselves, there's nothing special about the ingredients, but a good tiki brings them together in an instantly recognizable flavor profile and body that is unlike any other type of cocktail.

• 1 oz. dark rum
• 1 oz. light rum
• 1 oz. high proof rum (Bacardi 151 used)
• 1/2 oz. guava juice
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1/2 oz. pineapple juice
• 1/2 oz. orgeat syrup (from homemade recipe)
• 1 tbsp. tamarind syrup (homede recipe below)
• lime slice

Combine all ingredients except lime slice in a blender. Blend until smooth and pour into an intimidating tiki mug. Garnish with the lime slice.

Here's a few quick steps for making the tamarind syrup!

Get a handful of tamarinds; about a quarter pound, a little goes a long way. They are fruits as well as beans, so they may be tricky to locate at the store. Shred the shells and roots away from the pod innards and seeds.

 Boil tamarinds in 1 1/2 cups of water for five minutes and allow to cool for a half hour.

Press the syrup through a strainer using a coffee filter and collect the dissolved fruit in a bowl. Try to squeeze the soft fruit dry, then discard the pulp. Add 1 cup of sugar and whisk until it is dissolved. Store in an airtight container for 2-3 weeks.