December 23, 2022
There are holiday traditions, there are wonderful holiday traditions, and then there’s having the legendary Fish House Punch at the end of each year (or the beginning) – that’s a tradition nearly above all others, at least in the U.S., where this venerable punch has been punched up and sipped for hundreds of years, starting way back in the year 1732 (according to yore – I wasn’t actually there, though I am rather old) at Philadelphia’s Schuylkill fishing club, where I am sure (because sometimes the world is actually okay – meaning, I am not really sure, as I wasn’t there, but feel sure anyway, and want it to be true) folks sipped it by the bucketfuls around this time of year, much like I am now in the habit of doing, thanks to pals Eve and Curtis, who are annual Fish-House-Punch makers and distributors, and so I raise a glass in cheers to them, and to those who consumed this mix in the past, and to you, naturally, and to this sentence, which much like this year is now finally ending.
Fish House Punch, Serve 10
Block of ice (or cracked ice)
1 750-milliliter bottle dark rum
15 ounces cognac
7-1/2 ounces peach brandy
7-1/2 ounces freshly-squeezed lemon juice
7-1/2 ounces Simple Syrup
1. Add the ice to a punch bowl (fill about three quarters full if using cracked ice.) Add the rum, cognac, brandy, juice, and syrup. Stir 10 times, while humming holiday tunes.
2. Stir 10 more times. Serve in punch cups or wine glasses or what have you.
Tags: cocktail recipe, cocktails, Cognac, dark rum, Fish House Punch, Friday Night Cocktail, lemon juice, peach brandy, Rum, simple syrup, What I’m Drinking
Posted in: Cocktail Recipes, Cognac, Recipes, Rum, What I'm Drinking
March 29, 2022
It’s been eight years since my last Cocktail Talk post (The Crazy Kill Part II) from Chester Himes’ book The Crazy Kill, and twelve since my first (The Crazy Kill Part I, as you might imagine) – by all the bottles in the bar, time passes too quickly! You should for sure go back and read both those posts and the quotes from the book highlighted within, but let me also underline a few things: first, Chester Himes (who wrote all sorts of amazing works – see all Chester Himes Cocktail Talks, too) is awesome, and if you haven’t read anything by him, it’s a must do. Second, this book is one of his series featuring his Harlem-based police detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, two of the most memorable characters in detective fiction, inhabiting a perfectly rendered (as far I can tell, and I certainly feel transported when reading the books featuring them) 1950s-60s specific time-and-place. Third (and if the above haven’t sold you, this will), the book really kicks off by an opium-addicted preacher falling out of a window and landing in a bread-basket – which saves his life, but which also leads to realizing there is a dead body in the bread-basket! I just had to have another quote from the book:
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed. “Peach brandy and laudanum. You drink this stuff?”
“It’s for my nerves,” Reverend Short said.
–Chester Himes, The Crazy Kill
January 8, 2021
Welcome to 2021! Well, I’m a little late with the welcome, but it’s already been (to put it mildly) a strange week, and following up 2020’s strange year (and then some), well, tardiness is probably okay. As is drinking Fish House Punch. Luckily (for me!), some pals (Curtis and Eve!) made a big batch of Fish House Punch, and then bottled it for lucky folks (like me!), since they couldn’t, for obvious current reasons, have a big party as one usually would when making a big batch of this favorite that goes all the way, way, way back to Philadelphia’s Schuylkill Fishing Company sometime in the 1700s. There’s something about drinking a mix that traces back that far that’s wonderful, connecting us to drinkers from many years before, and then you can up the wonderful quotient ten times when it’s made by friends, and you get to share the drink with them (as well as those 1700s drinkers) in a communal, if distanced by both time and space, way. I’m not 100% sure if this is exactly the recipe they used, but it’s the one I use, from Dark Spirits. If you aren’t super thirsty, and want to do a bottling, I’d still mix with a little ice, or just add a little water, as water is one of the ingredients here (as with all chilled drinks). Let’s hope the rest of the year is as swell as this historical sipper.
Fish House Punch, Serve 10
Block of ice (or cracked ice)
1 750-milliliter bottle dark rum
15 ounces cognac
7-1/2 ounces peach brandy
7-1/2 ounces freshly-squeezed lemon juice
7-1/2 ounces Simple Syrup
1. Add the ice to a punch bowl (fill about three quarters full if using cracked ice.) Add the rum, cognac, brandy, juice, and syrup. Stir 10 times, while humming fishy songs or hymns to Pennsylvania.
2. Stir 10 more times. Serve in punch cups or wine glasses or bottle it to give to friends (in a distanced way).
Tags: cocktail, Cocktail Recipes, Cognac, dark rum, Fish House Punch, Friday Night Cocktail, lemon juice, peach brandy, simple syrup, What I’m Drinking
Posted in: Cocktail Recipes, Cognac, Recipes, Rum, What I'm Drinking
