Punches
20 recipes
This Field Manual holds 20 recipes in the punch family. Punch predates the cocktail by more than a century and works to a ratio rather than a recipe: one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak.
The ratio is what makes it scale. Every quantity moves together, so a bowl for twelve is the same arithmetic as a glass for one. Dilution is built in through the weak, which is water or tea, and that is why a punch can sit on a table without collapsing the way a shaken drink would. A large block of ice melts slowly enough to hold the balance for an evening, and cubes do not.
Base Spirit
Difficulty Level
Brandy Milk Punch
The Brandy Milk Punch is New Orleans keeping the eighteenth century's breakfast habit: brandy shaken cold through sweetened vanilla milk and crested with nutmeg. Milk punch
Cauldron Punch
The Cauldron Punch is the Halloween answer to a practical problem: fifteen guests, one host, and no appetite for shaking drinks all night. Dark rum and blackberry liqueur give it
Champagne Punch
The Champagne Punch is a celebration batch for gatherings where elegance matters more than warmth: a chilled base of cognac, orange liqueur, fresh orange juice and lemon, with two
Coquito
Coquito is Puerto Rico’s most celebrated festive drink, a creamy, spiced coconut and rum punch that has been a fixture of Christmas and New Year across the island and in Puerto
Eggnog
Eggnog is the milk punch that armoured up for winter: whole eggs whisked through milk, cream and sugar over a brandy-and-rum floor, the medieval posset’s descendant that colonial
Fireside Punch
The Fireside Punch is our batch answer to Bonfire Night: bourbon, apple cider, fresh lemon, maple syrup and water heated gently with cinnamon sticks, star anise and orange wheels,
Fish House Punch
Fish House Punch is America’s oldest named drink still in service: brewed since 1732 at the Schuylkill Fishing Company of Philadelphia, the colonial angling club that counted
Green Batched Punch
The Green Batched Punch is a crowd solution written for parties where individual cocktails are impractical: Irish whiskey, fresh lime, simple syrup and blue curaçao over a base of
Guy Fawkes Grog
The Guy Fawkes Grog is rich, rum-forward and built for a crowd: honey dissolved in hot water, then dark rum, butterscotch liqueur and fresh lemon, held warm and ladled into mugs
Hot Spiced Cider
The Hot Spiced Cider is a spiced cider base for eight, held warm on the stove, with the spirit added one mug at a time. Fifty millilitres of bourbon or dark rum goes in at the
Mulled Wine
Mulled wine predates the cocktail by the better part of two millennia. The Romans warmed wine with honey and spice in the pages of Apicius, medieval kitchens ran it through a
Pisco Punch
The Pisco Punch is San Francisco's lost masterpiece: the house drink of the Bank Exchange saloon through the Gold Rush decades, perfected by Duncan Nicol, who served it to Mark
Planter’s Punch
Planter’s Punch is one of the oldest rum drinks in the English-speaking Caribbean tradition, with documented references stretching back to the late nineteenth century and a
Reggae Rum Punch
The Reggae Rum Punch is Jamaica’s actual daily pour: the island’s most popular punch, sold under a dozen names from beach shacks to hotel bars, always on the same chassis of
Rum Punch
Rum Punch is one of the oldest recipes anywhere and the only one that rhymes: one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak. The Caribbean planter's formula predates
Sangria
Sangria is red wine lengthened with fruit, brandy and a little sugar, rested until the flavours marry, and served from a pitcher over ice. The name comes from sangre, blood, for
Spiced Rum Punch
The Spiced Rum Punch is our warming Christmas batch: spiced rum heated gently with apple juice, orange juice, fresh lemon and honey, while cinnamon sticks, star anise and cloves
Spiced Sangria
A sangria with no wine in it, which sounds like a contradiction until you look at what the wine was actually contributing. In a traditional jug it supplies body, a little tannin
Tropical Punch
Punch is the oldest cocktail format in the world. Long before the shaker, the coupe, and the measuring jigger, there was the bowl: a communal vessel built for sharing, designed
Wassail
Wassail is older than almost anything else in the canon by several centuries, and its name is the toast itself: the Old English wæs hæil, be in good health. The appointed reply