Halloween cocktails: a party punch, drinks that change colour and safe fog

Plan the drinks the way you plan the food: one bowl that looks after itself, and one or two cocktails that do something worth watching. The punch carries the crowd. The cocktails carry the theatre, so make them to order for a few people at a time.

Bonfire Night follows five days later, and Bonfire Night drinks covers the hot pots and flasks for it. Hot drinks built on rum are compared in hot rum drinks.

The Cauldron Punch serves about fifteen from one punch bowl. Combine 500ml dark rum, 250ml blackberry liqueur, 500ml pomegranate juice, 250ml fresh lime juice and 250ml simple syrup, and refrigerate it. Add 500ml of sparkling water just before guests arrive and stir once.

Make the still base in the afternoon. The rest improves it, and the fizz stays sharp because it goes in last. Taste the base before the water: that is the last point at which the balance can be corrected, and the syrup is the measure to adjust.

Each cup holds a little over 30ml of rum and just over 15ml of blackberry liqueur. The recipe scales in a straight line, so double it for thirty or halve it for a small table. Serve it with a punch ladle into small punch cups.

How to keep a bowl cold without watering it down, and every other punch in the Field Manual, are in how to batch cocktails.

For fog, stand the bowl inside a larger container of dry ice and warm water, so nothing frozen touches the drink. Dry ice never goes into the punch itself.

The Black Widow is near-black from fruit alone. Muddle three blackberries in a shaker, add 45ml vodka, 20ml blackberry liqueur, 15ml fresh lemon juice and 10ml simple syrup with ice, and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds. Double strain into a chilled coupe and finish with one blackberry on a pick. The double strain matters: seeds and pulp cloud a surface that should look glossy and dark. Frozen blackberries muddle to a deeper colour than fresh ones.

The Witch’s Brew does its trick at the table. Stir 45ml gin with 20ml butterfly pea flower syrup over ice and strain it into a chilled coupe, where it sits deep blue. Mix 20ml fresh lemon juice with 15ml elderflower liqueur in a small jug, then pour it slowly over the surface in front of the guest. The colour sinks through the glass from blue to violet. Stir once to settle it.

Butterfly pea flowers hold pigments that change colour with acidity, so the lemon does the work. For the syrup, steep a tablespoon of dried flowers in 200ml of hot syrup made one to one for ten minutes, then strain. We keep it for around two weeks in the fridge. Chill both stages: a warm pour turns the violet grey.

The Corpse Reviver No. 2 is on the menu for its name, and it is a fine drink as well. Harry Craddock printed it in the Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930. Rinse a chilled coupe with a dash of absinthe and pour out the excess. Shake 30ml each of gin, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc and fresh lemon juice hard for 10 to 12 seconds, and double strain into the glass. Express a lemon peel over the top.

For a stirred drink as dark as the night, the Black Manhattan replaces the vermouth in a Manhattan with Averna: 60ml rye, 30ml Averna and a dash each of Angostura and orange bitters, stirred for 20 to 25 seconds and strained into a chilled coupe with a cherry.

The Storm & Spice is our house serve, and the layer is the effect. Fill a highball with ice, squeeze in 15ml of fresh lime juice and pour in 150ml of ginger beer to about two thirds. Float 50ml of Expedition Spiced Rum on top over the back of a bar spoon, so the rum sits dark above the pale ginger beer, and add two dashes of Angostura. Let the guest stir it.

Blackberries and crème de mûre give a purple that reads as black in low light. Pomegranate gives a deep red. Butterfly pea flowers give a blue that turns violet with citrus. None of them needs food colouring, and each adds flavour as well as colour.

Food-grade activated charcoal turns a drink black without changing the taste. A pinch in the shaker is enough; more makes the texture gritty. It hangs in the drink rather than dissolving, so shake hard and serve at once, before it settles.

Charcoal binds to medicines in the gut, which is why it is used to treat some poisonings. It can stop a medicine taken around the same time from being absorbed properly, so tell guests which drink contains it and offer one without. It also stains worktops and cloth while wet.

Three garnishes do more than any colouring. Freeze pomegranate juice in ice cube trays: as the cubes melt they bleed red through a pale drink. Peel lychees, press a blueberry into each and float them in the punch as eyes; tinned lychees peel more easily than fresh. For a frozen hand, fill a new, food-safe disposable glove with water or juice, tie it off and freeze it overnight, then run it briefly under a warm tap and peel the glove away slowly so the fingers do not snap.

Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide at about minus 78 degrees. Swallowed, it burns the mouth, throat and stomach, and the gas it gives off as it warms has nowhere to go. A piece small enough to drop into a glass is small enough to swallow by accident, and in a dark room nobody sees it.

Our rule is simple: dry ice never goes into a glass or a bowl that anyone drinks from.

The fog works just as well from a separate container. Stand the punch bowl inside a larger bowl or cauldron, put the dry ice in the outer one and pour warm water over it. The fog spills over the rim, and nothing frozen touches the drink. Top up the warm water as the fog thins.

Handle it with insulated gloves and ice tongs, never bare hands. Use it in a ventilated room: the gas is heavier than air and collects low down, where children and pets breathe. Store it in an insulated box with the lid resting loose, never in anything airtight, because the gas builds pressure until the container bursts. Keep it out of children’s reach, and let what is left disappear outdoors in a safe spot, not in a sink or drain.

Liquid nitrogen has no place at a home party. The Food Standards Agency warned against it in drinks in 2012, as Food Manufacture, a trade title and secondary source, reported, after a teenager had her stomach removed following a cocktail made with it.

Smoke is the safer kind of theatre. A cocktail smoker fills an upturned glass or a covered jug with wood smoke in a few seconds and keeps the flame inside the tool. Smoke the empty glass, pour the drink straight in and serve it. Expect a smoke alarm nearby to notice.

Keep open flame away from the party. Fancy dress, fake cobwebs and wigs catch fire easily, and a flaming drink in a crowded room adds risk and nothing to the taste. Use battery candles on the drinks table. Keep flaming serves such as the Blue Blazer for a quiet kitchen on another night, and never pour spirit from a bottle towards a flame, because the fire can travel back up the stream.

A 700ml bottle of vodka or gin gives fifteen Black Widows or Witch’s Brews at 45ml each. One Cauldron Punch gives about fifteen cups. For a four-hour party, plan on two drinks each in the first hour and one an hour after that, then decide how much of that comes from the bowl.

The alcohol-free Witch’s Brew uses a non-alcoholic gin alternative in place of the gin, and elderflower cordial in place of the liqueur. Pick one without citric acid and skip tonic water, because either turns the drink violet before the lemon goes in. Then the colour change works the same, with the lemon’s acid and the flowers doing the work. For something warm, Hot Spiced Cider is alcohol-free when made with cloudy apple juice and no spirit added.

Label every drink, because an alcohol-free Witch’s Brew looks exactly like the gin one. Keep the drinks table away from the front door while children are calling for sweets. Measure every pour with a jigger: 25ml of a 40% ABV spirit is one UK unit, so a Black Widow carries close to two units of vodka before the liqueur.