Donn Beach Navy Grog Recipe Vs Victor Bergeron’s Recipe.
Donn Beach and Victor Bergeron’s Navy Grog recipes are similar and practically the same drink. The only difference between the two recipes is that Donn Beach uses honey instead of allspice dram and has an ounce of soda water added. The Biggest difference is the ice. Donn Beach’s recipe calls for a shaved ice cone around the straw. Victor Bergeron’s recipe call for shaking the cocktail with shaved or crushed ice and then pouring the entire contents of the shaker, ice and all, into the glass.
Shaken With Shaved Ice Vs Ice Cone.
While both cocktails are shaken with ice, the Trader Vic version does a dirty pour and includes the ice, while the Donn Beach version strains out the shaken ice and uses an ice cone in the glass. Keep in mind the ice cone is only used in Donn Beach’s navy grog cocktail. No other cocktail uses it, so I wouldn’t spend any money on a dedicated ice cone maker. The navy grog wasn’t the only tiki cocktail to use ice uniquely. Fun decorative ice was regularly used in the classic tiki scene—ice cones, ice caves, dirty pours, ice frill, etc. I think the trader Vic dirty pour is more practical and makes more sense, but the ice cone does have a following.
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0 from 0 votesOnly logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
1
servings
Calories
296
kcal
ABV
21%
Total time
3
minutes
Make A Classic Navy Grog Cocktail
Ingredients
3/4ozLime Juice
3/4ozGrapefruit Juice
3/4ozHoney Syrup
1ozWhite Rum
1ozBlack Rum
1ozAged Rum
1ozSoda Water
Directions
Combine all ingredients into a shaker with ice.
Vigorously shake till the shaker is ice cold and frosted.
Strain into a lowball glass with a decorative ice cone and straw.
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What Is The Difference Between Honey Syrup vs. Regular Honey?
Honey is SUPER sweet and a bit richer than simple syrup, so you want to dilute it. Trying to get honey to dissolve in a drink is like getting regular sugar crystals to dissolve. It takes a while and is somewhat difficult. So to make cocktails, you’ll want to make honey syrup. Just mix honey and water at a 2 to 1 ratio. 2 oz honey to 1 oz water. This dilutes the honey enough so that it will blend easily but still be sweet.
There are tons of different kinds of honey, all with subtle variations based on the flowers used, environment, and bee. However, it doesn’t matter once it’s mixed into drinks with citrus, liqueurs, and spirits. So pick get any kind and go with it.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
10
servings
Calories
150
kcal
Total time
3
minutes
Learn how to make a simple Honey syrup.
Ingredients
200gramsHoney
100gramsWater
Directions
Simply combine the honey with warm water and stir till the honey is completely dissolved.
Bottle and use like regular syrup.
Make Cocktails Like A Pro
If you have ever struggled with a recipe or wonder why yours are not turning out like they do at the bar then check out my simple step-by-step videos. I will walk you through how to expertly build each drink so you get consistently great results.
This is a fantastic spiced tropical juice-flavored cocktail. It’s one of my favorite tiki drinks and, in my opinion, is much better than many of the more popular tiki cocktails. The honey and juice perfectly match the strength of the rum and the spice of the bitters. Not much to say other than this is a must-try and one you will most likely make again.
Making A PI YI With A Fresh Pineapple.
The authentic way to prepare this was to scoop out a small pineapple and use the inside, blend it, and use its juice in the drink. Once the drink was shaken and done, it was poured back into the hollowed-out pineapple. To keep with tradition, I cut pineapple and used a small bit of blended fruit as the juice for this drink, which turned out good. I did not pour it back in since I wanted the drink to be visible in a glass. Also, I ate most of the pineapple on its own, and hollowing out a pineapple would give me way more than 1 oz of juice. My assumption is all the extra fruit and juice from the fresh pineapple was used in other drinks too, at Don The Beachcombers.
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If you have ever struggled with a recipe or wonder why yours are not turning out like they do at the bar then check out my simple step-by-step videos. I will walk you through how to expertly build each drink so you get consistently great results.
Many of these old drinks that we still make today are hard to find information on—hot buttered rum, hot ale flip, buttered beer, toddies, etc. Most actual written recipes are from the mid-1800s and later. Books mainly were published for histories and stories, but skills and trades were just taught from master to apprentice. There were a few, but not like there is today. One tries to piecemeal as much as they can together.
In a 1769 book, “A Dissertation On The Oleum Palmae Christi,” by Peter Canvane mentions adding medicines to “warm milk punch, common punch, or toddy, in which a hot poker has been quenched.” as ways of administering medication to those who complain about the taste. (Total side note. All the older English writing has the long “S” character ( “ʃ” ), but I changed it to a standard “s” in the quote, it looks kinda like an f, but it’s just another symbol for s that we don’t use anymore. That’s why the Declaration of Independence looks like they spelled everything wrong.) In a 1783 fictional book “Smyth’s Tour of The United States” by J.F.D. Smyth notes that his character likes to “take a draught of Bumbo, or toddy, a liquor composed of water, sugar, rum, and nutmeg.” There was also a funny romance story from 1741 I found, where a beautiful lady walks into the kitchen and asks the lord of the house for a toddy. “Would you like it hot or cold? warm I replied.”
All silliness aside, the point I am trying to get at is that there is no actual formal recipe to make a toddy but the parts and qualities. There are as many toddies as there are people. The parts matter, so based on the works I referenced, let’s break those parts down.
The first reference points to the colonial American way of heating drinks. Not by using a stove but by using a hot fireplace poker, often called a toddy rod or loggerhead. In a home setting, a stove probably was used as it was already fired up for cooking food, but in a tavern, it was more efficient to place iron rods in the already running fireplace. Rather than having a stove run all night to be ready for the occasional warm drink, they could dip the toddy rod into the drinks people request warmed.
The second reference gives us the ingredient of the toddy. The four parts are water, sugar, rum, and nutmeg. Now any spice will do, but it is worth noting that only nutmeg is mentioned in the early 1862 Bartenders’ guide when adding spice toddies.
The third reference shows us that toddies were served both hot and cold and sometimes warm. Now I am willing to bet that a cold toddy was not a heated one. Commercial refrigeration was not invented until the 1850s, so access to ice blocks was mainly limited to businesses. And while they did have ice houses that saved ice for most of the summer (some stayed in use up to the 1930s), something as special as the ice was not going to be wasted on a single drink.
So for this hot toddy recipe, I will stick to those points. It used only rum, water, sugar, and nutmeg. It was heated up with a toddy rod. Almost every recipe you find has lemon juice added it to add to its medicinal qualities, but since that is not traditional to the 18th or 19th century, I will leave it out and stick to the classic structure. On a fun side note, did you know the original name for the muddler was the toddy stick? That’s right, It was based on the pestle from the mortar and pestle but made of wood so it wouldn’t shatter glass cups. The shape was perfect for smashing together fruits, spices, and sugar cubes.
Do Hot Toddies Actually Help You Feel Better When You Are Sick?
So the short answer is, I guess… sure. The long answer is it depends on what ailment you hope to relieve. Western medicine has come a long way since the 18th century, but there are three reasons a person makes a hot toddy today other than tasting good. 1). When they have a soar throat. 2). When their sinuses are congested, and 3). It just feels nice to cozy up with one during the winter. The main health benefit of a hot toddy comes from honey; if you use sugar, you are missing most of the benefits of a hot toddy. Honey is pretty awesome nectar and has been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties. In some lab studies, if it is found to reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines, this combined with the warm steam from the drink can help reduce congestion as that is an inflammation of the sinuses. Or you can pop some Sudafed during the day and Benadryl at night, as those are some of the present-day gold standards of over-the-counter anti-inflammation medication.
Ignoring mechanical irritation of one’s throat like screaming a bunch, the most common reason for a sore throat is an infection, and the body’s natural response to infection is inflammation. So again, it’s honey with that anti-inflammatory response, or you could pop an ibuprofen or naproxen as they would be a more effective treatment. And the last point is it just feels good to cozy up with one, and it does. Being cozy makes you feel happy, but did you also know that nutmeg is a hallucinogen. The dose is so low that it’s hard to credit any effect on the brain to the nutmeg, but it does contain myristicin, making people trip in large amounts. Maybe that good feeling is just a psychedelic nut and alcohol-induced surface. Some people are susceptible to nutmeg and its active chemicals and get pounding headaches from even the smallest amount. So don’t ever use too much nutmeg, don’t use it to get high, and be careful as it can be dangerous in large doses. Make wise choices.
If you have ever struggled with a recipe or wonder why yours are not turning out like they do at the bar then check out my simple step-by-step videos. I will walk you through how to expertly build each drink so you get consistently great results.
Pulled from Harry Johnson’s 1882 bartender’s manual, this fantastic cocktail should never be served to babies. While honey may seem safe and wholesome enough, not to mention loved by Pooh Bears, it has bacteria that can be fatal to children under one year of age. Play it safe, and don’t mix any alcoholic cocktails for your children. Just stick to the laws in the country you are currently in.
On a less silly note, Harry Johnson was an early pioneer in mixology and contemporary to Jerry Thomas. Harry Johnson (what a name, huh) was born in 1845 in Prussia. In the early 1860s, while Otto Von Bismarck began marching the Prussian army westward to help unify the separate German states and set the stage for WWI, Johnson made his way to San Francisco. He bartended and mixed eastward from San Francisco to New Orleans and eventually New York, opening bars and publishing his guides. Even though Jerry Thomas is the more famous of these two early mixologists who published their works, Harry Johnson’s works contain a level of technical precision one expects from Germans.
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Mulled Apple Cider came around 40 – 50 AD when the Romans made it to what is modern-day England. Brewed apple cider was a popular Celtic drink in the area, and the invading forces brought it back to Rome. The Romans had a tradition of brewing herbs into their wine (Hippocras) for flavor and medicinal properties. They applied that to cider, thus creating mulled or spiced cider. Read my apple cider ingredient description first but pick the cider you want based on what you want your final product to be most like and how you want to layer your flavors. I think the sparkling cider apple juice stuff is way too sweet. I save that for the kids. The orchard unfiltered apple juice stuff is pretty good but just a little too sweet. So you can’t add your sweeteners like maple syrup or honey etc. This limits your ability to add complexity. I prefer to make this with a semi-dry cider beer or still apple wine. These give you room to build more of your flavors and bring an excellent brewed and aged taste that the unfiltered stuff lacks. Regular cider-style beer works well for this too. The bubbles dissipate after a few minutes, and you just left with essentially a still apple wine. So before your next holiday party, get a variety pack of ciders. See what you like, and then buy a six-pack of the stuff. Also, a six-pack is almost equal to 3 bottles of wine, so keep that in mind, and don’t just add all six beers or adjust accordingly.
Next up is spices. Long story short, just read my mulling spices description. It can be summed up as not adding too much and sticking to just four different spices. Think cooking; you wouldn’t add a shit ton of salt or pepper to your fried eggs. It would be too much, so you do a light sprinkle. The same thing with this: add 2 or 3 cloves, three cinnamon sticks, etc. A little bit goes a very long way.
Next up is cooking. Most folks do this in a crockpot, so I would just set it to warm. High, low, and simmer are all too hot. Alcohol burns off at 173 f (78 c), and high, low, and simmer all go to around 180 – 200 f. High gets there faster than low and simmer, but warm only goes to 160 f. You can do a slow cooker if you want, but keep in mind that you will burn off most of the booze even at a warm temperature if you cook it for a long time. I think it boils better if you do it faster in a regular stovetop pot. Turn on the fire, pour it into the pot and quickly bring it to heat. If you have a thermometer, stop around 160 or till you start to see a light vapor coming off the top. Once your hooch is up to temp, drop it to low, add your sweetener and spices, and then cook for just 20 minutes. Most of the good flavors in your spices will come out in those first few minutes. Turn off the heat, add your bourbon, and serve. And that’s it. Serve it, put a lid on it, put it in a thermos, reheat it when you want more a little later, but stop the long-term higher temperature cooking. Some folks cook this stuff for hours, but I think that’s a little excessive. You won’t get any more good flavor out of it, and you will burn off the booze.
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0 from 0 votesOnly logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
1
servings
Calories
149
kcal
ABV
15%
Total time
3
minutes
Learn how to make a dry, boozy mulled apple cider.
Ingredients
6.5ozHoney
1bottleApple Cider Wine
8.5ozBourbon
2wholeAll Spice Berries
3wholeCloves
1peelOrange Rind
1wholeCinnamon Stick
Directions
Combine spices, honey, and wine in a stove top pot and heat to 71c (160f) or till vapor starts to appear.
Maintain this temperature and cook for about 20 minutes. Don’t over cook this as the flavors will become too strong and most of the alcohol will burn off.
After 20 minutes turn off the heat and remove the spices.
Add the fortifying spirit to the mulled wine and serve.
If you have ever struggled with a recipe or wonder why yours are not turning out like they do at the bar then check out my simple step-by-step videos. I will walk you through how to expertly build each drink so you get consistently great results.
This may be the oldest drink in this app because it dates back to the Romans. They had a spiced wine they called Hippocras. Unfortunately, there are no actual recipes for it. At least that I could find. It was not till the 1300s that the English and French started to specify the spices to use, and it’s basically what we still use today. This is NOT a hippocras recipe; this is a more modern, more palatable spiced wine you would expect to find in a standard cocktail app.
Now the drink. Pick a medium dry wine. If it’s already sweet, you can’t add your sweeteners like maple syrup or honey. This limits your ability to add complexity. These give you room to build more of your flavors. Next up is spices. Long story short, just read my mulling spices description. It can be summed up as not adding too much and sticking to just four different spices. Think cooking; you wouldn’t add a shit ton of salt or pepper to your fried eggs. It would be too much, so you do a light sprinkle. The same thing with this: add 2 or 3 cloves, three cinnamon sticks, etc. A little bit goes a very long way.
Next up is cooking. Most folks do this in a crockpot, so I would just set it to warm. High, low, and simmer are all too hot. Alcohol burns off at 173 f (78 c), and high, low, and simmer all go to around 180 – 200 f. High gets there faster than low and simmer, but warm only goes to 160 f. You can do a slow cooker if you want, but keep in mind that you will burn off most of the booze even at a warm temperature if you cook it for a long time. I think it boils better if you do it faster in a regular stovetop pot. Turn on the fire, pour it into the pot and quickly bring it to heat. If you have a thermometer, stop around 160 or till you start to see a light vapor coming off the top. Once your hooch is up to temp, drop it to low, add your sweetener and spices, and then cook for just 20 minutes. Most of the good flavors in your spices will come out in those first few minutes. Turn off the heat, fish out the spices, add your bourbon, and serve. And that’s it. Serve it, put a lid on it, put it in a thermos, reheat it when you want more a little later, but stop the long-term higher temperature cooking. Some folks cook this stuff for hours, but I think that’s a little excessive. You won’t get any more good flavor out of it, and you will burn off the booze.
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Download The Official Vintage American Cocktails App
If you have ever struggled with a recipe or wonder why yours are not turning out like they do at the bar then check out my simple step-by-step videos. I will walk you through how to expertly build each drink so you get consistently great results.