HISTORY OF TAVERN DRINKS
By: Alice Morse Earle. Stagecoach and Tavern Days. MacMillan, 1900 (and other sources)
ANY account of old-time taverns would be incomplete without frequent reference to that universal accompaniment of travel and tavern sojourn, the most American of comforting stimulants-rum.
Rum
The name is doubtless American. A manuscript description of Barbadoes, written twenty-five years after the English settlement of the island in 1651, is thus quoted in The Academy: “The chief fudling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar canes distilled, a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor.” This is the earliest-known allusion to the liquor rum; the word is held by some antiquaries in what seems rather a strained explanation to be the gypsy rum, meaning potent, or mighty. The word rum was at a very early date adopted and used as English university slang. The oldest American reference to the word rum (meaning the liquor) which I have found is in the act of the General Court of Massachusetts in May, 1657, prohibiting the sale of strong liquors “whether knowne by the name of rumme, strong water, wine, brandy, etc., etc.” The traveller Josselyn wrote of it, terming it that “cursed liquor rhum, rumbullion or kill-devil.” English sailors still call their grog rumbowling. But the word rum in this word and in rumbooze and in rumfustian did not mean rum; it meant the gypsy adjective powerful. Rumbooze or rambooze, distinctly a gypsy word, and an English university drink also, is made of eggs, ale, wine, and sugar. Rumfustian was made of a quart of strong beer, a bottle of white wine or sherry, half a pint of gin, the yolks of twelve eggs, orange peel, nutmeg, spices, and sugar. Rum-barge is another mixed drink of gypsy name. It will be noted that none of these contains any rum.
In some localities in America rum was called in early days Barbadoes-liquor, a very natural name, occasionally also Barbadoes-brandy. The Indians called it ocuby, or as it was spelled in the Norridgewock, tongue, ah-coobee. Many of the early white settlers called it by the same name. Kill-devil was its most universal name, not only a slang name, but a trading-term used in bills of sale. A description of Surinam written in 1651 says: “Rhum made from sugar-canes is called kill-devil in New England.” At thus early a date had the manufacture of rum become associated with New England.
The Dutch in New York called the liquor brandy-wine, and soon in that colony wherever strong waters were named in taverns lists, the liquor was neither aqua vitae nor gin nor brandy, but New England rum.
It soon was cheap enough. Rev. Increase Mather, the Puritan parson, wrote, in 1686: “It is an unhappy thing that in later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They that are poor and wicked, too, can for a penny make themselves drunk.” From old account-books, bills of lading, grocers’ bills, family expenses, etc., we have the price of rum at various dates, and find that his assertion was true.
In 1673 Barbadoes rum was worth 6s. a gallon. In 1687 its price had vastly fallen, and New England rum sold for 1s. 6d. a gallon. In 1692 2s. a gallon was the regular price. In 1711 the price was 3s. 3d. In 1757, as currency grew valueless, it was 21s. a gallon. In 1783 only a little over a shilling; then it was but 8d. a quart. During this time the average cost of molasses in the West Indies was 12d. a gallon; so, though the distillery plant for its production was costly, it can be seen that the profits were great.
Burke said about 1750: “The quantity of spirits which they distill in Boston from the molasses which they import is as surprising as the cheapness at which they sell it, which is under two shillings a gallon; but they are more famous for the quantity and cheapness than for the excellency of their rum.” An English traveller named Bennet wrote as the same date of Boston society: “Madeira wine and rum punch are the liquors they drink in common.” Baron Riedesel, who commanded the foreign troops in America during the Revolution, wrote of the New England inhabitants: “Most of the males have a strong passion for strong drink, especially rum.” While President John Adams said caustically: “If the ancients drank wine as our people drink rum and cider, it is no wonder we hear of so many possessed with devils;” yet he himself, to the end of his life, always began the day with a tankard of hard cider before breakfast.
The Dutch were too constant beer drinkers to become with speed great rum consumers, and they were too great lovers of gin and schnapps. But they deprecated the sharp and intolerant prohibition of the sale of rum to the Indians, saying: “To prohibit all strong liquor to them seems very hard and very Turkish. Rum doth as little hurt as the Frenchman’s Brandie, and in the whole is much more wholesome.” The English were fiercely abhorrent of intemperance among the Indians, and court records abound in laws restraining the sale of rum to the “bloudy salvages,” of prosecutions and fines of white traders who violated these laws, and of constant and fierce punishment of the thirsty red men, who simply tried to gratify an appetite instilled in them by the English.
William Penn wrote to the Earl of Sutherland in 1683: “Ye Dutch, Sweed, and English have by Brandy and Specially Rum, almost Debaucht ye Indians all. When Drunk ye most Wretched of Spectacles. They had been very Tractable but Rum is so dear to them.”
Rum formed the strong intoxicant of all popular tavern drinks; many are still mixed to-day. Toddy, sling, grog, are old-time concoctions.
A writer for the first Galaxy thus parodied the poem, I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled:—
“I knew by the pole that’s so gracefully crown’d
Beyond the old church, that a tavern was near,
And I said if there’s black-strap on earth to be found,
A man who had credit night hope for it here.”
Josiah Quincy said that black-strap was a composition of which the secret, he fervently hoped, reposed with the lost arts. Its principal ingredients were rum and molasses, though there were other simples combined with it. He adds, “Of all the detestable American drinks on which our inventive genius has exercised itself, this black-strap was truly the most outrageous.”
Casks of it stood in every country store and tavern, a salted cod-fish hung alongside, slyly to tempt by thirst additional purchasers of black-strap. “Calibogus,” or “bogus,” was unsweetened rum and beer.
Mimbo, sometimes abbreviated to mim, was a drink made of rum and loaf-sugar–and possibly water.
Scotchem
Many years ago, one bitter winter day, there stepped down from a rocking mail-coach into the Washington Tavern in a Pennsylvania town, a dashing young man who swaggered up to the bar and bawled out for a drink of “Scotchem.” The landlord was running here and there, talking to a score of people and doing a score of things at once, and he called to his son, a lubberly, countrified young fellow, to give the gentleman his Scotchem. The boy was but a learner in the taproom, but he was a lad of few words, so he hesitatingly mixed a glass of hot water and Scotch whiskey, which the traveller scarcely tasted ere he roared out: “Don’t you know what Scotchem is? Apple-jack, and boiling water, and a good dash of ground mustard. Here’s a shilling to pay for it.” The boy stared at the uninviting recipe, but faithfully compounded it, when toot-toot sounded the horn–the coach waited for no man, certainly not for a man to sip a scalding drink–and such a drink, and off in trice went full coach and empty traveller. The young tapster looked dubiously at the great mug of steaming drink; then he called to an old trapper, a town pauper, who, crippled with rheumatism, sat ever in the warm chimney corner of the taproom, telling stories of coons and catamounts and wolverines, and taking such stray drops of liquid comfort as old companions or new sympathizers might pityingly give him. “Here, Ezra,” the boy said, “you take the gentleman’s drink. It’s paid for.” Ezra was ever thirsty and never fastidious. He gulped down the Scotchem. “It’s good,” he swaggered bravely, with eyes streaming from the scalding mustard, “an’ it’s tasty, too, ef it does favor tomato ketchup.”
Forty years later an aged man was swung precariously out with a violent jerk from a rampant trolley car in front of the Washington Hotel. He wearily entered the gaudy office, and turned thence to the bar. The barkeeper, a keen-eyed, lean old fellow of inscrutable countenance, glanced sharply at him, pondered a moment, then opened a remote closet, drew forth from its recess an ancient and dusty demijohn of apple-jack, and with boiling water and a dash of mustard compounded a drink which he placed unasked before the traveller. “Here’s your Scotchem,” he said laconically. The surprised old man looked sharply around him. Outside the window, in the stable yard, a single blasted and scaling buttonwood tree alone remained of the stately green row whose mottled trunks and glossy leaves once bordered the avenue. The varying grades of city streets had entirely cut off the long porch beloved of old-time tavern loafers. The creaking sign-board had vanished. Within was no cheerful chimney corner and no welcoming blazing fire, but the old taproom still displayed its raftered ceiling. The ancient traveller solemnly drank his long-paid-for mug of Scotchem. “It’s good,” he said, “and tasty, if it does favor tomato ketchup.”
A ray of memory darted across the brain of the old barkeeper, and albeit he was not a member of the Society of Psychical Research and could not formulate his brain impressions, yet he pondered on the curious problem of thought transference, of forced sequence of ideas, of coincidences of mental action resulting from similar physical conditions and influences.
Flip
Flip was a dearly loved drink of colonial times, far more popular in America than in England, much different in concoction in America than in England, and much superior in America–a truly American drink. As its chief ingredient is beer, it might be placed in the chapter on small drink, but the large amount consumed entitles it to a place with more rankly intoxicating liquors.
The earliest date that flip named in New England is 1690. From that year till the middle of this century there never was a day, never a minute of the day, and scarce of the night, that some old Yankee flip drinker was not plunging in a loggerhead, or smacking his lips over a mug of creaming flip.
In the New England Almanac for 1704 we read under December:-
“The days are short, the weather’s cold,
By tavern fires tales are told.
Some ask for dram when first come in,
Others with flip and bounce begin.”
American flip was made in a great pewter mug or earthen pitcher filled two-thirds full of strong beer; sweetened with sugar, molasses, or dried pumpkin, according to individual taste or capabilities; and flavored with “a dash”–about a gill–of New England rum. Into this mixture was thrust and stirred a red-hot loggerhead, made of iron and shaped like a poker, and the seething iron made the liquor foam and bubble and mantle high, and gave it the burnt, bitter taste so dearly loved. A famous tavern host of Canton, Massachusetts, had a special fancy in flip. He mixed together a pint of cream, four eggs, and four pounds of sugar, and kept this on hand. When a mug of flip was called for; he filled a quart mug two-thirds full of bitter beer, added four great spoonfuls of his creamy compound, a gill of rum, and thrust in the loggerhead. If a fresh egg were beaten into the mixture, the froth poured over the top of the mug, and the drink was called “bellows-top.”
Let me not fail to speak of the splendid glasses in which flip was often served–I mean the great glass tumblers without handles which, under the name of flip glasses, still are found in New England homes. They are vast drinking-vessels, sometimes holding three or four quarts apiece, and speak to us distinctly of the unlimited bibulous capacities of our ancestors. They are eagerly sought for by glass and china collectors, and are among the prettiest and most interesting of old-time relics.
English flip is not so simple nor so original nor so good a drink as American flip. It might be anything but flip, since it is compounded in a saucepan, and knows naught of the distinctive branding of flip, the seething loggerhead. If it contained no spirits, it was called “egg-hot.”
A rule for flip which seems to combine the good points of the American and English methods, uses ale instead of home-brewed. It may be given “in the words of the Publican who made it”:-
“Keep grated Ginger and Nutmeg with a fine dried Lemon Peel rubbed together in a Mortar. To make a quart of Flip: Put the Ale on the Fire to warm, and beat up three or four Eggs with four ounces of moist Sugar, a teaspoonful of grated Nutmeg or Ginger, and a Quartern of good old Rum or Brandy. When the Ale is near to boil, put it into one pitcher, and the Rum and Eggs, etc., into another: turn it from one Pitcher to another till it is as smooth as cream. To heat plunge in the red hot Loggerhead or Poker. This quantity is styled One Yard of Flannel.”
A quartern is a quarter of a gill, which is about the “dash” of rum.
No flip was more widely known and more respected than the famous brew of Abbott’s Tavern at Holden, Massachusetts. This house, built in 1763, and kept by three generations of Abbotts, never wavered in the quality of its flip. It is said to have been famous from the Atlantic to the Pacific–and few stage-coaches or travellers ever passed that door without adding to its praises and thereafter spreading its reputation. It is said to add that I don’t know exactly how it was made. A bill still existing tells its price in Revolutionary days; other items show its relative valuation:-
“Mug New England Flip . . . . . 9d.
Mug West India Flip . . . . . 11d.
Lodging per night . . . . . 3d.
Pot luck per meal . . . . . 8d.
Boarding commons Men . . . . . 4s. 8d.
Boarding commons Weomen . . . 2s.”
This is the only tavern bill I have ever seen in which nice distinctions were made in boarding men and women. I am glad to know that the “weo-men” traveller in those days had 2s. 8d. of daily advantage over the men.
Other names for the hospital loggerhead were flip-dog and hottle. The loggerhead was as much a part of the chimney furniture of an old-time New England tavern and farm-house as the bellows or andirons. In all taverns and many hospitable homes it was constantly kept warm in the ashes, ready for speedy heating in a bed of hot coals, to burn a mug of fresh flip for every visitor or passer by. Cider could be used instead of beer, if beer could not be had. Some wise old flip tasters preferred cider to beer. Every tavern bill of the eighteenth century was punctuated with entries of flip. John Adams said if you spent the evening in a tavern, you found it full of people drinking drams of flip, carousing, and swearing. The old taprooms were certainly cheerful and inviting gathering-places; where mine host sat behind his cagelike counter surrounded by cans and bottles and glasses, jars of whole spices and whole loaves of sugar; where an inspiring row of barrels of New England rum, hard cider, and beer ranged in rivalry at an end of the room, and
“Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred
Strange fancies in its embers golden-red,
And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip,
Timed by wise instinct, creamed the bowl of flip.”
These fine lines of Lowell’s seem to idealize the homely flip and the loggerhead as we love to idealize the customs of our forbears. Many a reader of them, inspired by the picture, has heated an iron poker or flip-dog and brewed and drunk a mug of flip. I did so not long ago, mixing carefully by a rule for flip recommended and recorded and used by General Putnam–Old Put–in the Revolution. I had the Revolutionary receipt and I had the Revolutionary loggerhead, and I had the oldtime ingredients, but alas, I had neither the tastes nor the digestion of my Revolutionary sires, and the indescribable scorched and puckering bitterness of taste and pungency of smell of that rank compound which was flip, will serve for some time in my memory as an antidote for any overweening longing for the good old times.
Punch
Another universal and potent colonial drink was punch. It came to the English colonies in America from the English colonies in India. To the Orientals we owe punch–as many other good things. The word is from the Hindustani panch, five, referring to the five ingredients then used in the drink, namely: tea, arrack, sugar, lemons, water.
In 1675 one Tryer drank punch in India and, like the poor thing that he was, basely libelled it as an enervating liquor. The English took very quickly to the new drink, as they did to everything else in India, and soon the word appeared in English ballads, showing that punch was well known.
Englishmen did not use without change the punch-bowls of India, but invented an exceptionally elegant form known by the name of Monteith. It was called after a man of fashion who was marked and remarkable for wearing a scalloped coat. In the Art of Cookery we find reference to him and the Monteith punch bowl:-
“New things produce new words, and so Monteith
Has by one vessel saved himself from death.”
Monteiths seems to have come into fashion about 1697. The rim was scalloped like its namesake’s coat, or cut in battlements, thus forming indentations, in which a punch ladle and lemon strainer and tall wine-glasses were hung on their sides, the foot out. The rim was usually separate from the bowl, and was lifted off with the glasses and ladle and strainer, for the punch to be brewed in the bowl. When the punch was duly finished, the ornamental rim was replaced. A porcelain imitation of a Monteith is here shown, which was made in China for an American ship-owner, doubtless from a silver model.
Punch became popular in New England just as it did in old England, in fact, wherever English-speaking sea rovers could tell of the new drink. In 1682 John Winthrop wrote of the sale of a punch bowl in Boston, and in 1686 John Dunton told of more than one noble bowl of punch in New England.
Every buffet of people of good station in prosperous times soon had a punch bowl. Every dinner was prefaced by a bowl of punch passed from hand to hand, while the liquor was drunk from the bowl. Double and “thribble” bowls of punch were served in taverns; these held two and three quarts each.
To show the amount of punch drunk at a minister’s ordination in New England in 1785, I will state that the eighty people attending in the morning had thirty bowls of punch before going to meeting; and the sixty-eight who had dinner disposed of forty-four bowls of punch, eighteen bottles of wine, eight bowls of brandy, and a quantity of cherry rum.
Punch was popular in Virginia, it was popular in New York, it was popular in Pennsylvania. William Black recorded in his diary in 1744 that in Philadelphia he was given cider and punch for lunch; rum and brandy before dinner; punch, Madeira, port, and sherry at dinner; punch and liqueurs with the ladies; and wine, spirit, and punch till bedtime; all in punch bowls big enough for a goose to swim in.
In 1757 S. M. of Boston, who was doubtless Samuel Mather, the son of Cotton Mather, sent to Sir Harry Frankland, the hero of the New England romance of Agnes Surriage, a box of lemons with these lines:-
“You know from Eastern India came
The skill of making punch as did the name.
And as the name consists of letters five,
By five ingredients is it kept alive.
To purest water sugar must be joined,
With these the grateful acid is combined.
Some any sours they get contented use,
But men of taste do that from Tagus choose.
When now these three are mixed with care
Then added be of spirit a small share.
And that you may the drink quite perfect see,
Atop the musky nut must grated be.”
From the accounts that have come down to us, the “spirits a small share” of the Puritan Mather’s punch receipt was seldom adhered to in New England punches.
The importation to England and America of lemons, oranges, and limes for use as punch “sowrings,” as they were called, was an important part of the West Indian and Portuguese trade. The juices of lemons, oranges, limes, and pineapples were all used in punches, and were imported in demijohns and bottles. The appetizing advertisements of J. Crosby, a Boston fruit importer, are frequent for many years in New England newspapers. Here is one from the Salem Gazette in 1741 :- Extraordinary good and very fresh Orange juice which some of the very best Punch Tasters prefer to Lemmon, at one dollar a gallon. Also very good Lime Juice and Shrub to put into Punch at the Basket of Lemmons, J. Crosby, Lemmon Trader.”
I don’t know whether the punch tasters referred to were professional punch mixers or whether it was simply a term applied to persons of well-known experience and judgment in punch-drinking.
In Salem, New Jersey, in 1729, tavern prices were regulated by the Court. They were thus:–
“A rub of punch made with double-refined sugar and one and a half gills of rum . . . . 9d.
A rub of punch made with single refined sugar and one and a half gills of rum . . . . 8d.
A rub made of Muscovado sugar and one and a half gills of rum . . . . 7d.
A quart of flipp made with a pint of rum . . 9d.
A pint of wine . . . . . Is.
A gill of rum . . . . . . 3d.
A quart of strong beer . . . . . 4d.
A gill of brandy or cordial . . . . 6d.
A quart of metheglin . . . . . . 9d.
A quart of cider royal . . . . . . 8d.
A quart of cider . . . . . . 4d.”
Punches were many of name, scores of different ones were given by drink compounders, both amateur and professional. Punches were named for persons, for places; for taverns and hosts; for bartenders and stage-coach drivers; for unusual ingredients or romantic incidents. Sometimes honor was conferred by naming the punch for the person; sometimes the punch was the only honor the original ever had. In these punches all kinds of flavoring and spices were used, and all the strong liquors of the world, all the spirits, wines, liqueurs, drops, distilled waters and essences–but seldom and scant malt liquors, if it were truly punch.
With regard to the proper amounts of all these various fluids to be used in composition opinions always differed. Many advised a light hand with cordials, some disliked spices; others wished a plentiful amount of lemon juice, others wished tea. In respect of the proportions of two important and much-discussed ingredients, old-time landlords apparently heeded directions similar to those I once heard given impressively by an old Irish ecclesiastic of high office: “Shtop! shtop! ye are not commincin’ right and in due ordher! Ye musthn’t iver put your whiskey or rum foorst in your punch-bowl and thin add wather; for if ye do, ivery dhrop of wather ye put in is just cruel spoilin’ of the punch; but–foorst–put some wather in the bowl–some, I say, since in conscience ye must–thin pour in the rum; and sure ye can aisily parcaive that ivery dhrop ye put in is afther makin’ the punch betther and betther.”
Charles Lamb tells in his Popular Fallacies of “Bully Dawson kicked by half the town and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson.” This Bully Dawson was a famous punch brewer; his rule was precisely like that of a famous New England landlord, and is worth choosing among a score of rules:–
“The man who sees, does, or thinks of anything else while he is making Punch may as well look for the Northwest Passage on Mutton Hill. A man can never make good punch unless he is satisfied, nay positive, that no man breathing can make better. I can and do make good Punch, because I do nothing else, and this is my way of doing it. I retire to a solitary corner with my ingredients ready sorted; they are as follows, and I mix them in the order they are here written. Sugar, twelve tolerable lumps; hot water, one pint; lemons, two, the juice and peel; old Jamaica rum, two gills; brandy, one gill; porter or stout, half a gill; arrack, a slight dash. I allow myself five minutes to make a bowl in the foregoing proportions, carefully stirring the mixture as I furnish the ingredients until it actually foams; and then Kangaroos! how beautiful it is!”
Ale
The American colonists were not enthusiastic water drinkers, and they soon imported malt and established breweries to make the familiar ale and beer of old England. The Dutch patroons found brewing a profitable business in New York, and private families in all the colonies built home brew-houses and planted barley and hops.
In Virginia a makeshift ale was made from maize as early as 1620. George Thorpe wrote that it was a good drink, much preferable to English beer. Governor Berkeley wrote of Virginians a century later:–
“Their small-drink is either wine or water, beer, milk and water, or water alone. Their richer sort generally brew their small-beer with malt, which they have from England, though barley grows there very well; but for the want of convenience of malt-houses, the inhabitants take no care to sow it. The poorer sort brew their beer with molasses and bran; with Indian corn malted with drying in a stove: with persimmons dried in a cake and baked; with potatoes with the green stalks of Indian corn cut small and bruised, with pompions, with the Jerusalem artichoke which some people plant purposely for that use, but this is the least esteemed.”
Similar beers were made in New England. The court records are full of enactments to encourage beer-brewing. They had not learned that liberty to brew, when and as each citizen pleased, would prove the best stimulus. Much personal encouragement was also given. The President of Harvard College did not disdain to write to the court on behalf of “Sister Bradish,” that she might be “encouraged and countenanced” in her baking of bread and brewing and selling of penny beer. And he adds in testimony that “such is her art, way, and skill that shee doth vend such comfortable penniworths for the relief of all that send unto her as elsewhere they can seldom meet with.” College students were permitted to buy of her to a certain amount; and with the light of some contemporary evidence as to the quality of the college commons we can believe they needed very “comfortable penniworths.”
Some New England taverns were famous for their spruce, birch, and sassafras beer, boiled with scores of roots and herbs, with birch, spruce, or sassafras bark, with pumpkin and apple parings, with sweetening of molasses or maple syrup, or beet tops and other makeshifts. A colonial song writer boasted–
“Oh, we can make liquor to sweeten our lips
Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree chips.”
According to Diodorus Siculus, the ancient Britons drank on festive occasions liquors made from honey, apples, and barley, viz., mead, cider, and ale. The Celts drank mead and cider–natural drinks within the capabilities of manufacture by slightly civilized nations; for wild honey and wild apples could be found everywhere. Ale indicated agriculture and a more advanced civilization.
Mead, or metheglin, of fermented honey, herbs, and water, has been made by every race and tribe on this globe, living where there was enough vegetation to cherish bees. It had been a universal drink in England, but was somewhat in disuse when this country was settled.
Harrison wrote:–
“The Welsh make no less account of metheglin than the Greeks did of their ambrosia or nectar, which for the pleasantness thereof was supposed to be such as the gods themselves did delight in. There is a kind of swishswash made also in Essex, and divers other places, with honeycomb and water, which the homely country-wives putting some pepper and a little other spice among, called mead: very good in mine opinion for such as love to be loose-bodied at large, or a little eased of the cough. Otherwise it differeth so much from true metheglin as chalk from cheese; and one of the best things that I know belonging thereto is, that they spend but little labour and less cost in making of the same, and therefore no great loss if it were never occupied.”
Metheglin was one of the drinks of the American colonists. It was a favorite drink in Kentucky till well into this century. As early as 1633, the Piscataqua planters of New Hampshire, in their list of values which they set in furs,–the currency of the colony,–made “6 Gallon Mathaglin equal 2 Lb Beaver.” In Virginia, whole plantations of honey locust were set out to supply metheglin. The long beans of the locust were ground and mixed with honey herbs and water, and fermented.
In a letter written from Virginia in 1649, it is told of “an ancient planter of twenty-five years standing,” that he had good store of bees and “made excellent good Matheglin, a pleasant and strong drink.”
Cider
In New England drinking habits soon underwent a marked and speedy change. English grains did not thrive well those first years of settlement, and were costly to import, so New Englanders soon drifted from beer-drinking to cider-drinking. The many apple orchards planted first by Endicott and Blackstone in Massachusetts, and Wolcott in Connecticut, and seen in a few decades on every prosperous and thrifty farm, soon gave forth their bountiful yield of juicy fruit. Perhaps this change in drinking habits was indirectly the result of the influence of the New England climate. Cider seemed more fitted for sharp New England air than ale. Cider was soon so cheap and plentiful through-out the colony that all could have their fill. Josselyn said in 1670: “I have had at the tap-houses of Boston an ale-quart of cider spiced and sweetened with sugar for a groat.”
All the colonists drank cider, old and young, and in all places,–funerals, weddings, ordainings, vestry-meetings, church-raisings, etc. Infants in arms drank mulled hard cider at night, a beverage which would kill a modern babe. It was supplied to students at Harvard and Yale colleges at dinner and bever, being passed in two quart tankards from hand to hand down the commons table. Old men began the day with a quart or more of hard cider before breakfast. Delicate women drank hard cider. All laborers in the field drank it in great draughts that were often liberally fortified with drams of New England rum. The apple crop was so wholly devoted to the manufacture of cider that in the days of temperance reform at the beginning of this century, Washingtonian zealots cut down great orchards of full-bearing trees, not conceiving any adequate use of the fruit for any purpose save cider-making.
A friend–envious and emulous of the detective work so minutely described by Conan Doyle–was driving last summer on an old New England road entirely unfamiliar to him. He suddenly turned to the stage-driver by his side and, pointing to a house alongside the road, said, “The man who lives there is a drunkard.”–”Why, yes,” answered the driver in surprise, “do you know him?”–”No,” said the traveller, “I never saw him and don’t know his name, but he’s a drunkard and his father was before him, and his grandfather.”–”It’s true,” answered the driver, with much astonishment; “how could you tell?”–”Well, there is a large orchard of very old apple trees round that house, while all his neighbors, even when the houses are old, have younger orchards. When the ‘Washingtonian or Temperance Movement’ reached this town, the owner of this place was too confirmed a drunkard to reform and cut down his apple trees as his neighbors did, and he kept on at his hard cider and cider brandy, and his son and grandson grew up to be drunkards after him.” Later inquiry in the town proved the truth of the amateur detective’s guesswork.
Cider was tediously made at first by pounding the apples in wooden mortars; the pomace was afterward pressed in baskets. Then rude mills with a spring board and heavy maul crushed the apples in a hollowed log. Then presses for cider-making begin to be set up about the year 1650.
Apples were at that time six to eight shillings a bushel; cider 1s. 8d. a gallon–as high-priced as New England rum a century later.
Connecticut cider soon became specially famous. Roger Williams in 1660 says John Winthrop’s loving letter to him was as grateful as “a cup of your Connecticut cider.” By 1679 it was cheap enough, ten shillings a barrel; and in the year 1700, about seven shillings only. It had then replaced beer in nearly all localities in daily diet; yet at the Commencement dinner at Harvard in 1703, four barrels of beer were served and but one of cider, with eighteen gallons of wine.
In 1721 one Massachusetts village of forty families made three thousand barrels of cider, and Judge Joseph Wilder of Lancaster, Massachusetts, made six hundred and sixteen barrels in the year 1728.
Bennett, an English traveller, writing of Boston in the year 1740, says that “the generality of the people with their victuals” drank cider, which was plentiful and good at three shillings a barrel. It took a large amount of cider to supply a family when all drank, and drank freely. Ministers often stored forty barrels of cider for winter use.
By the closing years of the seventeenth century nearly all Virginia plantations had an apple orchard. Colonel Fitzhugh had twenty-five hundred apple trees. So quickly did they mature, that six years after the scions were planted, they bore fruit. Many varieties were common, such as russets, costards, pippins, mains, marigolds, kings, and batchelors. So great was the demand for cider in the South that apple orchards were deemed the most desirable leasing property. Cider never reached a higher price, however, than two shillings and a half in Virginia during the seventeenth century. Thus it could be found in the house of every Maryland and Virginia planter. It was supplied to the local courts during their times of sitting. Many households used it in large quantity instead of beer or metheglin, storing many barrels for everyday use.
At a very early date apple trees were set out in New York, and cultivated with much care and much success. Nowhere else in America, says Dankers, the Labadist traveller, had he seen such fine apples. The names of the Newton pippin, the Kingston spitzenburgh, the Poughkeepsie swaar apple, the red streak, guelderleng, and others of well-known quality, show New York’s attention to apple-raising. Kalm, the Swedish naturalist, spoke of the splendid apple orchards which he saw throughout New York in 1749, and told of the use of the horse press in the Hudson Valley for making cider. Cider soon rivalled in domestic use in this province the beer of the Fatherland. It was constantly used during the winter season, and, diluted with water, sweetened and flavored with nutmeg, made a grateful summer drink. Combined with rum, it formed many of the most popular and intoxicating colonial drinks, of which “stone-wall” was the most potent. Cider-royal was made by boiling four barrels of cider into one barrel. P. T. Barnum said cider-spirits was called “gumption.”
Beverige
A very mild tavern drink was beverige; its concoction varied in different localities. Sometimes beverige was water-cider or ciderkin; at other times cider, spices, and water. Water flavored with molasses and ginger was called beverige, and is a summer drink for New England country-folk to-day.
John Hammond wrote of Virginia in 1656 in his Leah and Rachel:
“Beare is indeed in some places constantly drunken, in other some nothing but Water or Milk, and Water or Beverige; and that is where the good-wives (if I may so call them) are negligent and idle; for it is not want of Corn to make Malt with, for the Country affords enough, but because they are slothful and careless; and I hope this Item will shame them out of these humours; that they will be adjudged by their drinke, what kind of Housewives they are.”
Vinegar and water–a drink of the ancient Roman soldiery–was also called beverige. Dr. Rush wrote a pamphlet recommending its use by harvest laborers.
Switchel was a similar drink, strengthened with a dash of rum. Ebulum was the juice of elder and juniper berries, spiced and sweetened. Perry was made from pears, and peachy from peaches.
A terrible drink is said to have been popular in Salem. It is difficult to decide which was worse, the drink or its name. It was sour household beer simmered in a kettle, sweetened with molasses, filled with crumbs of “ryneinjun” bread, and drunk piping hot; its name was whistle-belly-vengeance, or whip-belly-vengeance. This name was not a Yankee vulgarism, but a well-known old English term. Bickerdyke says small beer was rightly stigmatized by this name. Dean Swift in his Polite Conversations gives this smart dialogue:–
“Hostess (offering ale to Sir John Linger). I never taste malt-liquor, but they say ours is well-hopp’d.
Sir John. Hopp’d ! why if it had hopp’d a little further, it would have hopp’d into the river.
Hostess. I was told ours was very strong.
Sir John. Yes ! strong of the water. I believe the brewer forgot the malt, or the river was too near him. Faith! it is more whip-belly-vengeance; he that drinks most has the worst share.”
Sack
It is vain to enter here into a discussion of exactly what sack was, since so much has been written about it. The name was certainly applied to sweet wines from many places. A contemporary authority, Gervayse Markham, says in The English Housewife, “Your best Sackes are of Seres in Spain, your smaller of Galicia or Portugal: your strong Sackes are of the islands of the Canaries.”
Sack was, therefore, a special make of the strong, dry, sweet, light-colored wines of the sherry family, such as come from the South, from Portugal, Spain, and the Canary Islands. By the seventeenth century the name was applied to all sweet wines of this class, as distinguished from Rhenish wines on one hand and red wines on the other. Many do not wish to acknowledge that sack was sherry, but there was little distinction between them. Sherris-sack, named by Shakespeare, was practically also sherry.
Sack was so cheap that it could be used by all classes. From an original license granted by Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1584, to one Bradshaw to keep a tavern we learn that sack was then worth two shillings a gallon.
Perhaps the most famous use of sack was in the making of sack-posset, that drink of brides, of grooms, of wedding and christening parties. A rhymed rule for sack-posset found its way into many collections, and into English and American newspapers. It is said to have been written by Sir Fleetwood Fletcher. It was thus printed in the New York Gazette of February 13, 1744:-
” A Receipt for all young Ladies that are going to be Married. To make a
SACK-POSSET
From famed Barbadoes on the Western Main
Fetch sugar half a pound; fetch sack from Spain
A pint; and from the Eastern Indian Coast
Nutmeg, the glory of our Northern toast.
O’er flaming coals together let them heat
Till the all-conquering sack dissolves the sweet.
O’er such another fire set eggs, twice ten,
New born from crowing cock and speckled hen;
Stir them with steady hand, and conscience pricking
To see the untimely fate of twenty chicken.
From shining shelf take down your brazen skillet,
A quart of milk from gentle cow will fill it.
When boiled and cooked, put milk and sack to egg,
Unite them firmly like the triple League.
Then covered close, together let them dwell
Till Miss twice sings: You must not kiss and tell.
Each lad and lass snatch up their murdering spoon,
And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon.”
Sack was drunk in America during the first half-century of colonial life. It was frequently imported to Virginia; and all the early instructions for the voyage cross-seas, such as Governor Winthrop’s to his wife and those of the Plymouth Plantations, urge the shipping of sack for the sailors. Even in Judge Sewall’s day, a century after the planting of Boston, sack-posset was drunk at Puritan weddings, but a psalm and a prayer made it properly solemn. Judge Sewall wrote of a Boston wedding:-
“There was a pretty deal of company present. Many young gentlemen and young gentlewomen. Mr. Noyes made a speech, said love was the sugar to sweeten every condition in the marriage state. After the Sack-Posset sang 45th Psalm from 8th verse to end.”
Canary soon displaced sack in popular affection, and many varieties of closely allied wines were imported. Sir Edmund Andros named in his excise list “Fayal wines, or any other wines of the Western Islands, Madeira, Malaga, Canary, Tent, and Alcant.” Claret was not popular. The consumption of sweet wines was astonishing, and the quality was exceeding good. Spiced wines were much sold at taverns, sangaree and mulled wines. Brigham’s Tavern at Westborough had a simple recipe for mulled wine: simply a quart of boiling hot Madeira, half a pint of boiling water, six eggs beaten to a froth, all sweetened and spiced. Nutmeg was the favorite flavoring, and nutmegs gilded and beribboned were an esteemed gift. The importation of them was in early days wholly controlled by the Dutch. High livers-bon vivants-carried nutmegs in their pockets, fashionable dames also. One of the prettiest trinkets of colonial times is the dainty nutmeg holder, of wrought silver or Battersea enamel, just large enough to hold a single nutmeg. The inside of the cover is pierced or corrugated to form a grater. The ones now before me, both a century and a half old, when opened exhale a strong aroma of nutmeg, though it is many a year since they have been used. With a nutmeg in a pocket holder, the exquisite traveller, whether man or woman, could be sure of a dainty spiced wine flavored to taste; “atop the musky nut could grated be,” even in the most remote tavern, for wine was everywhere to be found, but nutmegs were a luxury. Negus, a washy warm wine-punch invented in Queen Anne’s day by Colonel Negus, was also improved by a flavoring of nutmeg.
Above from:
Alice Morse Earle. Stagecoach and Tavern Days. MacMillan, 1900; Also found on:
http://www.2020site.org/drinks/flip.html
Another Source:
Tavern Drinks
There are a variety of drinks appropriate for a Rendezvous or Living History Event. Many of the beverages we enjoy today were also popular in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Among the popular beverages during the Eighteenth century were: Ale, Brandy, Chocolate, Cider, Claret, Coffee, Eggnog, Flip, Grog, Milk, Milk Punch, Port, Punch, Rum, Small Beer, Spruce Beer, Syllabub, Tea, and Wine.
Cider
By far the most popular drink in the colonies, until beer replaced it in the 19th century. Cider is the juice that is pressed out of a fruit, most often apples. Cider made from crab apples and pears was also popular. Fermented cider was called hard cider.
Coffee
Coffee was normally purchased as unroasted green beans that had to be roasted before they were boiled to make coffee. Coffee houses were popular in London as early as the mid-17th century. Coffee replaced tea as the popular colonial drink during the American Revolution. Coffee from the West Indian colonies of France and Spain dominated the coffee trade from 1690-1830. By 1830, coffee began to be produced in Java.
Corn Coffee
Many Indian tribes used corn for coffee. Take whole ears of shucked corn. Dry them real good and roast them on hot coals. Then pound the kernels, and boil them. Maple sugar was used to sweeten this strong drink.
Ginger Ale & Ginger Beer
Nonalcoholic beverage flavored with fermented ginger. Ginger Ale was common during the 18th century. Ginger Beer was made in England at the beginning of the 19th century, and later in the century it was brought to America, and substituted for real beer.
Hot Chocolate
Chocolate and cola were among the foods the Indians introduced to the Europeans. Shortly after the introduction of chocolate in Europe, cola and vanilla were highly valued trade items. The Ivory Coast began growing cola by 1660 to trade to Europe. The colonists in North America were as found of chocolate as their European cousins.
1 cup water
1/4 ounce unsweetened baking chocolate
2 Tbsp. sugar
Bring the water to a boil and shave the chocolate into the water. As the chocolate melts, add the sugar and continue to boil for a short time (3 or 4 minutes). Keep an eye on the pot, because the chocolate is inclined to boil over. If you wish you can add about 1/2 cup milk and boil it with the chocolate. Also, grating nutmeg on top of the chocolate can improve the flavor.
Mulled Cider
1 gallon cider
2 cups brown sugar
6 sticks of cinnamon
2 tsp. whole cloves
2 tsp. salt
Dissolve the brown sugar into the cider. Bring to a boil. Add cinnamon, cloves, and salt, and let simmer for 15 minutes. Strain to remove cloves, or the cloves can be put into a cheesecloth or tea strainer. Serve hot.
Switchel
Switchel is said to be most refreshing especially on hot days. Mix one quart of water, one Tbsp. ginger, three Tbsp. molasses, and 1/2 pint of apple cider vinegar.
Tea
Tea was a popular drink of the 17th and 18th century in both Europe and the Colonies. Its popularity dropped in the Colonies in the 1770’s as a political statement against England, and it never regained its popularity in the United States . The common types of tea in the 18th and early 19th centuries were; Bohea Tea, Gunpowder Tea, Hyson, Green Tea, Hyson Skin, Imperial, Pouchong, Oolong, Souchong, and
Another Source:
Tavern Drinks
Apple Jack
Apple jack is made by taking hard cider and putting it outside when the temperature is below freezing, or by placing in your freezer. When the cider begins to freeze pour the unfrozen 1iquid into a container. The unfrozen liquid is apple jack. Apple jack is a delicious drink, but a word of caution is in order. You might not taste the alcohol in apple jack, but the beverage is very potent. When frozen, water is removed leaving a beverage with a much higher octane rating than the 10-12 % of hard cider
If you don’t have any hard cider handy, I made a tasty version using a fifth of Apple Schnapps mixed with a fifth of apple cider. I put the mixture into two quart jars, and put them in the freezer. It took about eight hours for the liquid to begin to freeze.
Flip
A drink made from beer, sugar, molasses, dried pumpkin, and rum, heated with a hot iron.
Put a spoonful of brown sugar into about five or six gills (20-24 ounces) of malt beer, which is then warmed by putting a hot iron into it (the name comes from nickname of a fireplace poker, “iron flip dog”). Add a half pint of rum or brandy and stir well. Grate a little nutmeg on top. Serves four.
Some recipes also called for dried pumpkin, and Flip with a beaten egg added to it was called `Yard of Flannel`.
Grog
Hot water and rum, Grog was initially served to Royal Navy to help prevent scurvy. Eventually the U.S. Navy included grog as sailor’s rations.
Mix a teaspoonful of molasses and some lemon juice in a mug. Add a gill (1/2 cup) of rum, and fill the mug with strong hot tea. Grate a little nutmeg on top.
Hot Buttered Rum
1/2 gallon cider
l/2 cup maple syrup
1/8 lb. butter
1/2 quart dark rum
Mix cider and syrup. Bring to a boil. Add butter and remove from the fire. Add rum and serve. Don’t allow to reboil. This recipe makes about 12 six-ounce servings.
Rumalade
There are several variations of this beverage making the rounds at Rendezvous. After much experimentation, we at Morgan County have come up with this formula. In a pitcher, or coffee pot, put in a can of frozen lemonade. Fill the can with rum and add to the pitcher. Then add 3 cans full of water and stir well. The formula also works well with Orange Juice and Pineapple Juice. Grapefruit Juice has been tried with the formula, but that is an acquired taste.
Shrub or Bounce
2 quarts of brandy
juice of 5 lemons
peels of 2 lemons
1/2 whole nutmeg
3 pints white wine
1-1/2 lb. sugar
Place brandy, lemon juice, peels, and nutmeg into a large bottle. Let stand for 3 days. Add wine and sugar. Mix well and strain twice, then rebottle. Definately an officer’s drink, the ingredients are too costly for the enlisted man.
Whipt Syllabub
Eggnog with wine added, popular in Colonial America and before.
1 pint cream
1 cup dry white wine or sack
1 lemon
3 egg whites
sugar
nutmeg
Combine cream, wine and egg whites. Add sugar to taste, about 1 Tbsp. Grate in nutmeg and the skin of the lemon (grated). Using a whisk, whip the ingredients until they froth. Skim and discard froth. Pour into glasses to serve.
Common folk, not having the means to buy lemons and wine, would use cider and milk, adding cream over the top of his syllabub.
Wine
Among the popular wines in Early America were; Claret, Madeira, Malaga, Medoc Claret, Port, Sicily, often known as Marsala (cream sherry), Sherry or Sack, Teneriffe, and White Muscatel.
Yard of Flannel
Flip with a beaten egg added. (see, Flip)
American Colonial Flip
Ingredients
A flip was among the most popular drinks in early American taverns. It was made frothy by beating the eggs, then pouring the beer and eggs back and forth in two large pitchers. The drink was also served hot by thrusting a red-hot iron poker or loggerhead into the drink. It was served in large drinking vessels, each man consuming several quarts.
2 bottles beer
1/2 cup gin, rum, or brandy
3 eggs
1/4 cup sugar
grated nutmeg
Method
Heat beer and gin, if desired, but do not boil. Pour into a large pitcher. Beat eggs with sugar until thick and pour into a second pitcher. Gradually add beer mixture to eggs, stirring constantly. Froth by carefully and quickly pouring back and forth between the two pitchers. Pour into mugs. Makes 3-4 (modern) servings.
Beer as an Early Mixed Drink
One of the most widespread versions of beer mixing was “Flip”. John Adams reported a person spending a day in the tavern would find it full of people drinking drams of flip, carousing, and swearing. This primarily American drink was found in England but with not near the frequency it was served up in the colonies. The earliest mention of Flip is thought to be in 1690, but the oldest reference in print was the December 1704 edition of the New England Almanac
“The days are short, the weather’s cold,
By tavern fires tales are told.
Some ask for dram when first come in,
Others with flip and bounce begin.”
What was this drink? How was it made? Fortunately, our forefathers wrote about everything, flip included. The most common recipe called for
“A great pewter mug or earthen pitcher filled twoÐthirds full of strong beer; sweetened with sugar, molasses, or dried pumpkin, according to individual taste or capabilities; and flavored with `a dash’ Ðabout a gillÐ of New England rum. Into this mixture a red hot loggerhead, made of iron and heated in the fire, was thrust.”
Other recipes could be found as regional variations. Lord May of Canton, Massachusetts devised his own version which started with four pounds of sugar and beat in four eggs, tothis he added one pint of cream and let it age for two days. When people ordered a flip he would fill a quart mug twoÐthirds full of beer then added four large spoonfuls of his aged mixture, stirred it with the glowing loggerhead and added a gill of rum.
Orders of Flip often punctuated the entries in General Washington’s expense account, and General Israel Putnam had his own well regarded recipe. Almost anywhere a revolutionary fire was burning a loggerhead stood by the ready, although sometimes it was referred to in other slang terms such as hottle or flipÐdog. It was such a common and well loved fire place instrument it inspired James Lowell to pen lines of praise.
“Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred
Strange fancies in its embers goldenÐred,
And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip,
timed by wise instinct, creamed the bowl of flip”
One other variation on the flip theme was when a fresh egg was beaten into the mixture. In this case it was considered different enough to earn the separate name of “bellowstop”. As the loggerhead hit this mixture it foamed over the mug and most likely the rest of the table. What could be more fun than sitting around a fire in the tap room and ordering drinks you knew would cause the bartender a big mess? Flip was so widely ordered and of such a fashion that it was a hit well into the mid eighteen hundreds.
Though Flip was certainly one of the most common beer mixtures, it was by no means the only drink order by thirsty firebrands. A most curious mix was “WhistleÐBellyÐVengeance” and it was the altogether rage in Salem, Massachusetts. This little delight was probably born of New Englanders well known thrift. To begin required the tavern keeper to have a batch of sour household beer. The success of this venture is dubious, for after securing the sour beer it was simmered in a kettle and sweetened with molasses, crumbs of ‘ryneinjun’ bread were added to thicken and it was served piping hot. The recipe was common enough for Dean Swift to mention it in his “Polite Conversations”
“Hostess (offering ale to Sir John Linger). I never taste maltÐliquor, but they say ours is well hopp’d.
Sir John.Hopp’d why if it had hopp’d a little further, it would have hopp’d into the river.
Hostess.I was told ours was very strong.
Sir John.Yes! strong of water. I believe the brewer forgot the malt, or the river was too nearhim. Faith! it is more whip belly vengeance; he that drinks most has the worst share.”
With an endorsement such as this is it any wonder the drink was also known by the name whipÐbellyÐvengeance. Thankfully this was a fad which faded away.
Other favored drinks included “Calibogus” or “bogus” which consisted of rum and unsweetened beer. Rather sounds like a colonial boiler maker. Another variation of this drink was cider based and went by the name “Stone Wall”, its effect was reported to be much like hitting one. Yet another drink was “Mumm”, don’t be deceived by the name, this had nothing to do with champagne. In fact it’s hard to imagine a drink further removed. “Mumm” was a charming flat ale made of oat and wheat malt.
If all this didn’t tickle a colonist’s fancy, or if it was just a case of boredom with the usual beer based drinks, you could try a “flip” based on cider instead of beer. The other possibility was a mixture called “Ebulum” which seems to be a cider based punch in which the cider was mixed with the juices of elder and juniper berries. The other New England favorite didn’t use beer at all. “Black Strap” was a mix of cold rum and molasses. Casks of this were found in most every General Store. Next to the barrels were hung dried, salted cod fish which the customers could munch on at no charge. Of course there was a charge for a drink, crafty those New Englanders.
Though we often long for the simplicity of the early days it would seem Billy Joel may have hit the nail on the head when he wrote”..the good old days weren’t always good…” Even today’s worst beer seems pretty tame next to these. But if you mix one up write us at All About Beer and let us know how it turned out.
(credit: Gregg Smith)
