Latest / Into The Barchive / Grog & Planter’s Punch — The Roots of Tropical Cocktails
Transcript
- ITB: To the bark where the past comes alive. Frip the tails, let them die. Welcome to the Barkhive. Welcome in Bark of Vist to this week's episode of Into the Barkhive. Before there were paper umbrellas, before there were flaming garnishes, there was a bucket of watered down rum on a British naval ship. So today? So today we're gonna go. All the way back to the foundation of tropical and tiki drinks. And if you think about it, because every Mai Thai, every zombie, every over-the-top tiki drink you've ever had starts with something a lot simpler. And what is that? Well, two drinks specifically, grog and planner's punch. Ooh. So this is Into the Barchive, and today we're going to kick off this brand new series. Yeah, so this brand new series about tropical antique dr cocktails in terms of where they come from, how they evolve, and why they still matter behind the bar today. So you are focusing specifically on tropical antique drinks over the next few weeks? Yes, that's what we're gonna talk about, and we'll get into the icons, the techniques, and the legends, including one guy. You basically turn run drinks into an entire cinematic universe. Okay. So before we start going down into some of your f more favorite cocktail artists, I say let's start at C somewhere. Yeah. Maybe a grog? Let's do some grog. We're gonna start with a very simple drink. The drink that may have started it all, the grog. So I'm starting with just an ounce and a half of chilled water because that's essentially what the grog was, watering down the British sailors rum ration. And then we're gonna add two ounces of this Navy Strength Rum, Pussers Gunpowder Proof. We can get into that later in the conversation. Then a half ounce of Demarera syrup that's a rich two to one simple syrup. So adding that sugar component. Then two ounce or a half ounce of lime. So we can prevent scurvy. And then we're gonna hit end with a couple of dashes of Angestura bitters. And because I've got a Japanese dasher, I'll dash it four times to get two dashes. Then we'll add our ice to the shaking tin, the large part. And then we'll give it a shake. Alright, and then I'm gonna add some ice to our glass. Just a nice ruck's glass will do the trick. And then we will strain into our Rops glass over the fresh ice. Again, this is a no-frills kind of drink. And because it's no frills, there's no garnish. Enjoy the classic grog. Cheers. The Planner's Punch. Simple cocktail to make with a little extra booze. In your shaking tin, three ounces of a Jamaican rum. A little spice. We're gonna go one quarter of an ounce of all spice dram. Next we're gonna add one ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice. To help with some of that sweetness, three quarters of an ounce of Dimerera syrup. And lastly, two dashes of Angusor bitters. Japanese dasher, four dashes. Put ice in our tin and we'll shake. After a good shake, fresh ice in our collins. And next we're gonna shream. Over that fresh ice. As we start to lean into these tiki drinks a little bit further, garnish game on this one comes starts to come in fairly strong. Take a sprig of fresh mint. Wake it up. Right now, oils are not activated. Slap, squeeze, drop it in, but as you drop it in, make sure you place that straw right by. And here we have our planar's plunge. Now that we've built the cocktails, let's build the context. The origins of rum. Yeah, so if you think about the Caribbean and the 17th and 18th centuries, sugar production is booming during that time. And and sugar production, like the way you take the cane juice, and essentially you keep boiling it down to get the sugar crystals, but then you have Byproduct. And what are those byproducts? Molasses. Molasses. Okay. Okay. And so the molasses at the time is instead of just throwing that away, there's still some residual sugar left in the molasses. So people start distilling it. All right. And at this point, rum isn't the smooth, siffable spirit we think of today. It's very different. No, I imagine if it's in its rawest form of a dislike, it's gonna be rough, pretty hot. Yeah, so it's gonna be hireproof. It's gonna Yeah, rough I think would be an understatement. And it's really all over the place, but it's everywhere in the Atlantic world. Because it is, as you stated, a byproduct of all these plantations of being able to source it, and so each one has their own individual. process and take on it. Yeah, and and it's one of those things where I mean sugar is big business today. We we don't think about it that way today, but during this time period sugar was a hot commodity. Yeah, and it was a reason that it was on a specific trade route too. Yeah, and so like sugar, I mean, of course is what's driving like the African slave trade, things like that. ⁓ the rum, it's part of this triangular trade between Africa, the Caribbean, North America, places like that. It rum sugar its currency. like and when I teach about like early history, what's kind of interesting about sugar? Again, we take like domino sugar packets and it's like, you know, we think they're like ⁓ two pennies apiece or whatever. Super valuable commodity. Barbados, of course, we've both been there. Barbados on the eve of the American Revolution was more valuable to the British Empire than all 13 mainland American colonies combined. Wow. That's how valuable sugar was. And so that's the refined sugar. The rum adds even further value to sugar production. So it's it's currency. It's being used in trade. So there's where that value over the thirteen colonies is because ⁓ monetarily it serves that staple. But most importantly, it becomes like this part of everyone's daily life. Yeah. It's adding sugar to tea and things like that in British ⁓ culture, ⁓ confections, things like that. And it and rum plays an important role on ships and ⁓ everyday Naval life. Okay. And how does this come into to play then? How does it become a staple? Well, I mean, if you think about it, fresh water doesn't exactly keep well on long voyages. The water will go bad and it grows things you don't want to drink exactly. ⁓ so like a barrel of water that you just a bucket of water you just leave out, it starts to grow mold or something. You know, less pleasant. And so the alcohol. Yeah, doesn't do that. So rum, on the other hand, is very shelf stable. Put it in a barrel, it doesn't grow mold. It gets better. Yeah, it gets better with age. Yeah, so it smooths off some of those rough ⁓ edges. And so the sailors ⁓ would be given daily rations of rum, not just for like morale's sake. But because it's safer to drink than water. Please drink this instead of the water. We would rather you be ⁓ a little tipsy and instead of sick. Yeah, and so this is where we begin to see the earliest building blocks of what we'd recognize as like a rum cocktail. Okay. And so people start mixing rum with citrus, sugar, and water, and not for fun at this point, not Because of some carefully balanced cocktail. Y you were mentioning earlier when you were making your cocktail, it was like one to help dilute a pretty proofy thing, but scurvy with the lime, right? Yeah, exactly. ⁓ and again, the drinks were as much for like keeping people alive. It goes back to alcohol being medicinal serving dual purposes or multi purpose purpose, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so that goes to the history of that cocktail there, the grog, is really that staple, right? The diluting of so the history of the grog. Walk me through it again. So ⁓ the grog comes about the British Navy and as legend has it is invented by a British naval officer named Edward Vernon, whose nickname was Old Grog. And it was because he wore this grogram cloak, which is like a mixture of like wool and silk. And what he did is he ordered the rum rations of sailors to be diluted with water in seventeen forty. So as you can imagine, why would you want to dilute a sailor's rum ration? Well, one if I wanted to s lengthen my amount of fluid if it was a longer journey, but the other obvious one is to get them less tipsy over time. Absolutely. So reducing drunkenness, stretching their supplies, but then in a instead of just rum diluted with water, add a little lime juice. So serve that scurvy purpose, also maybe to give it some extra flavor. Yeah. Balance. And then you're adding a little sugar to balance it out. And then you have the grog, right? It's rum, water, Lime sugar. In its simplest form, that is the grog. Yeah, now the the big difference between the grog of the Royal Navy and the grog that I made is it wouldn't be on ice. There wouldn't have been shaking. It would have just been the ice would have been the just diluting it more with water. Because the rum that they're using at this point is not like 80-proof rum. It's this sort of like what they called navy strength rum, although Pussers calls it gunpowder proof. But if ⁓ you see ⁓ it says British Navy because Pussers was one of the suppliers of rum to the British Navy and it says original admiralty strength. S do we take a moment and let's talk about what does Navy strength or gunpowder mean in this situation? Yeah, I think it's fits in well with the story of the grog is that on a naval vessel, they wanted rum to be a certain proof level because as you can imagine, you're on a ship, you're sloshing around, and you know, if water came into the vessel and it would hit your gunpowder, you know, the gunpowder then wouldn't ignite. So there's a fear like if your rum like the barrel, like something hits the barrel and it gets over the gunpowder. They don't want an effective gunpowder. They don't want the rum to spoil their opportunity of attack or defense. Yes. And so they couldn't like pre-dilute the rum. And so it was also a way for the sailors to check that the officers weren't diluting too much in advance is they'd want to make sure that the gunpowder would still like that it was still proofed up enough. Take a little a a little spoonful or pinch of gunpowder, pour a little drop or two of this liquid on top and then ignite it and if it doesn't fizzle, they've proofed it down. Or if it actually ignites, then we still have the gun gunpowder or gunproof or the naval strength, right? Yes. And so I mean there's anytime whether it's with rum or gin, Navy strength refers to ⁓ the percentage at which gunpowder would still ignite typically about 57% ABV or 114 114 proof. So it packs a punch. And so in the way the recipe I use in making my grog, by adding a little extra water to begin with was a nod to the tradition of Diluting the rum in addition to what was already happening with the ice. But if you were making this at home with a demerera rum that's like 80 86 proof, I'd omit the extra water. But because I was using this higher proof navy strength rum, the water was a good fit. So this is very nice and easy drinking. Let's evolve now from ⁓ the naval grog or the grog. and into what we have for a planter's punch in that evolution. Ingredients almost the same. Think about it. The dilution is not coming from ⁓ adding the water that you did. It was already a a lower proof rum that we were using. The only real difference then is I I added another ingredient of an allspice dram. Let's talk about the history of the planter's punch. So the planter's punch shows up a little later in the 1800s. So while the grog is from like the 16 and 1700s, the planner's punch is meant more for ⁓ hospitality rather than like the necessity of keeping people alive and things like that. And the planner's punch is most commonly associated with Jamaica. Yes. Like you go anywhere in Jamaica, they have a planner's punch on the menu. Said and done. Their version of it, some variations, but on the menu. Absolutely. And you know, you're very right in pointing out that these cocktails are almost identical in many ways. In terms of ingredient, the only extra one you had was the allspice trim, but the rum also changes to represent the origins of the drink in Jamaica. True. ⁓ y mine was definitely using a Jamaican rum ⁓ what's it what plantation or planteray now is the company, but ⁓ and that w The Jamaica, however, it starts with an X, but it's kinda like a different way of saying Jamaica in a way. ⁓ and it does have that Jamaican funk to it, right? That that I don't know, it's the oily u umame flavor that you would usually think ⁓ that comes from a Jamaican based rum. Absolutely. And so the planner's punch in many ways lays the groundwork, the architectural framework for the tiki drinks to come with one of the most famous cocktail rhymes ever. And I'm still surprised we don't have this up in your in your in this area, but it's what? One of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak. Now they there was a fifth line that said. And a touch of spice to make it nice. And oftentimes your planner's punch would recommend some like freshly grated nutmeg over the top. In the case of this recipe, it's the allspice strand. but variations of the planner's punch ⁓ have been made in the Caribbean since 1694, just these large format punches. But it later gets transformed in Jamaica to the single serving cocktail. So let's go back. It was a punch. Like it is supposed to be a large put the big piece of ice. It dilutes over time. So you're at the party as your guests are drinking it, they, you know, start to hydrate a little bit more. It's less boozy. It's the traditional speck of a punch that we have talked about in many of our classes before. But it served a purpose. Well, this one again is supposed to be the hospitable part. This is the I get to make it my my own personal flair, my own pizzazz as a resort or a bar or a rum distillery that we've gone to many of that do their own versions. So the ⁓ probably the more important one that you would want to highlight here would probably what be Myers? Yeah. So ⁓ Fred Myers of Myers Rum made The Planner's Punch, the signature cocktail of the Myrtle Bank Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica. And in fact, the drink received international acclaim or the Myers version of it, when in 1924, Fred Myers dispatched one of his bartenders to England to make Planner's Punches in the West Indies Pavilion at the British Empire exhibition. So this is 1924, you say? we flash forward what? Ten years, nine years. Yeah, so by nineteen thirty nine, Myers updated the recipe a little more and he swapped the proportions of strong of wheat, strong and wheat. So instead of three of strong, four of weak, it was three of weak, four of strong. And although it messes up the rhyme, it does sell more rum. And it does make a heftier cocktail. Yeah, and I mean it's one of those things where a lot of times The extra alcohol adds the body and sometimes it's the thing that you need to balance the drink. But the planner's punch in many ways has been kind of bastardized since World War II. Okay, walk me. So like it just becomes this generic description slapped on any rum punch. You know, it's like throw some rum, some fruit juice, we'll throw pineapple, we'll throw guava, some orange. grenadine and just like throw it all together and ⁓ planner's punch. ⁓ But it does have a specific history and a specific recipe. Okay. So we've got bastardization. How does it come back into being something that's not a joke and definitely again simple but elegant. Well I mean The Planner's Punch initial reputation spreads through tourism, right? With Prohibition, Americans are doing are traveling around the Caribbean. Six miles, seven miles off the ⁓ Yeah. To ⁓ to be able to drink. So with alcohol banned in the US, Americans go elsewhere and rum drinks gain prestige with travel, leisure, escapism. And so, ⁓ you know, that's what popularizes the planner's punch, but the bastardization begins with every last resort just taking whatever local rum they have, and sometimes it'd be less flavorful or character forward rums like a Jamaican rum and throwing it with juices. But of course it's the cocktail renaissance that kind of brings it back into focus. So the the cocktail renaissance now helps the planner punch spread around the world, this kind of what tiki movement, if we will? Yeah, the ⁓ tiki movement is really in many ways just rifts on the planner's punch. And while it may not deal with like don your tiki icons like Don the Beachcomber, Trader Vic will make more honest planners punches compared to, you know, the standard beach resort in the Caribbean. The escapism that they create in the with the Planner's Punch, that tropical getaway, this helped shape the birth of the tiki movement. So the passage of a prohibition act is the catalyst of this what we would consider rum drinking Americans now. Yes. Okay. Absolutely. Then we've got alcohol bans in the US. Roll me. ⁓ they have this ⁓ We've gone from them drinking ⁓ o case punches to bastardized punches, but this escapism starts to lead them into learning about the different cultures of rums, right? We we talked about it, like a Jamaican rum compared to a Barbados rum or a Cuba kind of Havana rum. Yeah. Where does that like they they gain their prestige and mention? So escapism. Where does this Rum now lead into our next three to four, maybe even yeah, four episodes. Yeah, so I mean if we think about it, today we're we focus like on naval survival with the grog, we've looked at early Caribbean hospitality with the Planner's Punch, and all of this is foreshadowing what's to come with tiki drinks and then tropical drinks and What we'll do next time is we're gonna make meet the man who took all of these threads and turned it into an empire. Don the beachcomer, the original tiki icon. Okay, so as we stated, we're going to focus a series around tiki tropical drinks. This kicking off our first. We've got three, four more episodes to focus in on this. So hang in with us. Don the Beachcomber is next. Yep. ⁓ Teach them a little bit more. What would what do we need to do? Like, subscribe, follow us on ⁓ YouTube. ⁓ we've got these podcasts coming out now on Apple and Spotify. Feel free to always email us at ⁓ podcast at IntoThebarchive.com. We're getting some great feedback. Some of this is helping us about short short form content as well, which was never our initial intent, but it seems to be catching some some steam there. So again, keep those coming. But In the meantime, make yourself a grog or try a planner's punch. They're relatively simple cocktails to make. You can play with the ratios. and if you come up with something great, let us know through one of these avenues. And until next time, keep exploring the past one drink at a time as we dive deeper into the bark hive. Cheers.