one hundred cocktails

drinking with a purpose

Fish House Punch

22 Feb 2012

And so we find ourselves with another punch. I’m not sure whether to be excited or horrified.

As with some of the preceding punches, this one presented a problem. It required an ingredient that can’t be found in most places, and it was an ingredient needed in many of the remaining cocktails. It took a few months, but I found a solution.

That ingredient in question? Peach brandy. Very few people make real peach brandy. By this, I mean brandy that is made from peaches. There’s a bunch of stuff called “Peach Brandy” but it’s just brandy flavored with peach flavor. That’s not what vintage cocktails used, and by God I’m not going to use it either.

Peach brandy

So I discovered a craft distiller called Old World Spirits. They make genuine Peache Brandy – an aged O’Henry Peach and an unaged Indian Blood Peach. I elected for the former in this cocktail. The distiller, Davorin Kuchan, has a tiny little still and puts about twenty pounds of peaches into each split of brandy. The stuff is pretty good and it’s one of the only peach brandies available in the country. Check it out, especially if you can easily procure it where you live.

Like most good things, you of course cannot ship this stuff to Connecticut. But, suffice to say, I eventually found means to get some.

So, that’s but one ingredient. Like other punches in the book, the Fish House Punch requires a metric ton of random stuff including some freshly brewed green tea, of all things.

Like most punches, this requires a lot of ingredients.

Most of the ingredients are combined to let “brew” (how long and under what circumstances is unspecified), except for the prosecco. I tossed it in a jar in the fridge overnight.

Stuff in the fridge

I don’t know, the final product just wasn’t that interesting.

Finished Fish House Punch

There are some interesting punches in the book already, and this one just didn’t do much for me. There could be a lot of things to blame for this, but it was a bit sweet, not very complex (some of the constituents overwhelmed the complexity) and sort of dull and confused. This stuff will definitely get your drunk, I guess, but it doesn’t feel like it would be rewarding.