00:00 Founding Fathersʼ Drinks So I want to get a portrait of George Washington with a red baseball cap that just says, Make America on it. We're here today on Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast to talk about what they drank around the time that the framers or the founding fathers, whatever you want to call them, were wearing knee socks and making up the Constitution. Probably better stated as what didn't they drink, because they drank a lot. Water, they didn't drink water. Yeah, that was about it. That's why they drank so much everything else, right? Yeah. Finding potable water was a big issue for thousands of years, actually. So they're just kind of on the tail end of that. And then I also think that they just had a wide breadth of different categories of drinks available to them that maybe other people didn't have as much. Just they ran the gamut from day to night. So founding fathers, the national average right now is about two gallons a year per adult. I don't think that they're considering, like they did during the time of the founding fathers, six to seven gallons per head, but they counted the entire population. But that was just distilled spirits though, wasn't it? Yeah, they didn't count their wine. Cider, beer. I've seen a couple of different numbers which had them at roughly four to six gallons of distilled spirits a year per man, woman and child consumed, and also 30 gallons a year of beer or cider. Oh man. So we're talking about the framers of the United States Constitution, those lovely gentlemen who for 13 years from the Declaration of Independence to the signing of the US Constitution, drank their way through the meddling of early American politics. So we're here to talk about what they drank and obviously how much they drank. And then some funny stories kind of surrounding the sh** faced culture that was the framers. So before he became the first president, George Washington, he actually when he was a young lieutenant in the early army, he ran for the Virginia State Legislature and he lost. So he came back two years later and when everybody voted, he brought 144 gallons of rum, cider, wine, you name it. So if you were voting, he was buying and then he won. But only by 68 votes though. Must have been pretty bad rum. Yeah. There was a super harsh winter at Valley Forge when he was a general and he made sure that all of his enlisters got to drink rum before the officers did. So that's why there was one way to get the masses, why he had such loyalty like Julius Caesar. I mean, they would, they loved this guy, especially because he kept him well-hydrated for the entire thing. Lubricate the troops. Exactly. There's such a heritage of buying votes with liquor that certain states of laws on the books closing bars on election day. Andrew Jackson chose cheese. I think that's one reason he sucked so hard. He missed the boat completely. His hair was weird, cheese, whatever. 3:06 Colonial Spirits So what did they drink, Pat Brophy? Well, they drink a lot of rum. Yes, a lot of rum. You know, before the Revolutionary War, rum was very much the national drink. It was very easy to get molasses up from the Caribbean. There were over 130, I believe, rum distilleries just in Boston at the time. So, I mean, we drank a lot of rum in this country. It was our native beverage. Only once the war started and our ports were blockaded and we were cut off from our supply of molasses did we start using our native grains and making whiskeys, notably rye whisky. Yeah, I think people think, you know, it's the Boston Tea Party, this and that, but it really was the molasses, the sugar and the Stamp Act were all basically geared at restricting alcohol production and movement. Yeah. Export. So they cut off our booze and we went crazy. Yeah, they took our rum away and got real fast. Distilling also was really popular with brandies though too, right? Absolutely. There was a lot of fruits available, blackberries, apples. I brought some Laird's apple brandy in for us to taste today. Laird's is the oldest distillery in America. It's out of New Jersey and they've been making the same apple brandies there for over 200 years. Where in Jersey are they? Do you know? Scobyville, I think. Scobyville. Scobyville, New Jersey. I've never seen this before because I've never paid attention, but there's a DSP NJ1. That's the distillery number. That's great. That's great. When we talk about early whiskey production, a lot of the times whiskey back then, it's very different from what we think now, correct? It's clear spirit for the most part. Yeah, clear spirit that may have picked up some color from a barrel that had happened to be stored in for a little while. It was a cruder distillation method. It was almost always on a pot still system, continuous distillation, column stills hadn't been invented yet, or spread outside of France yet at that point. They didn't age them in barrels? They started to around the end of the 1700s. I don't think it was with the aim to age as much as it was just a movement. It was the storage vessel. I mean, we didn't have cardboard cases. I mean, it was just that's how they moved. But the serendipitous effect of aging was found actually by the Romans in wood. They were the first to notice like, oh, this wine tastes better when I rolled it from Rome up to Germany or whatever. So, I think they knew, but yeah, it was more for... 5:30 Historic Cocktails A lot of the quality of some of these early spirits wasn't really there. So, when you start to read some of the funny names about some of the cocktails that they like to drink, a lot of it is kind of building the flavor from other things or masking the inadequacies of, be it the rum or whatever. Yeah, rum back then was notoriously just vile and disgusting. I love that they used eggs in almost everything. It was like they had to get their protein and vitamins, and so this is one way they did it. Yeah, for sure. The one where they put the beer and egg and shake it up, that sounds terrible. Flip, yeah. I think we should have made one. Well, the key ingredient to a true flip is that you take a poker out of the fireplace and you jam that into the tankard and it makes everything instantly heat up and froth over. So I've always wanted to try this. I've gone so far into trying to get a poker, but they coat all these pokers with stuff now. Like I just want the true iron. A food-grade poker. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, they loved mixing beer with rum, adding sugar, adding spices. They were big fans of nutmeg. That was kind of the really sought-after and highly coveted spice. I mean, it was really anything they could to cover up the terrible tasting distilled spirits they had. I mean, I can't so much speak to the beer. I imagine beers back then were all wild fermented, so they probably had a drier barnyard. Listen, everything sucked compared to what we have today. I mean, there's just no question, right? It was out of necessity. Although there are some of the most classic cocktail, the idea of sweet, sour, weak and strong, that's kind of this age old recipe. So you look at some of the early names of some of these drinks, like a drink called Mimbo was essentially just rum, sugar and water. If you added nutmeg to that, then it was called Bombo. Grog has been around for hundreds of years. That's basically lime, sugar, water and rum. Grog is famously associated with the Royal Navy and with sailors. You get your daily Grog ration, which when they started the Naval Rum Ration, it was a pint of rum a day. You imagine that to speak to how much people drank. A pint of rum and people would just drink it all at once. The Navy realized, hmm, people are doing things like falling out of the crow's nest if they're, you know, totally schlockered. That rum ration lasted all the way until the 1970s. Yep. And it just kept getting weakened and weakened over the years. That was called Black Tot Day. It was the last time that they actually served rum on a naval ship. So that tradition and everything lives on in the Puster's brand of rum. Now you just have to get an Appletini. No, no. So, we had the Mimbo. The Bombo. Flip is the beer, rum, sugar, and you can put eggs and milk. Yeah, and that would be like a porter beer, like a dark heavy beer, right? Right. Dark heavy beer, rum, eggs, and milk. Yup. And a little nutmeg on top. And I think it sounds great. Famously, so Jerry Thomas, the first bartender, famous bartender, wrote one of the first drink manuals. He had this whole procedure for making Flip, where you take these two cups, you'd raise one much higher than the other one, and you'd be essentially mixing this drink by expertly pouring it from six feet in the air into the next one, and that would help stir in the eggs and froth it up and make it, you know, the right consistency. So there's great pageantry in making a preparing. This is exactly why I don't make drinks at home. The Sack Flip, where they added sherry. That's pretty cool. Posset and Silly Bub were two also ridiculous sounding drinks that were quite popular. Posset was equal parts ale and milk and then lemon juice so that the whole stuff gets nice and curdled up. Oh my God. Looks like cottage cheese. Silly Bub was similar, but with wine or cider instead. Gross. But remember, with some of these, especially with Flip, these live on in a pretty common drink that we still drink today, and that would be eggnog. So the precursor to your modern day eggnog are these goofy egg and spirit drinks of yore. I will take the pre-made Dean stuff from the little open refrigerator's a jewel. I don't know. So we're currently in the cider renaissance, hard cider. 10:21 Wines Ciders Punch Oh, speaking. That was a huge drink back in the day. Yeah, and the stone fence, the stone fence cocktail was a blend of cider and rum. Then it later on became cider and rye whiskey, which is a really delicious cocktail and holds well now too. It's refreshing and it's got this tart balance to that spicy, snappy character from the rye. It was supposedly, weren't they all drunk on stone fences when they raided some barracks that started off the revolution, I think. Yeah, I think I read that. Yeah, up in Vermont. But they were probably drunk on pretty much everything. Yeah, I mean, but apparently that was the drink of choice at the pub. They all got liquored up and grabbed their guns and then started a revolution. So it was in, it was the Indian Queen Tavern, where Thomas Jefferson wrote a lot of the Declaration of Independence in a series of days, just getting housed on Madeira. And that's the language he came up with. Madeira. I think that's why the S's were F's, is because they were just fricking drunk. Madeira, the other great drink of the colonies. I mean, a nearly indestructible style of wine. The ports, the Sherries and Madeira's, especially Madeira's, that could handle the long voyage all the way from the island of Madeira to the colonies. So how long did that take? A couple of months, right? Back in the day. I would assume so. I don't know. Well, it depended on what the route the ships took. A lot of the higher quality Madeira's would take that whole voyage all the way around the world. The circumnavigation then meant more time and storage. Whole of the ship gets super hot. Then there also is the constant rocking of the boat. Some of the best value in the wine market is Madeira. I had a bottle that I opened in August or September that's still in my fridge, and I was going to bring it for you today, but I forgot it. That's the other great thing about these, is that you can give them a try, and they're so indestructible that it's like opening a bottle of spirits. Just have it forever. Yeah. John Quincy Adams actually was such a fan of Madeira, that he used to hold blind tastings, and he nailed 11 out of 14 different styles of Madeira. When I read that, I was like, hmm, see if Roger could do that. See if he could JQA up in here. I doubt it. Yeah, he wasn't a big fan of, he did some smuggling in his day, too, with Madeira. Yes, he smuggled whatever he could, it seemed like. When he couldn't get it, he had Thomas Jefferson help him out. Like, he couldn't get his boats in. Like, they just go like, okay, who's the biggest wig? Who's got a wig for a wig? Or a wig on his wig or whatever that's the song. Who's got a brain for his heart? Beer was not much like what we think of today. There was some, colonial beer was often made with anything at hand, anything that was fermentable. You hear a lot of stories about beers made with pumpkins, sweet potatoes. Molasses. Lots of spices thrown in there. Hops were not as common of a thing. So wine stunk. Wine was... Wasn't great either compared to what it is today. But Thomas Jefferson... Thomas Jefferson famously brought like 20,000 bottles of Bordeaux when he was president. No, but he was. He had 20,000 bottles. He brought and he had a cellar. He tried to make them here. He would bring in members of the Matzai family, famous Bordeaux's analogists and viticulturists. And he was a viticulturist himself. And he was so frustrated because obviously with phylloxera, American vines, the grapes are terrible compared to vitis finifera, and then the phylloxera thing. So they just couldn't get him to go. And he had no idea. It was kind of one of his biggest frustrations as a viticulturist, is that wine made in America totally sucked. Native American wines? So Native American wines are often described as foxy. Yes. Because? They smell like a fox. What does a fox smell like? Oh, you don't want to smell a fox, man. No, they smell, it smells like animal fur, foxy. Gamy. What do you think everyone's hats were made out of? You know, so they kind of had more, they're more in tuned, I think, to that animal fur smell than we are today. But they didn't stop at grapes, made wine out of pretty much anything they could get their hands on. There's lots of fruit wines, dandelion wine. Martin Van Buren was born on the floor of his dad's bar. There was probably somebody at some point in his life who was like, hey, close the door. Were you born in a barn? And he was like, yeah, wait, what? See, that was a good one. Yeah, it was. We also forgot to talk about punch. I mean, punch was huge. Yeah, well, punch was, they had... Punch is huge again, though, right? Seven enormous, after the US. Constitution was signed, they celebrated very famously with 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret or red wine, eight bottles of whiskey, 22 bottles of port, eight bottles of cider, and seven enormous bowls of punch. But they didn't say what was in them. So what was normally in the punch? Like a lot of today's rum based cocktails, it's citrus, rum, sugar. If you're trying to make kind of more of a colonial flavored cocktail or punch, I definitely recommend seeking out the right kind of sugar. So look for something that's more of a raw sugar, something that's labeled like demerara or turbinado. Those are true brown sugars that are actually not as refined. I love brown sugar. I'll eat that stuff by the spoon, man. God, I love it. Well, that molasses-y kind of flavor is definitely, it's a reoccurring theme in a lot of colonial drinks, a lot of the different things that we mentioned. I can see why, because it's good, it's delicious, yeah. And it's plentiful. Yep. And hides the flavors of your really rough hard, harsh spirit. 16:27 Apple Brandy Euphemisms Hey, let's try this Laird's, huh? Yeah. So, from New Jersey's first distillery, the oldest distillery in America. Laird's. I believe so, yeah. Well, the oldest distillery in New Jersey, anyway. 1780, I mean, we have actually both apple brandies. We have, they're both 100-proof apple brandies. One is Unaged, which they refer to as Jersey Lightning. Jersey Lightning. Jersey Lightning Apple Brandy. And the other is the classic Laird's Straight Apple Brandy, which has been made pretty much the exact way in this style for over 200 years. Cool. Very cool. So it's pretty cool that this went from a relatively unknown, somewhat obscure beverage to it's been totally embraced and loved by the cocktail movement. Yeah, Laird's has really blown up in the cocktail scene recently to the point where now some of their old expressions are on allocation. We used to always have 12-year-old Laird's Apple Brandy on the shelf all the time. Well, we can barely get it at all anymore. I think we only get a drop every year or so. This Jersey Lightning is surprisingly delicious to me. A lot of flavor comes through. It's got a very opulent mid-palate. It's a very natural smelling and tasting apple to me. A lot of times with cheap apple brandies, you might get this Jolly Rancher, imitation green apple kind of thing going on. I really like the straight apple brandy. I like that it's got this herbal backbone. It's a woody herbaceousness to it. And I like that it's got enough sugar to balance it, though. Again, it's kind of natural apple tasting, but you can definitely tell it's got barrel character and it's got barrel flavor to it. It's still bone dry. It didn't pick up any sweetness from the wood. Yeah. This is a neat spirit because I can see it appealing to a lot of people. Cognac drinkers, other brandy drinkers will like it, but I think there's an audience here for rum fans, whiskey fans. I'd like to make an old-fashioned out of this. This makes great old-fashions. Old-fashioned? Do you use a club soda in that one? He likes, you like the sour, right? Sounds like Greg has eaten a toad and a half for breakfast. That's how Benjamin Franklin would call you drunk. Benjamin Franklin was famous for coming up with euphemisms and synonyms for being sauced. That could easily be one. By the time this podcast taping is over, I'll be halfway to Concord. Looks like Greg pissed the brook this morning. Looks like Greg is wample cropped, my friends. Wample cropped. Wait, do this again without the looks like Greg. Unfortunately, Greg's been too free with Sir John Strawberry this morning. Yeah, that's my favorite one. Read it without using my name. You got to use a name to put some context to it. She's using it in a sentence. This is all of our names. I like Eight Half a Toad. Looking into the slang of the 18th, early 19th century, black guardism was the term they used for swearing or excessively lewd language. So when they would get wasted inevitably by two o'clock in the afternoon and screamed each other over articles in the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson would be like, This black guardism will not stand, sir! Or whatever the hell, I'm sure it sounded like you wimples. As his sweat would beat under his wig, you know. Excessive eating and drinking, Thomas Jefferson would call crapulous. He came up with hundreds of words. And of course, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, July 4th, 1826. You know, if you want to drink like a true patriot, you know, like a framer of the US. Constitution this 4th of July, you need to be drinking apple brandy, rye whiskey, rum, hard cider, Madeira, cherry, basically anything, you guys. Just go ahead and drink it all. Yeah. Don't think about it too much. Don't get your wigs in a twist. Don't take it too crazy, too hard because you'll die like Benjamin Harris did at a party from gout. Well, I mean, you only live once. Happy Independence Day, everybody. Yes. Happy Independence Day. From your friends at Barrel, the Bottle, the Binny's Podcast. I'm Kristin. I'm Pat. I'm Roger. I'm Greg. Keep tasting. Huzzah.