Hot winter cocktails
Ice is nice, but this winter we’re warming up to hot cocktails. Time Out puts some brew on the burner and enjoys a fistful of firewater
Best bars for hot cocktails I Recipes
Over ice, super-chilled, cold draught, ice-cold – it’s only a matter of time before a brewer comes up with a drink so frigid that it actually fuses your lips to the bottle. However, the ‘ice-cold’ drink is still a relatively new-fangled notion. Ice didn’t become commercially available in England until the 1840s, and even then it was still luxurious stuff, imported from North America in giant, crystal-clear blocks. A letter from the time tells of crowds flocking to see one such block on display in a London shop.
Before then, it was all about hot drinks – toddys, blazers, possets, mulled wine, egg nog and wassails. Not only did these drinks warm you up in the days before central heating; the heat also helped to sterilise the ingredients and was considered by some to be good for your health. Nowadays, the chief benefit of mulled wine is that it allows you to serve your guests really nasty, cheap plonk without feeling guilty.
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But a look at the drinks lists of some top London bars suggests that hot drinks are making a comeback this winter, not least as succour for smokers facing their first winter languishing on sub-zero smoking terraces.
So what the hell is a wassail anyway? Put simply, it’s a warm punch made using spiced ale or cider. In days gone by it was traditional to serve these punches with pieces of toasted bread floating on top – supposedly to improve the flavour – which some believe is the origin of the expresssion ‘to toast’. In apple-farming regions this sodden toast would then be hung in the orchard to attract robins and scare away evil spirits which might threaten the harvest – a practice that still goes on in some parts of the country.
But one can also go a-wassailing from door to door, either begging for or bearing a wassail, a process which is meant to involve lots of singing and revelry and general larking about. But if your singing’s not up to much, then The Hide in London Bridge will whip you up a cider and apple brandy wassail for £6, along with a variety of other old-school winter warmers including a fortifying stout posset made from stout, milk, cream, egg yolk and sugar, heated up with a blast of steam (£5). Egg nog, a drink you’d normally file along with bed pans and hot-water bottles, also makes an appearance here, and at a number of other bars including the exceedingly chic Prism, which offers an egg nog (£11) made with cognac, amaretto, Cherry Marnier, milk and egg yolk – think of it as a warm, boozy bakewell tart.
Beer drinkers feeling the cold should squeeze into The Rake in Borough Market for a dose of Mulled Porter (£3 for 250ml), made with a blend of light and dark ale, rum and spice. This style of drink, often fortified with eggs or cream, was particularly popular in the taverns of the eighteenth century, when it was heated up by taking a hot iron from the fire and plunging it into the mixture. These irons were known as ‘loggerheads’, and it seems highly likely that the state of ‘being at loggerheads’ was invented by a few lairy drinkers after one too many hot porters…
Another way of heating up your drink is to set fire to it – and for this we have the blazer. Invented by legendary American bartender Jerry Thomas in the mid-1800s, the original blazer involved pouring flaming alcohol backwards and forwards between two mugs – done right, the result is a spectacular arc of fire and drink with gorgeous aromas. Done wrong, the consequence is third-degree burns.
A rather safer method is described below. Otherwise, most good cocktail bars have their own take on a blazer using one of a variety of spirits. Jerry Thomas’ example was made with whiskey, sugar and a twist of lemon peel, but Pinchito Tapas in Old Street offers two alternatives: an aged rum blazer flavoured with raspberries, blackberries and orange oils (£6.50) and a Coffee Caleta Blazer which is based on a traditional Ibiza drink, and uses brandy flavoured with coffee beans, cinnamon and lemon peel (also £6.50). When it comes to mulled wine, some might say that the sticky business of making it yourself is part of the fun. But if you fancy a luxury version, settle back in the plush Library bar at The Lanesborough with a glass of their Italian-style Vin Brulet (£13.50), made with the addition of grappa, and Grand Marnier [see recipe]. Otherwise the hearty but elegant Marquess gastropub in Canonbury offers a more typically English recipe using wine, brandy, oranges, orange juice and spices (£5).Frozen smokers will no doubt be pleased to hear about the new cigar terrace at Boisdale of Belgravia, which now serves a range of whisky-focused hot drinks including a hot toddy made with Macallan ten-year-old Scotch (£8.30). Also alfresco is the pop-up bar which will sit outside Conran’s Bluebird in Chelsea throughout December. Decked out in fairy lights and candles, it will be serving hot cocktails including a hot buttered rum made with a blend of spiced rums, butter, apple juice and vanilla tea (£7) – heaters and blankets inclusive. So shivers be banished. Happy wassailing!
