The Spirits #51: Brandy Milk Punch

~ "Brandy and milk, folks!" ~ Nutmeg importance ~ An interview with me! ~ C.R.E.A.M. ~ Only connect ~

Nov 05, 2021

📚 THE SPIRITS (i.e. the book that inspired this newsletter) is available once more! You can find it at: Bookshop.org, Foyles, Blackwells, Hive, Waterstones, Amazon and even WH Smith. Makes a great Christmas present, just saying.

~ BRANDY MILK PUNCH ~

50ml brandy
15ml cinnamon-infused syrup
125ml full-fat milk
Dash vanilla extract (optional)
Nutmeg

I want you to put the brandy, syrup, milk and possibly vanilla in the shaker, now. Throw in just a single ice cube and ‘whip shake’ for 30 seconds or so - this will give you decent froth and not to much dilution. Now throw in a bunch of extra ice, give it another 3-second shake to cool it and strain through a tea-strainer into a pretty glass. Grate some fresh nutmeg over the top.

Some Brandy Milk Punch notes:

1) Almond milk is fine here, my vegan friends, as is oat milk, hazelnut milk, etc (though soy milk is trash). You can also replace, ooh, ~50ml of the milk with cream, if you want things a little richer.

2) Basic sugar syrup is traditional in a Milk Punch but I reckon this benefits from a little spice, and cinnamon takes it in a pleasing, horchata-type direction. I actually made a green cardamom and cinnamon syrup for the cocktail above; a regular 2:1 sugar syrup made with golden caster sugar with a few pods and sticks thrown in, simmered for a minute or two and then left to infuse for a few hours. If you have vanilla syrup left over from Porn Star week, that might be worth using too.

3) A lot of the old timey Milk Punches combines brandy and dark rum for the base. So by all means, throw in 15ml or so of rum if you fancy.

4) And be generous with that nutmeg. It’s the crucial part of the drink. Has to be freshly grated nutmeg too; if all you have is the powdered stuff, throw it into the bin and use cocoa or cinnamon instead.

HELLO. Woah! Busy tonight! Never mind, there’s plenty of room if we all shuffle along…

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CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST!

I am the journalist Richard Godwin and this is my cocktail newsletter. You will find instructions for making sugar syrup, grenadine, orgeat ice, etc here and my 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS here. I have also assembled some bottle recommendations here - and here is the full archive of past cocktails. Scroll to the bottom of this page to find out what to get in for next week’s special.

Please consider hitting the SUBSCRIBE button to become a member of the ✨THE CABINET✨. This way you will learn about exciting things like Maraschino and Green Chartreuse and Apricot Brandy. Oh and if you opt for the priciest ‘Founding Member’ option, I’ll send you a signed copy of my book with your very own bespoke recipe in it.

Please share The Spirits with anyone you reckon might be into this sort of thing. And feel free to @ me with your creations!

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MILK plus alcohol feels wrong somehow, two liquids that shouldn’t really be running into each other like this. It’s the adult world corrupting the infantile - the briefcase in the nursery; the exasperated parent slipping a little gin into their baby’s bottle. Or maybe it’s the infantile undermining the adult. Like when you reach for your revolver and pull out one of your kid’s toy dinosaurs. We’ve all been there.

The wrongness surely lies in milk’s childish connotations. Milk is what we were weaned on (assuming we’re all mammals here). Alcohol is what we’re crawling to. “Civilisation begins with distillation”, said William Faulkner. And yet they’re so delicious together. Also: a baby bottle makes a handy cocktail shaker if you’re in a tight spot. Why, it has all the measurements written handily up the side! It cannot be a coincidence, either, that a standard scoop of milk powder requires 30ml water to dilute it. That’s a shot.

Anyway, I always think there’s something louche, something a little arrested development-y about drinking alcohol and milk in the same glass. It isn’t exactly a grown-up thing for a person to drink. There’s no more famous milk drinker than The Dude in the Coen brothers’ cult comedy The Big Lebowski, who spends the whole movie drinking White Russians in his dressing gown. If he has become an international icon, it’s not because of his whole-hearted embrace of adult responsibility. And then there’s that famous story about John Lennon being introduced to Brandy Alexanders by Harry Nilsson at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. This was during his ‘lost weekend’, which lasted for most of 1974-75. “After one he was everybody’s friend,” recalled one observer. “After three he was nasty drunk.” Lennon ended up being thrown out of the club. He tried to explain his behaviour a few months later on the Old Grey Whistle Test. “It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders. That’s brandy and milk, folks!”

I wish I could lose a weekend that lasted two years.

Anyway. Pedants will note that the Brandy Alexander is not brandy and milk, but brandy, cream and crème de cacao (which just so happens to be the next ingredient I’ll be covering in The Cabinet…) Brandy and milk would be Milk Punch, the forefather of both the Alexander and the White Russian, which dates back to the 18th century at least.

One of these days, closer to Christmas perhaps, I’m going to show you how to make a proper old fashioned Clarified Milk Punch, which is a whole other delicious thing altogether and takes a bit of effort. But Brandy Milk Punch is… well, it’s brandy and milk, folks! It’s easy to make and to drink.

It’s a speciality of New Orleans, where it’s usually served as a brunch drink. Certainly, it provides a little morning uplift, which is presumably why John Lee Hooker is prescribed it in the song Serves Me Right to Suffer (“My doctor put me on / Milk, cream and alcohol”). However, to my mind it works better as a dessert drink, the sort of thing you’ll have after dinner but then could find yourself drinking long into a night at the card tables. (Or in front of Succession). Traditionally, it’s shaken and served with crushed ice but I happen to think water melting into milk isn’t nice, so I prefer to serve it strained.

I tell you what it is? It’s nice. It’s dangerously nice. It’s accidently drink eight of them and get thrown out the club nice.

Public service announcement#1!
There’s a great Death & Co drink called The Ingénue if you want something else to do with your cinnamon syrup: 60ml brandy, 30ml Italian vermouth, one teaspoon of cinnamon syrup, stirred and served up like a Manhattan. Contains no milk.

Public service announcement #2!
As a lactose-intolerant vegetarian-aspiring lover-of-cheese, I was delighted to discover earlier this year that Gruyère, Comté and also Gorgonzola are actually fine for members of our community. If you are having one of us over for dinner, please note that Parmesan is good too, as are any goat, sheep, or water buffalo cheeses (Roquefort, Ossau d’Iraty, mozzarella di bufala…) Please! No more vegan cheese. I love vegans, but that stuff is just disgusting.

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PLAYLIST

Dairy Products! From Milk Cow Blues to C.R.E.A.M. via Blue Cheese and Buttermilk. I was a little disappointed, however, that I couldn’t find an acceptable song about yoghurt.

THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download it and return to it each week in your Spotify. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the ongoing archive of 2021 playlists.

WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

I interviewed Tessa Thompson about her new film Passing (which I highly recommend for its depiction of 1930s Harlem as much as the central performances, by the way). It’s not always the case that you have an actual conversation in these circumstances but we found a sympathetic frequency and she had lots of interesting things to say on persona, identity and what was going on with Rita Ora and Taika Waititi that afternoon. (ES Magazine)

I also wrote an article about my hometown Bristol’s much-vaunted “most-green-city-in-Britain” status and whether that is really justified. (The Sunday Times)

And most excitingly of all, THE SPIRITS (this newsletter) was featured in Substack’s WHAT TO READ column this week! Thanks Substack! This was a pleasing opportunity for me to reflect on one whole year of writing this thing. Thanks so much to all my regular patrons - and welcome to all the new ones! See below 👇