Ingredients
8 ounces (one cup) sugar
6 ounces honey syrup (3:1 honey:water, whisked thoroughly)
8-12 lemons (4-5 for zest, 8 oz lemon juice)
32 ounces black tea, made with 4-5 black tea bags
8 ounces fresh squeezed lemon juice
32 ounces Jamaican rum
16 ounces cognac or American brandy
4 ounces real peach brandy, or, if you can’t find the good stuff (see below), peach-flavored brandy
Ground nutmeg or cinnamon
Directions
1
The Night Before: Make a Big Block of Ice
Early Afternoon: Make Oleo Saccharum, Lemon Juice & Tea
Combine peels of 4-5 lemons with sugar and muddle
Juice lemons to produce 8 oz, strain juice, and refrigerate
Combine 4-5 black tea bags with 32 oz boiling water and let steep (optionally pull bags after 15-20 minutes)
Mid-Afternoon: Take a Break (and Check Your Tea)
After 1-3 hours, remove tea bags from cooled tea.
Late Afternoon: Combine the Main Ingredients
2
Roughly an hour before your guests arrive, combine the remaining ingredients except the honey syrup and the ice. Start by pouring the tea over the oleo saccharum. Gently whisk the mixture to combine the tea, sugar, and citrus peels. Then add the lemon juice, cognac, rum, and peach brandy. Stir to combine, then let sit on the counter.
3
When Your Guests Arrive: Add Ice and Spice — and Adjust the Sweetness
4
Once your guests start arriving, add the big block of ice you started making the night before. If you’re going to transfer the mix to a fancy punch bowl, this is the time to do it. (If the ice block breaks up, don’t worry about it.)
5
Then lightly cover the liquid with fresh-ground nutmeg, cinnamon, or both. You should get a distinct whiff of spice on the nose, but the spice flavor should not overpower the rest of the drink. Alternatively, you can add the ground spice to the top of each individual drink.
6
Finally, as you taste the punch over the course of the evening, consider adjusting the sweetness. The punch will be tasty from the first sip, but it will also be on the strong and dry side. As it dilutes, it will grow weaker, and a bit of added sweetness can punch it up.
7
Punch is best served in small glasses, 2-4 ounces at a time.
8
Congratulations, you’ve just made a big bowl of punch. At the end of the night, you can bottle up any remainder and store it in the refrigerator for up to a week (make sure to strain out the lemon peels first.) But until then, the only task left is for you and your guests to enjoy the evening.
Notes
For the sugar, you can use ordinary white sugar, but some recipes do call for darker sugars, such as cane, turbinado, or demerara sugar. Those will produce a darker, richer punch.
For the rum, I like Appleton Estate Signature, which is inexpensive, easy to find, and delicious. For an upgrade, try Plantation Xaymaca, which is slightly pricier and has a somewhat more distinctive, complex flavor. For a bit more alcohol, try blending a few ounces of overproof Jamaican rum like Smith & Cross with the Appleton.
For the cognac, an ordinary bottle of Courvoisier VS or VSOP will do just fine. For an upgrade, try something like Hine H cognac. If you want something less expensive, you can substitute unflavored American brandy, like your trusty bottle of E&J (use VSOP or XO).
For the peach brandy: If you want to make this the “right” way, this will be the most difficult bottle to obtain. Sure, you can find bottles of Paul Masson Peach Brandy for $15 or less in most any liquor store in the country, and it will produce a tasty punch. But those inexpensive bottles are peach-flavored brandy.
What the original recipe calls for, however, is “best peach brandy.” And the peach brandy used at the time would have been brandy distilled from macerated peaches. It was a fruit-based eau de vie — almost a fruit whiskey — and it was a favorite spirit of America’s Founding Fathers, as well as a key ingredient in Fish House Punch.
A decade or two ago, it would have been nearly impossible to find such a thing. But now there are several distillers who make old style peach brandy. I keep a bottle from Catoctin Creek around. The George Washington Distillery at Mount Vernon also produces a limited edition bottling. These tend to be fairly expensive, but they are worth the price of entry. If you get one, make sure to try at least a sip or two on its own; this stuff is divine.