Cocktail to try: Milk Punch
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
As drinkers, we romanticize the past — a time when the world seemed populated by beautiful ingénues and dashing criminals and a cut-crystal decanter of whiskey was always in arms reach. A time when people knew how to drink. And how to make drinks.
But hindsight is 20/20, and the lives of our liquor-swilling forbearers weren’t all juleps and buttered rum. Pre-Prohibition, you didn’t have a refrigerator unless your last name was Gatsby or Rockefeller, a challenge that had given rise to the practice of preserving milk in acidified alcohol as early as the 17th century. In other words, milk punch.
“The process was developed out of necessity,” explains Vincent Stipo, who crafts the fine milk punch at Vernick. “People would use a classic punch recipe and combine it with heated milk that would otherwise go bad.”
But wait — combining hot milk with an alcoholic punch. Wouldn’t that … curdle?
“It curdles instantly,” says Stipo. “But as it settles over a few days, it separates naturally. Then you filter out the milk solids and you’re left with a clarified punch.”
The milk punch Stipo is currently making at Vernick starts with Batavia arrack — “100 proof so the integrity of the alcohol doesn’t get lost in the citrus and sugar” — and smoked black tea leaves, which “add depth and character.” The two infuse, then Stipo introduces orange peel, ginger and toasted and ground allspice and black pepper for a secondary infusion. The flavored rum gets blended with fresh lime, fresh yuzu and a vanilla-lime caramel to make a punch that would be perfectly quaffable on its own. That’s when the hot milk comes in, curdling the punch on contact. After settling and straining, Stipo bottles the clear 24-carat elixir and stores it in the fridge. Once chilled, it goes right from bottle to cup.
“It’s a delicious, well-crafted batch drink. In a business sense, it’s a high-quality drink that’s really easy to sell,” he says.
It’s also something of a mind fuck — a drink that’s clear to the eye but possesses a luscious, creamy mouth feel. No wonder Stipo is already on his seventh batch.
For Stipo's milk punch recipe head over here.
