Black Tot Day

Today is Black Tot Day and the 45th anniversary of the last ever daily rum ration served to sailors in the Royal Navy. After over three hundred years of tradition, at six bells in the forenoon watch (11am) on 31 July 1970, ‘Up Spirits’ was piped on the Bos’n’s call and the grog tub was rolled out for the last time across the British fleet.

The rum ration had held a sacred place in the hearts of Navy sailors since it was first introduced in 1655 as part of the standard Navy rationing of beer, wine and spirits in place of tea, coffee, cocoa and water on all shifts. Until 1740 each sailor was entitled to half a pint of neat rum (40% proof) and a gallon of beer if they wanted it – and most did. 

The rum ration in particular was doled out in a ceremony announced by the Bos’n piping “Up Spirits”. At this call, senior crew members would convene at the door of the Spirit Room, the heavily padlocked home of the ship’s casks of hard liquor. Inside, the Butcher tapped a cask and drew off the day’s ration for the entire ship’s company. Neat tots were issued for the Chiefs and Petty Officers and then the remainder, in a padlocked cask or breaker, was carried to the rum tub.

At Rumcall (played on the bugle) the breaker was unlocked and emptied carefully into the oak tub, with the company arranged in reverence to its shining brass hoops and inscription of “The King – God Bless Him”.

At this point the Petty Officer would consult his ledger and grandly announce the number of tots to which each mess was entitled. Once served, the remainder was poured away down the scuppers (or snuck back to the officers’ cabins).

By 1740, however, Admiral ‘Old Grogram’ Vernon had decided that drunkenness was a scourge up with which the Navy should not put and introduced a ‘Grog’ of 4 parts water to 1 part rum.

However even this dilution was not enough to keep the sailors in a shipshape condition. By 1745 the Navy had decided to cut back on mixing their drinks and moved to issue beer and spirit rations on alternate days. Eleven years later, the thoughtful addition of lime to the rum further mitigated the effects of the Grog and also had the benefit of guarding against scurvy, although it did give the British the nickname of Limeys.

By 1810 it was clear that the Admiralty was taking its dipsological responsibilities seriously as they codified the rum blend to be used across the fleet (thus creating Navy Rum and a recipe still used by Lamb’s to this day) and by 1824 space considerations were clearly more of a concern and the ration was halved to a quarter pint per man (also known as a tot). This freed up more space in the hold for limes, cannonballs, cabin boys and all the ephemera of a modern naval force.

Again, in 1850, Parliament raised concerns about the level of drinking on the high seas and proposed the abolition of the rum ration. Fortunately common sense prevailed and in some presumably excellent negotiations, the decision was made to merely halve the ration to 1/8 pint per sailor per day, to be served once a day, rather than twice, at noon.

Finally on Black Tot Day the ration itself was abolished in an occasion of great solemnity and mourning; some sailors wore black armbands, and some tots were buried at sea.  It was widely accepted that the extra can of beer that had been added to daily rations was scant compensation.

Genuine Navy Grog

1. Add four parts water to one part navy rum.  Add lime (post 1756) and enjoy.

Modern Navy Grog

1. Dissolve three teaspoons of honey in 50ml rum.
2. Add 10ml fresh lime juice, two dashes of Angostura bitters and 50ml water.
3. Add cubed ice and shake for twenty seconds.
4. Strain into an ice filled old fashioned glass and garnish with a wedge of lime

Papa Doble

“I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks?” —”Hills Like White Elephants,” Men Without Women, 1927

Just two days after National Daiquiri Day we celebrate the birthday of Ernest Hemingway. Surely that can’t be a coincidence? Today, Hemingway’s legacy owes almost as much to his reputation as a heavy drinker as it does to his short, sharp writing style which has been credited with reinventing American literature, although the two were always heavily intertwined. When I first read The Sun Also Rises I tabbed every page where a character took a drink and ran out of Post It notes before I was halfway through.

“In The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes has a Jack Rose while waiting in vain for Brett. In A Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry has a couple of “cool and clean” Martinis; they made him “feel civilized.” and in For Whom the Bell Tolls, it is the ritual of dripped absinthe that gives Robert Jordan temporary solace from the rigours of war: “One cup of it took the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in cafés, of all chestnut trees that would be in bloom now in this month.… of all the things he had enjoyed and forgotten and that came back to him when he tasted that opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy.”” – Philip Greene, To Have and Have Another

As for the heavy drinking reputation, most of it comes from the man himself and his proud tales of record-breaking sessions at La Florida Bar, Havana. During the decades he lived and holidayed in Cuba, Hemingway spent the majority of his time holding court at the bar affectionately known as La Floridita after a chance visit had convinced him that the house daiquiri was “the ultimate achievement of the daiquiri-maker’s art”. Nevertheless, he requested a couple of tweaks (double the rum and skip the sugar) and the Papa Doble was born. Although his recipe has been tweaked again more recently to create the more palatable Hemingway Daiquiri or even the modern Doble to which it is also common to add a little sugar (not everyone has a palate like Papa…) today, in his honour, we go back to the original. The hardcore. The not for the faint-hearted. The ‘I’ll have six of these of an average afternoon’: The Papa Doble.

1. Add 110ml white rum, 70ml fresh lime juice, 120ml fresh grapefruit juice and six dashes of Maraschino to a blender of shaved ice.
2. Frappe until it looks “like the sea where the wave falls away from the bow of a ship when she is doing thirty knots”.
3. Serve in a large wine goblet.

Most people would shy away from a drink that contains 110ml of rum. Most people would fall off their stools after an evening session of six of these. And who but the man himself could handle the record-beating sixteen he once put away in one session?

Maybe it’s the crushed ice that does it. The original recipe calls for the drink to be blended “until it foams” and the author himself claimed the finished product “had no taste of alcohol and felt, as you drank them, the way downhill glacier skiing feels running through powder snow.”

Corpse Reviver #2

Photo courtesy of Rubin Starset

“Four of these taken in quick succession will un-revive the corpse again.” – Harry Craddock, Savoy Cocktail Book, 1930

One of the classic early morning cocktails, the Corpse Reviver #2 was originally considered a hangover cure of sorts.  An eye-opener, or hair of the dog style drink of classic provenance, it appears the sharp citrus flavours were seen by the bon viveurs of the 1920s as the ideal tonic to a night of overindulgence.  Of course these days we rely on non-alcoholic lemon shower gel to provide the same citrus tingle.  Shame.

The other overriding flavour of the Corpse Reviver is absinthe, interestingly a common ingredient in other early morning drinks (see also the Morning Glory) and used here as a dry counterpoint to the sharp citrus and the floral gin botanicals.

So why the #2?  Well the original Corpse Reviver is a cognac, calvados and vermouth concoction, and hasn’t aged as well, or with as much popularity as the second in the series.  Many bars have come up with #3s, #4s and beyond, but none are as perfectly balanced and silently lethal as the tart and sweet, gin-based version.

1. Rinse a martini glass with a teaspoon of absinthe and discard the excess.
2. Shake equal parts gin, triple sec, Lillet Blanc (or Cocchi Americano) and lemon juice with cubed ice for twenty seconds.
3. Double strain into the absinthe-rinsed glass.
4. Garnish with a twist of lemon.

Death in the Afternoon

Photo courtesy of Kenn Wilson, some rights reserved.

Today is National Absinthe Day (in the US at least), and what better way to celebrate than with a quick post about one of literature’s great cocktails.  Ian Fleming may have given us the Vesper, but Ernest Hemingway went a few steps further down the road to decadence when he created Death in the Afternoon.

The cocktail, named after Hemingway’s book about the history and practice of bull-fighting, was created in 1935 for So Red the Nose, Or Breath in the Afternoon, a collection of new cocktail recipes proposed by famous authors of the time.  Hemingway’s instructions were as follows:

“Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly.”

The great author was credited with the creation of a number of other cocktails, but it was Death in the Afternoon which was said to be his favourite after he developed a taste for the bohemian concoction whilst living in Paris.

Variants of the recipe also include the addition of sugar and bitters (we can’t stray too far from our original bittered sling after all, and what better decadent replacement for water than champagne?), lemon juice, or a garnishing rose petal.