I tried Britain’s forgotten drinks | Grog, Mead + more! 🍻

Purposely curdling milk is a horrible thing to watch when you know you’re going to drink the result. I was making clarified English milk punch, and before I’d even tasted it, the sight of the curds made my stomach turn. This was supposed to be a fun experiment with historical British drinks.

I like British history and trying new things, so I’d bought ingredients for a collection of old drinks. I was nervous before I started, but the first tastes were much better than I’d expected. Then came the milk.

Watch my historical British drinks experiment on YouTube.

The easy start

I began with a bottle of traditional mead made in Wales. Its gold-speckled label was shiny and lovely, which has absolutely nothing to do with the taste but did matter to me. I chose the traditional version rather than a flavoured one.

It was smooth, sweet and delicate without being too heavy. I thought of it as a dessert tipple, something to enjoy in a small amount rather than a pint. Starting with something this good made me worry that everything else would go downhill.

The spiced wine proved me wrong. I used white wine we already had and left it overnight with cinnamon, ginger, clove, pepper, nutmeg and rosemary. My ground nutmeg made the mixture look pretty heinous, and I used a coffee filter because we didn’t have cheesecloth.

Once I’d added the sugar and strained it, it reminded me of mulled wine. I’d had white mulled wine at Christmas markets before, so that part was familiar, though the rosemary was a less usual addition. I really liked the spices. The sugar was another matter. If I made it again, I’d use less because it was a bit too sweet for me.

Cream, eggs and a Christmas mug

Sack posset sent me over to the hob with cream, eggs, sugar, spices and a medium-dry fortified wine I’d bought at Tesco. I was stressed about this one, particularly when I thought I might have made scrambled eggs.

The mixture thickened, though I wasn’t convinced it was as thick as it should be. I ran out of patience and put it in an old German Christmas market mug. With the cream and nutmeg, it seemed close enough to eggnog to deserve the mug.

It tasted creamy, rich and very sweet. I was intrigued rather than disgusted, but I wanted more flavour alongside all that cream. More cinnamon and nutmeg would have suited me. It was pretty good as it stood, even with my doubts about what I’d just cooked.

Grog was mostly water

A Townsends video about grog had started this whole idea. For my first version, I mixed dark rum with four times as much water. It tasted much more like water than rum, which wasn’t exactly a shock given what I’d put in the mug.

I then added a little sugar and fresh lime. The lime made a huge difference, although it was still mostly water. My sad rum had become a little less sad.

Oxford Punch Royal was the other extreme. I combined lemon peel, sugar, hot water, lemon juice, dark rum and ruby port. It was drinkable and interesting, but very strong and tart. Even bringing my nose near the glass gave me that burning alcohol sensation. This was a much less gentle taste than the mead.

The milk punch had the last word

For the milk punch, I’d left cognac and lemon peel together overnight, then added sugar and fresh lemon juice. That already sounded wonderful to me. The next part involved adding hot milk, watching it curdle and filtering the mixture after it cooled.

Looking at it was enough to make me feel ill. I kept thinking of a mince pie taste test years ago when I’d eaten so many that I broke out in a cold sweat. This was a close second, and I hadn’t even taken a sip.

The filter kept the curds while the drink underneath became clear and pale yellow. It looked nothing like the mixture I’d been dreading.

And it was really good. Despite that light colour, it still had a deep cognac flavour and lemon, and it tasted strong. I loved it. After all the time I’d spent trying to pretend the curdled milk wasn’t there, I couldn’t quite believe the finished drink.

The mead was lovely from the first sip, but the milk punch gave me the biggest surprise. I went from struggling to look at it to wanting to drink it. What the hell.