Tag Archives: Rum

Feb 10 2015
11 Comments
Germany

Feuerzangenbowle and how to make your own Zuckerhut

Feuerzangenbowle in Alaska 2014

Feuerzangenbowle in Alaska 2014

I’ve written about the German winter tradition Feuerzangenbowle (aka “fire tongue punch”) before. In my post last year, I explained (eerily familiar these days when you look at the East Coast):

“Yet another “polar vortex” sweeping the Midwest is giving me a chance to write a post that I thought would have to wait until next winter. I meant to write it before Christmas, but then life got in between. So I relish this chance that Mother Nature has provided me with. Why could I only write this post in utter cold? Because of tradition…but let me begin:

If you type “Feuerzangenbowle” into Google, you will find a gazillion of hits for this term. Other bloggers, like John The Food and Wine Hedonist and Julian of Vino in Love, have written about it before, so I want to keep the intro part rather short. Feuerzangenbowle, usually translated as “Fire Tongue Punch”, is a German winter tradition. Most English-speakers are familiar with “Glühwein” aka mulled wine, and Feuerzangenbowle is an extension of mulled wine.” To be more precise, it’s pimped version of mulled wine.

If current weather conditions make you want to throw a party and impress your guests with a show of fire and light as well as a tasty mulled wine, this is what you need: a burner, mulled wine, sugar loafs or hats (in German: Zuckerhut), some metal rack (to set the sugar onto), minimum 50 proof rum, a metal ladle, and a lighter. The final product will be sugar drenched in rum that is lit up sitting atop a pot of mulled wine. It makes for quite the spectacle.

First up, you need some form of hardened sugar. In Germany, we use a Zuckerhut, a cone shaped loaf of sugar that fits perfectly on the tongues that are used to hold it above the mulled wine. It’s hard or expensive to get them in Germany, and I have experimented a lot with how to replace it. We’re throwing at least one Feuerzangenbowle party in Alaska each year, and usually one in Ann Arbor as well (like this past weekend). Initially, I played with adding a bunch of water to sugar and then putting it into the oven at a rather low temperature. The problem with that is that it can caramelize the sugar and then it burns down much harder (as happened to me this year in Alaska, where the sugar was so hard that the flames turned into a greenish color – pretty, but not what you want).

When I told Nina my dilemma, she did a Google search and found the perfect solution: a Youtube video. Not that I couldn’t have thought of that. The three minute video shows how easy it is to make your own sugar cones. Mix a cup of sugar with a teaspoon of water. Mix well with a fork, the sugar will resemble damp sand. Then take a champagne or beer flute or martini glass, put in a third of the sugar, use a muddler to press the sugar firmly, criss-cross the top of the sugar with the fork to loosen it a bit and ensure the next round will stick to this round, add another third of sugar, repeat and repeat again. Then flip the glass on parchment paper, tap the glass, and let it sit over night. It worked perfectly! I was very happy with the consistency of this cone, just right.

For the mulled wine, combine a box of Franzia Zinfandel (or any other cheap wine of choice) with 8 sticks of cinnamon, three oranges and three lemons cut in wheels, and some vanilla aroma. Heat up, but don’t let it boil (it will ruin the flavor).

When everything is ready, put the wine pot on a burner, set up the rack on top of the pot, put a cone or two on the rack (I use two cones of a cup of sugar each per wine box of 5 liters). Dim the lights in the room. Pour rum over the cones to drench them. Pour rum in the ladle and light it up. Pour the burning rum over the cones. You might need to light up the cones separately to get them started. Once they are burning, add more rum as you see fit. The sugar will drip into the mulled wine, there will be small fires of rum and sugar sitting on top of the mulled wine, giving the orange and lemon wheels a nice burn. Once the sugar is burned down after a couple of minutes, remove the rack, and start serving the mulled wine.

The mix is potent, so watch out. But it’s also SO good. Here’s to getting through the winter in style!

Feuerzangenbowle (as captured by The Food and Wine Hedonist)

Feuerzangenbowle (as captured by The Food and Wine Hedonist)

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Jan 28 2014
28 Comments
Germany

How’s that for a tongue twister: Feuerzangenbowle

Die Feuerzangenbowle (Photo from Wikipedia)

Yet another “polar vortex” sweeping the Midwest is giving me a chance to write a post that I thought would have to wait until next winter. I meant to write it before Christmas, but then life got in between. So I relish this chance that Mother Nature has provided me with. Why could I only write this post in utter cold? Because of tradition…but let me begin:

If you type “Feuerzangenbowle” into Google, you will find a gazillion of hits for this term. Other bloggers, like John The Food and Wine Hedonist and Julian of Vino in Love, have written about it before, so I want to keep the intro part rather short. Feuerzangenbowle, usually translated as “Fire Tongue Punch”, is a German winter tradition. Most English-speakers are familiar with “Glühwein” aka mulled wine, and Feuerzangenbowle is an extension of mulled wine.

I never knew it existed until I entered University. One late November evening, my friends and I were talked into attending a screening of the movie with the same title. It’s a very ambivalent movie: It was shot and aired in 1944, a feel good movie to keep the German population distracted from the War, with one of Germany’s most popular actors Heinz Rühmann. It is set in the early 1900s and basically tells the story of an adult man going back to school in order to experience what school feels like. This in the day and age when German high school was pretty much the equivalent of American college…the movie is funny, and has become a classic. Why is it named Feuerzangenbowle? Because the idea to go back to school developed over an annual meeting of some older guys who love to reminisce about their school days while drinking the punch…you can read more about the movie on Wikipedia here.

Even without the movie, making Feuerzangenbowle is fun, and it is great to share with others. You need only a few ingredients, some of which are hard to get in the US: You need a bowl of mulled wine; alcohol (preferably rum) of over 100 proof; a fire tongue; and a sugar cone. While mulled wine and  rum are easy to find, a fire tongue and a sugar cone are actually pretty hard to get. When we made it before Christmas, we borrowed the set that John owns which comes with a fire tongue which looks like this:

A Fire Tongue (Photo credit: http://www.edelstahlbecher.de)

The other ingredient is the “sugar hat” or “sugar loaf”, which fits exactly on the fire tongue. It was the standard shape in which sugar was sold in Germany for the first half of the 20th century, and since the punch originated then it became the standard shape for Feuerzangenbowle. It looks like this:

A Zuckerhut (via http://www.diamant-zucker.de)

But fear not, when I recreated Feuerzangenbowle in late December in Alaska, I had neither a fire tongue nor a sugar cone. Trust me, it is doable without these, so that should not stop you! Like I said, it is visually quite stunning and very tasty. The way it works is that the sugar sits on the tongue on top of the mulled wine. It gets drained with rum, then you light the sugar on fire. As the alcohol burns off, it melts the sugar which drips into the mulled wine. It seriously looks like Northern Lights when the flames drip into the wine. Keep adding rum to the sugar to keep it burning (watch out for the flames might go up higher than anticipated!), and don’t be shy. Some will burn off, the remainder will just make the punch better! :) Once the sugar is melted, just take off the tongue and start serving the mulled wine in cups.

This is what it looked like when John made it in 2012:

Feuerzangenbowle at its best (Photo credit: The Food and Wine Hedonist)

I replaced the tongue with a cooling rack for baked goods and made my own sugar cone. It wasn’t cone shaped, but rather shaped like the bowl I made it in, but it was ridiculously easy to make: I just combined a cup of sugar with four spoons of water for each 3 quarts of wine I had. Once the sugar is combined with water, set it aside and let it dry out over night. If your environment is too humid, you can put it in the oven at a low temperature (150 degrees or so) to dry it out quicker. Just don’t let the sugar glaze. And there you have your lump of sugar you need.

My mulled wine recipe is fairly simple: Combine a box of Franzia Zinfandel with 8 sticks of cinnamon, three oranges and three lemons cut in wheels, and some vanilla aroma. Heat, but don’t let boil (it will ruin the flavor).

Put the cooling rack on top of the pot, set the sugar on top, turn off the light, drain in rum, light, and there you go. See? It’s really easy and now you have no more excuses not to try it because I told you how to proceed without a fire tongue and a sugar cone. Give it a try while the polar vortex is getting us. I promise, it warms you from the inside like nothing else. But beware, it can be quite potent….and this is what it ended up looking like in Alaska:

Feuerzangenbowle Homemade

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Jul 17 2013
12 Comments
Guest Blogging

Talk-a-Vino: Liquid Pleasures Beyond Wine – Rum

Somewhere, beyond the Sea

Somewhere, beyond the Sea

This is the fourth post in my summer 2013 guest blogging series with the theme “Somewhere, Beyond the Sea”. Let me briefly introduce today’s blogger: Anatoli Levine, the man behind Talk-a-Vino. In his blog, that seems to have been around since the earliest days of wine blogging, Anatoli explores his passion for wine and everything surrounding it. He is a fountain of knowledge, and the saying among some of us that “following Anatoli’s advice means you’re on a good way” could not be truer. What impresses me most on his blog is the number 470. The current count of grapes he hast tried. Isn’t that amazing? I was excited when Anatoli offered me to republish this post which was originally written for the now-defunct Art of Life Magazine in 2011, because I do have a weak spot for rum. Thank you, Anatoli, for always broadening my horizon!

Liquid Pleasures Beyond Wine – Rum

In this series exploring the world of liquid pleasures beyond wine , we already talked about Cognac, Scotch and Whiskey – is there anything else left in the world of spirits which deserves our attention? Yes, there are still quite a few things worth our attention. Particularly, today we will take a look at past and present of Rum.

Interestingly enough, Rum has probably most significant involvement into the history of humankind, more than any other spirit. Bold claim, you say? Let’s take a look.

History of Rum starts at around 1500s, when sugar cane was brought to Caribbean islands by Spanish conquistadors. Caribbean islands happened to have an ideal climate for growing the sugar cane, and the area became a big producer of sugar. After sugar is made, the retaining mass, called molasses, was still containing a lot of sugar. Mixed with water and left under the tropical sun, it was found to start fermenting. Once distilled, this is what became known as Rum.

Rum became a drink of choice for the sailors. During the long sea voyage, water supply was quickly getting spoiled with algae. In order to make water more palatable to drink, some amount of beer was added. Sometime in the middle of 17th century, the Rum started to make its way on board of Britain Royal Navy ships – it stayed as an official Royal Navy drink until 1970, even though the ration was quite diluted with water over time. As you might remember from the folklore, pirates also embraced Rum as their symbolic beverage, which finds its reflection even in the songs, such as “Yo ho ho and a bottle Rum”.

Sad part of the Rum’s history is related to the slave trade, a triangle of sorts. Molasses had being shipped to England, where they had being used to produce Rum. Rum then was sent to Africa, where it was exchanged for the slaves, which were in turn sent to Caribbean to work on sugar cane plantations. This triangle was broken with American Revolution. At about the same time, making sugar from beets became economically feasible in Europe, which reduced the need for cane sugar and subsequently lead to lesser production of molasses. Also Whiskey started to increase in popularity in United States. All these events lead to substantial drop in demand for Rum, reaching all times minimum in the first half of the 20th century.

Increase in tourism in the second half of the 20th century, coupled with improvements in methods and technology, lead to gradual increase of the interest in Rum in the second half of the 20th century. As many other spirits, Rum started to be aged in different types of the wooden casks, which lead to increased availability of sipping Rums.

Rum production and classification is not really regulated, as each Caribbean island has its own style of production. In general, Rum is made either from molasses or sugar cane juice, which is fermented with additional of water and different types of yeast. After fermentation, the liquid is distilled (again, there are no specific requirements for the number of distillations or the distillation methods). Once distilled, there are few choices for making the final product. If so called Light Rum is being produced, then different batches can be blended together to produce beverage with consistent taste. If Dark Rum is desired, process of ageing in the oak barrels will take place after distillation. Ageing can take anywhere from 3 to 23 or 25 years. After ageing, additional blending process is still possible, again, depending on the style. One more popular style is called Spiced Rum, which is produced by adding spices to so called Gold Rum, which is a lightly aged version of Light Rum. Both Light Rum and Spiced Rum are typically used in the cocktails, while Dark Rum are perfect for sipping in most of cases.

Practically all islands in Caribbean produce their own versions of Rum, with Appleton Estate being one of the most famous rums producers on Jamaica; Mount Gay Distillery is one of the most famous producers from Barbados, also probably one of the oldest in the world (operating from second half of the 17th century). Dominican Republic, Trinidad, Haiti, Guatemala and many other islands produce Rum of different styles and ever increasing quality. If you only had Rum in the cocktails until now, this is about the time to change it. Go find a bottle of 21 years old Zafra from Panama or 23 years old Ron Zacapa from Guatemala and see for yourself how good Rum might taste. Cheers!

Choices, choices...

Choices, choices…

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