A Drink for the Season...and The Ages

New England Almanac, 1704 December-

"The days are short, the weather's cold, By tavern fires, tales are told. Some ask for dram when first come in, others with flip and bounce begin."

A flip was a colonial mixed drink first mentioned in New England, 1690. The drink was very popular in Colonial America, as illustrated by Washington's expense reports. General Isreal Putman, famed leader of the Bunker Hill Battle, had his own personal rules for mixing. John Adams was reported to have said, "if you spent the evening in a tavern, you found it full of people drinking drams of flip, carousing, and swearing."


Abbott's Tavern at Holden, Massachusetts Bill 1763-

"Mug New England Flip . . . . . 9d.


Mug West India Flip . . . . . 11d.

Lodging per night . . . . . 3d.

Pot luck per meal . . . . . 8d.


Boarding commons Men . . . . . 4s. 8d.

Boarding commons Weomen . . . 2s."

Two Recipes of many-

1. "Keep grated Ginger and Nutmeg with a fine dried Lemon Peel rubbed together in a Mortar. To make a quart of Flip: Put the Ale on the Fire to warm, and beat up three or four Eggs with four ounces of moist Sugar, a teaspoonful of grated Nutmeg or Ginger, and a Quartern of good old Rum or Brandy. When the Ale is near to boil, put it into one pitcher, and the Rum and Eggs, etc., into another: turn it from one Pitcher to another till it is as smooth as cream. To heat plunge in the red hot Loggerhead or Poker. This quantity is styled One Yard of Flannel." 

2. "A great pewter mug or earthen pitcher filled two-thirds full of strong beer; sweetened with sugar, molasses, or dried pumpkin, according to individual taste or capabilities; and flavored with `a dash' -about a gill- of New England rum. Into this mixture a red hot loggerhead, made of iron and heated in the fire, was thrust."

A quartern is a quarter of a gill, which is about the "dash" of rum." 

The flip with eggs was often called a "Bellowstop".  Unfortunately, loggerheads are tough to come by so I will be using a poker.

James Lowell 1868-

"Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred Strange fancies in its embers golden dred, And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip, timed by wise instinct, creamed the bowl of flip”