The Jersey Lightning Recipe
Adapted from Philip Ward
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Philip Ward of Death & Co on New York’s Lower East Side concocted this addictive punch. Mix up a batch for your next party, but be forewarned: A few too many cups will leave you feeling like you’ve been struck by lightning!
This recipe was featured as part of both our story on The Return of Punch and our Punch Recipes photo gallery.
INGREDIENTS
- 36 sugar cubes
- 3 1/3 cups soda water
- 2 1/3 cups applejack, such as Laird’s
- 1 1/4 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1 1/4 cups Tea-Infused Vermouth
- 36 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
- 6 cups ice
- Apple slices and cinnamon sticks, for garnish
INSTRUCTIONS
- Combine sugar cubes and 1 cup of the soda water in a large bowl and muddle until the sugar breaks up. Add applejack, lemon juice, vermouth, bitters, and ice and stir to chill.
- Strain over a large block of ice into a punch bowl. Add remaining soda water, and garnish with apple slices and cinnamon sticks.
What about making it with a simple syrup?
Yah muddling the sugar cubes is completely pointless.
Er, dashes *from* the bottle *into* the bowl.
Stilton, with bitters you're best off doing dashes into the bottle. By the time you pry off the little thing that lets you do just a dash into a drink, you could have already dashed 36 dashes of Peychaud's into the bowl. A dash is usually around 1/8 teaspoon, so 36 dashes would be 1-1/2 tablespoons.
And really, you can skip muddling the sugar cubes in favor of using 3/4 cups of sugar; in this case, muddling sugar cubes with soda water is going to make the soda go flat in a hurry.
What's 36 dashes in tablespoons?