Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, Mulled Apple Cider!

Sort of a warm apple hug for the holidays. We could use one.

This garnish was a pain, but so worth it.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. Let’s squeeze in one more winter holiday drink for the crowd before Christmas hits. Time to make some mulled cider for holidays … with a tiny bit of a tiki twist, mind you. I always forget how good this drink is until the season rolls around. Time for some Mulled Apple Cider. Here’s the recipe:

Mulled Apple Cider

5 cups fresh cider

1 large Gala apple, sliced

½ navel orange, sliced

½ lemon, sliced

¼ cup brown sugar

½ cup pineapple juice

3 cinnamon sticks

6-8 allspice berries

4-5 whole cloves

3 oz. Appleton Estate Rum

3 oz. apple brandy

Place all ingredients except for the alcohol into a large saucepan. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add rum and brandy. Strain into warmed serving glasses.

Mulled drinks probably qualify as the oldest “cocktail” in human history. Mulling wine dates back to Roman times, and cider has certainly been mulled as often as wine. Adding spice and sugar to lousy wine is a good way to make bad wine taste good. Heating the wine extracts more oils from the citrus and spice, making the drink even tastier. Fresh cider rarely needs the same treatment to become palatable, but there’s something about baking spices, citrus, and apple that’s pure magic. It’s no wonder this drink has never gone out of style.

I think of this version of mulled cider as a Colonial American take on the beverage. Pineapples have been a symbol of hospitality in America for a long time, and a splash of pineapple juice gives this drink a sunny, tropical touch. Jamaican rum is also a natural here — it pairs wonderfully with fruit. The apple brandy is an obvious choice, but any aged liquor will be fine. Brandy, bourbon, whiskey, and even a reposado tequila will be at home here. The heat will not remove the alcohol from the beverage; you’d need to bring the cider to a full boil for that. But as time goes on, the alcohol will mellow in the cocktail until it’s nearly undetectable. If you’d like to make this a non-alcoholic offering for a party night, leave out the rum and brandy and replace them with an equal amount of fresh cider.

While we’re talking about time, I should note that this punch does degrade over time. I’m not a fan of the all-day Crock Pot bowl of cider. Eventually the apple slices break down into sauce and the bright citrus flavors from the lemon and orange degrade. Without the citrus, the drink becomes dull and heavy. The cider might survive being refrigerated overnight with a quick lemon squeeze the next day. I’ll try it and find out. This drink is too tasty to simply throw away.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Pot shot. This is after three hours of sitting at temp; fresher cider is less murky.

Cider: Fresh as you can, local as you can. Apple season is regrettably over in the Midwest, but there’s still some very drinkable stuff in the stores. I did stumble across a mulled “cider” variation that used pineapple juice instead of apples as its base, but I decided to stay conventional this year.

Gala apple: If you have a favorite apple, by all means use it, but boosting the apple cider with fresh apple flavor is a must. Wash the fruit with water and scrub with a rough towel to remove any wax from the exterior of the fruit.

Orange and lemon: Don’t peel these, but also give them a coarse scrub. The oil from the fruit peel is as important as the juice in this drink.

Brown sugar: Honey is the classic sweetener in this drink, and cooperates with apples beautifully. I decided to use brown sugar to play into the rum and aged spirits, but both work.

Spices: Cinnamon and cloves are a must; everything else is negotiable. If you have a favorite blend of mulling spices, use it. Pay attention to the age of your spices, though. The line between mulling spice and holiday potpourri can be thin at times. I strain the drink before service to catch wayward cloves and berries, but if you’re feeling industrious you could tie all the spices into a sachet and fish out the spice bag after the initial simmer.

Rum and apple brandy: Use your favorites. Anything you would drink neat is fair game. The notion of a Southwest mulled cider with reposado tequila intrigues me; I’ll have to play with that idea some time.

Service: Splash some hot water into the serving glasses before pouring out the punch. Hot cider in cold glasses cools much too quickly.

In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below!

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