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Meanwhile, at the recently shuttered (but moving locations) Booker and Dax in New York City, drinks were clarified in a centrifuge or brought to boiling via a red-hot poker stuck in the glass. Like a great magic act, many have to be seen to be believed.

In cold weather, the portable Red Hot Poker sits on the bar of L’Ecole, The FCI’s restaurant, plugged in and glowing away, looking like kitchen equipment meets Battle Bot. They can be served hot or cold. The very first Flips, which emerged as early as the late 1600s, consisted of a tankard of ale to which a mixture made from sugar, eggs and spices was added before being heated with a red-hot iron poker from the fire. The gin cocktails (made with Sipsmith’s London Dry Gin) are heated with a red hot poker, called a loggerhead, crafted specially by a blacksmith for using to heat drinks.

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Pamela Sambrook, Country House Brewing in England, 1500-1900 from Amazon.com or from Amazon UK

Flip, in those days, was a favourite and fashionable liquor, especially among the New England settlers....Put into a quart of beer a tablespoonful of brown sugar, warm it thoroughly by stirring it round with a red hot poker; add from a gill to half a pint of old Antigua rum; grate on half a nutmeg; our grandfathers thought it a capital beverage.
Charles Miner, History of Wyoming, 1845

Mary Gaston, Antique Brass & Copper from Amazon.com or from Amazon UK

Gregg Smith, Beer in America: The Early Years--1587-1840, from Amazon

The English labourer, according to my experience, prefers to warm his supper ale with a red-hot poker.
Walter Johnson, Folk Memory, 1908

..those good old days when it was thought best to heat the poker red hot before plunging it into the mugs of flip. This heating of the poker has been disapproved of late years, but I do not know on what grounds; if one is to drink bitters and gins and the like....I do not know why one should not make them palatable and heat them with his own poker.
Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, 1872

Warming beer and mulling ale at the fireside - tin and copper mullers, hot pokers or flip-irons

In this photo* of a 1790s English kitchen are two different brass containers for warming beer. If you want to try spotting them yourself before reading on, look on the wall to the right of the fireplace and on the mantelshelf. Attractive copper antiques now - but once they were used for warming and mulling ale. Why was beer warmed? And how?

In England and other beer-drinking countries warm ale was a popular winter drink when heated on its own or mulled with spice and sugar. Many people also thought ale was healthier drunk warm. And then there was a fondness for sweetened warm ale with nutmeg. If you added a measure of rum or brandy the mixture was called flip, and was popular on both sides of the Atlantic in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

...when I did always drink cold beer...I was very often troubled with exceeding pain in the head...also with stomach-ache, tooth-ache, cough, cold, and many other rheumatic diseases.. But since my drinking my beer (small or strong) actually as hot as blood, I have never been troubled with any of the former diseases, but have always continued in very good health constantly...
F.W., A Treatise of Warm Beer, 1641

In England, although mulled ale was popular, and there were recipes for flip in cookery books, it was sometimes seen as slightly disreputable, associated with boisterous sailors from the 17th century on.** 19th century writers also thought it suitable for the lower classes at Christmas. There doesn't seem to have been this feeling amongst settlers in America. Flip is mentioned in the memoirs of respectable New Englanders.

Flip, a sort of Sailor's Drink, made of Ale, Brandy, and Sugar.
Nathan Bailey, An universal etymological English dictionary, 1721

Connecticut, 1820s: The boys heated the flip-irons and passed around the cider and flip, while Aunt Esther and the daughters were as busy in serving the doughnuts, cake, and cheese.
Wm C Beecher and Rev. Samuel Scoville, A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, 1888

Men drinking in an inn or at home by the hearth didn't necessarily want to wait for someone in the kitchen to warm up ale or flip in a pan. They used a hot poker from the fire. You can see this re-created, complete with hissing sound effects, in A Man for All Seasons when Cromwell sticks a poker into a tall pewter tankard of ale before giving it to a visitor. Slightly more hygienic, and avoiding any burnt taste, were the flip-irons set aside for warming drinks. They may have gone from jug to jug, tankard to tankard, but at least they didn't have ash on. Some had rounded heads, like the iron rods used to heat pots of tar, and were called loggerheads. Flip-dog and hottle are other names you may come across.

In a little inn, in a small village in one of the western counties of England, a group of men were assembled [in] the tap-room, where the fire was blazing very comfortably, and serving the purpose of keeping the poker at that degree of red heat necessary to warm a pot of beer when inserted therein.
James Hannay, King Dobbs, 1849

So was there a better way? In the UK two styles of ale muller or beer warmer developed, probably during the 18th century. Both could be used at the fireside. One was boot-shaped. You could stick the 'toe' into the fire and let the heat spread through the ale inside. (Called boots or slippers, sometimes shoes.) The other style was a simple cone to be stuck point-down into the heat from the top of the fire. Perhaps these would work best on a coal fire, although you could press them into a deep pile of glowing ash from a log fire. They were particularly widespread in 19th century Britain, where coal fires were the norm.

You could buy simple tin mullers as well as lovely shiny copper ones. Sambrook's Country House Brewing in England shows an 1898 catalogue offering two-pint tin cones at 24 shillings a dozen, while the same money would not pay for five copper cone mullers - available in one and one-and-a-half pint sizes too. Her book also shows a boot-shaped muller made of sheet iron.

'Then,' said Mr. Codlin, 'fetch me a pint of warm ale...'
...the landlord retired to draw the beer, and presently returning with it, applied himself to warm the same in a small tin vessel shaped funnel-wise, for the convenience of sticking it far down in the fire and getting at the bright places. This was soon done, and he handed it over to Mr. Codlin with that creamy froth upon the surface which is one of the happy circumstances attendant upon mulled malt.
Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, 1841

Over time the attractive copper ale mullers became something people enjoyed seeing around a fireplace. Along with well-polished warming pans, aka bed warmers, copper kettles, toasting forks etc. a copper ale muller developed an aura of comfortable tradition, evoking a cosy past when the hearth was warm.

This vessel was of copper — an ale-warmer, though the common name for the article was 'the devil'. This 'devil' now only hangs on the walls of inns as a relic of bygone times, because, I am told, not only are hot ales less asked for, but landlords and landladies are averse to the trouble of making such drinks.
Letter from Nottinghamshire, Notes and Queries, 1906

Bierwärmer - German beer warmer - a clean alternative to the poker?

In Germany and Austria some people warm their beer with a Bierwärmer, although they may be seen as old-fashioned. It's a tube that you fill with boiling water before putting it in your mug. It has a hook to hang it over the side, often with a stand to hold it when it's not in the beer. Old ones are tin (see picture); fancier ones were made of opalescent glass, or even silver. Some people used to use a metal rod that was heated in boiling water. There are some vintage mid-20th century electric immersion beer warmers too. Inns used to keep beer warmers for customers' drinks, but this has died out as it contravenes modern hygiene regulations.

[In 1930s Vienna the musician Guido Adler] ...had the waiter bring him a 'beer-warmer' (an iron rod removed from a pot of boiling water and stuck into the beer glass).
Edward R. Reilly, Gustav Mahler and Guido Adler: Records of a Friendship

More than one stainless steel beer warmer of the German 'hot water bottle' type is currently available. Some are promoted as protecting stomachs which can't tolerate cold beer. Are these being bought by people who remember beer warming in 'the old days', or by a new generation of cask ale connoisseurs? Brewers sometimes suggest an ideal temperature for bringing out the flavour of their beer. Is this a good way of bringing beer to a state of perfection?

*Photos of kitchen and copper mullers taken for Heather's Travel Blog
**See Congreve's Love for Love, 1695, for a flip-drinking sailor

07 Feb 2011

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If there’s one thing big beer marketers know, it’s that people like their beer cold. “It’s a simple fact that consumers love ice-cold beer, and we love providing it,” writes MillerCoors, touting their cold-activated labels with mountains that turn blue to indicate when beer “goes from cold … to Super Cold.” The problem of insufficiently frigid beer apparently plagues the American consumer and technology is here to help.

But since this is the middle of winter, consider an alternative suggestion. Why not drink hot beer?

Red Hot Poker Cocktail Ingredients

The idea seems strange today, but heated ale drinks were once staples of home and tavern life. They provided warmth on chilly nights and nutrition when meals were scarce. And although we’re in the midst of a craft brewing renaissance in which no style of beer is too exotic or obscure to bring to market, warmed ales are conspicuous by their absence.

If the allure of hot beer is mysterious, it helps to consider that both the beer and the setting were very different when these drinks were popular. Today’s crisp, clear lagers and bitter, hoppy IPAs are not conducive to being at enjoyed at high temperatures. Prior to the 20th century, English and American drinkers were more likely to be quaffing malty ales. These fermented quickly without refrigeration, and at their best they offered a full-bodied sweetness that could be enjoyed unchilled or even hot.

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They weren’t always at their best, however. Publicans could let them go stale and the ales were prone to spoilage by bacterial invaders. As historian Maureen Ogle writes in Ambitious Brew, a history of beer in America, “Wise drinkers edged toward a mug of ale, taking a delicate first sip in order to find out whether the tankard contained sweet beer or sour; a thick, yeasty pleasure or a rank broth with the taste and texture of muddy water.”

Warnings abound of unscrupulous publicans adulterating their ales with all sorts of unsavory additions to cover up defects. Famed barman William “The Only William” Schmidt cautioned in his 1891 book The Flowing Bowl that “[this] healthy and agreeable beverage used to be prepared often enough from a mixture containing many violent poisons, as Indian hemp, opium, sulphuric acid, sulphate of iron, etc.—nay, the addition of strychnia even was suspected.” One hopes he was exaggerating. Even so, when the quality of beer was unreliable, the temptation to season it with sugar, spice, and spirits, all of which were common additions to heated ales, is understandable.

The heat in taverns serving these drinks would have come from a fireplace around which stiffened, weary travelers would gather, warming up with a hot beverage of some sort. An ice-cold beer was probably the last thing they desired.

The fire served as a source of heat for the drinks, too. Iron loggerheads were kept in the flames, ready to be plunged into tankards of Flip, a popular mixture of ale, rum, and sugar. Less dramatically, metal mulling pots were nestled amongst the coals to bring malty ales to warming temperatures.

Many of these drinks provided not just warmth and a buzz, but also nutrition. Beverages like caudel and ale berry supplemented alcohol with grains or dairy, blurring the line between food and drink. Books from the 1800s such as The Practical Housewife, Bar-Tender’s Guide, or Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks contain many variations on the theme of hot and hearty ale concoctions. The strangest and most substantial of these was posset, which was prepared by curdling milk or cream with hot wine or beer in a specially designed pot. The warm liquid was drawn from the bottom for drinking and the spongy curds spooned from the surface. (If you ever wondered what the king’s ghost in Hamlet meant when he described poison causing his blood to “posset and curd, like eager droppings into milk,” now you know.)

Red Hot Poker Cocktails

Historian Dorothy Hartley described the appeal of such “soup wine” or “ale meal” in her book Food in England. “After long hours of travel, hot wine, or spirits, on an empty stomach … often you were too tired to eat. Thus, the compromise of a caudel, which warmed you, fed you, and ‘kept you going till you could obtain a solid meal.’”

Indeed, heated ale was often perceived as being more healthful than cold beer. A pamphlet first published in 1641 with the title “Warm Beer” cautioned that although a cold drink is pleasant when one is thirsty, “pleasant things for the most part are very dangerous.” The unknown author of the preface claims that drinking cold beer caused him to suffer a headache, toothache, stomachache, cough, cold, and other illnesses, but drinking his beer “hot as blood” restored him to good health. He goes on to warn that cold beer could be downright lethal, recounting numerous tales of overheated imbibers falling deathly ill after attempting to refresh themselves with cold beverages.

As bizarre as the argument seems, it was grounded in classical theories of medicine that held that the stomach was like a cauldron boiling and breaking down cooked food. 'Well into the 17th century, and long after that in the popular imagination, it was taken as a given that digesting was cooking in the fires of the stomach,” explains Rachel Laudan, author of Cuisine and Empire. “Anything that quenched those fires, endangered this vital process. And what more effective dampener of the flames than cold, wet drinks?'

These theories of digestion eventually gave way to more empirical approaches, but enjoyment of warm beer continued through the 19th century. Even so, trends were underway that would eventually drive heated ale drinks out of fashion. By 1888, W. T. Marchant was lamenting their decline in his In Praise of Ale, published in London. “It is a matter of regret that some of the more comforting drinks have gone out of date. When beer was the staple drink, morning, noon, and night, it was natural that our ancestors would prefer their breakfast beer warm and ‘night-caps’ flavoured.”

Red Hot Poker Cocktail Recipe

Perhaps the most important change was the rise of German lagers. Previously enjoyed in the United States mostly by German immigrants and sold in close to proximity to breweries, the development of pasteurized bottling lines and refrigerated rail cars allowed these beers to travel much longer distances and reach much larger markets.

American drinkers gradually took to the style and Prohibition helped complete the transition. When the ban on alcohol was repealed, dormant breweries offered plenty of capacity for making beer, but the market had irrevocably shifted away from the saloon and toward home consumption. “Brewing’s future lay not in barrels of beer rolled behind mahogany bars,” Ogle writes of the period, “but in the cool, well-lighted interiors of the nation’s refrigerators.” Americans traded their ales for lagers that were colder, cleaner, and more consistent.

Appreciation for craft beers has revived in recent decades and it is a great time to be a beer lover. With such an abundance of excellent beers to choose from, one may question whether there is any need to heat them up with all sorts of other ingredients. We no longer believe that our bellies are fiery cauldrons that could be extinguished by a cold draft. We have better ways of feeding ourselves than scooping curds off a pot of posset. We have bosses who frown on starting mornings with a breakfast beer, regardless of its temperature.

Red Hot Poker Cocktail Recipes

The demands of good health and nutrition no longer dictate that we drink our ales hot. The only reason left to do so is for pleasure, as a small handful of bars and breweries have rediscovered. The New York cocktail laboratory Booker and Dax has brought back the practice of heating beer cocktails with red-hot pokers. In London, a bar called Purl gets its name from a warm ale-and-gin drink once popular among laborers on the Thames, and it serves a modern spin on the beverage. In Portland, Oregon, Cascade Brewing offers their Glueh Kriek, a tart cherry ale served hot with spices.

As brewers and bartenders plunder the past for inspiration, could hot ale drinks become the next big thing? Will heat-activated cans soon appear at a store near you? It’s unlikely. But however dubious their theories of health and digestion, our ancestors did know a thing or two about consuming beer. Perhaps in these cold winter months, adventurous beer enthusiasts might be willing to step back in time and enjoy what Charles Dickens described as “the happy circumstances attendant upon mulled malt.”