Time for some punch!

Homemade cocktails for two!

However, I somehow managed to persuade my housemates to make punch and play drinking games.

It then dawned on me – I didn’t have the right ingredients to make any punches I know of. So we emptied any alcohol or mixers we had out of our cupboards and this is what we found we had:

• ¾ of a bottle of White Rum
• ¼ of a bottle of Vodka
• ½ a bottle of Port
• A bottle of Lambrini
• Some Crème de Cassis
• Grenadine
• Cream Soda
• Cherryade
• Orange Juice
• Pineapple Juice
• Pomegranate Juice
• Apple Juice

Between us we had quite an extensive list of punch ingredients. Now they were all on the table we were certainly in the mood for experimenting with different mixes.

I started off with a simple mix of pineapple juice with plenty of rum and a few dashes of grenadine. This tasted pleasant enough. It was certainly a preferable option to Grand Designs, but with so few ingredients the rum overwhelmed the whole drink. As the first drink in a night it was simply too strong. I think we all got the feeling that I hadn’t been adventurous enough either – the next concoctions needed to be far more daring.

Next we used vodka, rum and port. We added plenty of Lambrini before mixing in orange, pineapple and pomegranate juices. To give it a bit of life we added lots of cream soda. It was a good drink, but the cream soda totally dominated the taste. It helped us on our way to absolute drunkenness, but next time I would definitely not use so much of the stuff. It was certainly very drinkable and interest in the punch was regained after a slightly unexciting first attempt.

Punch Saucepan!

The next was delicious. We made quite a similar punch to before: using vodka, rum, port, Lambrini and pineapple juice as we did last time. I think my hand may have slipped adding the port though – the bottle looked surprising empty considering this was only the second drink we’d used it in. On top of the ingredients we had before, we added crème de cassis and grenadine. It could be that by this time we were starting to get slightly sozzled – but this was the best so far. It was fantastically fruity, with all the juices and the grenadine we used. The crème de cassis added a lovely blackcurrant twist to the creation.

Now by the fourth punch we were all pissed from the games of Ring of Fire; Fuzzy Duck was certainly not getting pronounced correctly in that game!

Another housemate of mine came back from the pub and contributed a can of Strongbow. Our alcohol reserves were running pretty low by this point so we greatly appreciated this new contribution; we had been worried the cocktails were about to turn virgin.

This would be the final punch – so we pretty much added anything left to it. This was rum, cream soda, orange and apple juice, a splash of grenadine and that can of cider. This turned out to actually be one of the best drinks of the night. The orange and grenadine added a lovely level of fruitiness, whilst the apple juice and cider helped to give the combination a great tangy taste. The cream soda and cider kept the drink fizzy which went particularly well with the sharp apple flavour (as far as I can remember…)

Considering the evening started out with watching a programme about architecture – it turned out to be a success. The best drinks were certainly the last two, and I would definitely try and make them again. Adding the cider to the last one seemed like a slightly crazy drunken move, and probably added seriously to the hangover, but it was definitely one of the taste successes of the night.

If I were to do anything differently again I think I would be as experimental as possible in the first few drinks – you never know what something is going to taste like until you try it!

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