Belly Up to the Bar

Thanks to eBay, Amazon, AbeBooks, and COAS - my local used bookstore, I have a collection of 90+ books related to Drink, ranging from Willie Schmidts' 1892 treatise The Flowing Bowl to recent works such as To Have And Have Another by Phillip Greene.

Here in southern New Mexico, drinking is largely Bud, in its various forms, and margaritas. Hardly more interesting, probably less so, than in the 60's when I frequented the Kentucky Club and Freds' Rainbow Bar in Juarez, Mexico. At least the drinks were cheap, the Mexican beer good, and the 50 cent sandwiches at Freds' took care of the munchies. The pursuit of engaging bar books, and mixing mostly forgotten drinks from the past, is a nice way to add something special to an ordinary day and an opportunity to share thoughts, and drinks with you.

Several of my books are German, dating from 1905 to 1920. A favorite is the Lexikon Der Getranke (Encyclopedia of Drinks)1913, by Leybold & Schönfeld, fellows of the Internationalen Barkeepers-Union, Cöln.  The Lexikon is a 296 page compendium  of  drinks and vintage advertisements for booze, bars, and purveyors to the trade.  The recipes include American, German, and European mixed drinks.

Of special interest, is the section labeled “Regiment-Mischungen” (Regimental Mixtures).  Comprised of  23 pages listing regimental “mixtures,” there are 181 drinks alone for infantry regiments.  Every possible organization seems to be mentioned. Do you fancy yourself in a tchapka sipping the traditional drink of the 3^rd Prussian Uhlans, or have just finished your model railroad layout and want to celebrate your success with the drink the Eisenbahner (railway men) toasted with?  Lexikon Der Getranke has the answer.

While, in my opinion, a great book, there are a couple of burrs under the saddle. The units of measure can be odd, and some of the ingredients have disappeared or are difficult to obtain.

The measures in this book may drive you to drink, or perhaps to a modern English cocktail book that will not have you grinding your teeth. The recipes vary from the simple ratio measurements still used today, to the more esoteric measures of an era long past.  Like many vintage tomes dedicated to mixology, German books seem to be notoriously poor in defining the unit volume of a measure. When asked to add a Likörglas, or Portweinglas, how much liquor do you use? Today, you cannot even get oenophiles to agree on the size, or shape, of a port glass. 

Apparently, these measures were once more precise than simply grabbing a small, or not so small, glass.  In the Handbuch Der Krankenphlege (Handbook for the Sickroom), 1904,  and other references, I have found some measures used in cocktail books of the day, along with their corresponding volumes. The measures below may be helpful to those of us easily confused and confounded.

  

Vintage German-English Measurement Equivalents
Measure	Volume		Measure	Volume
Likörglas (liqueur glass)	30ml		Limonadenglas (Lemonade glass)	220ml
Portweinglas (Port wine glass)	40ml		Flasche (bottle or flask)	30ml – 1 L. Content dependent
Moccatasse (Demitasse cup)	50ml		schuß	a splash, or dash
Weinglas (Wine glass)	125ml		Essloeffel or Eβlöffel or EL	15ml (about 1 level Tbsp)
mittlere Tasse  (Medium cup)	150ml		Kinderlöffel (Childs spoon)	10ml
gewöhnliche Tasse (Ordinary cup)	200ml		Teelöffel or Teeloeffel or Teel. or T	5ml (about 1 level tsp)
Wasserglas (Water glass)	0.4l		Messerspitze (Knife tip)	1/8 tsp or 1 pinch
Portionstasse (Serving cup)	0.3l

Many, if not all, of the liquors and other ingredients are still available, or have modern analogs, that will make a passable drink.  The problem lies in figuring out what the odd ingredient is so that you can make an appropriate substitute. Fortunately, we have the internet and appreciate the fact that all, that is truthful and worth knowing, is there. 

Need to top a glass with Sauerbrunn? Easy.  Sauerbrunn is a naturally carbonated mineral water from the Tyrol.  Do you live somewhere, as I do, where choice of mineral water is bottled tap water or Perrier & S. Pelligrino?  Quietly slip in your favorite carbonated mineral water.  The bubbles don’t care how they got there and you can choose the one most agreeable to your palate. 

Stuck on Stoughton’s?  Those bitters have been off the market since Hector was a pup.  San Francisco Bitters makes something that is alledgely close.  There are all sorts of recipes for Stoughton’s out there purporting to be correct, some in books of the time, though nobody living is old enough to remember the original.  The quick solution is to simply grab your Angostura or Peychaud’s.  You will have just brought a dusty antique to the 21^st century.  These suggestions are heresy to some cocktail cognecenti but, as a layman of potable potions and a back-sliding Baptist, I have done far worse.

Having made it this far, it would be abject cruelty to close this blog without offering a tasty drink. Being summer, a "cooler" seems most appropriate. From Lexikon, the Luftshiff, or Airship.

Luftshiff

In a lemonade (8oz.) glass, add some fresh peppermint leaves, the juice of 1/4 lemon,    and 1 1/2 oz. Rye whiskey. Add ice to half full and fill with ginger ale.  Garnish with fruit and peppermint leaves. Note: I find the drink improved if, after adding lemon and rye, you muddle the mint leaves. The first drink goes down quickly, plan on a second. Sehr gut!