Blow My Skull

[00:00] Oh, we doing under Google rules that was the play of super excited told us we had to
[00:12] say that we said we signed up for it in the end it's going to be better and more true
[00:20] than Google can give you.
[00:23] I do have more under Google rules would you like to do more?
[00:26] Yeah, sure.
[00:28] Why not?
[00:29] Yay.
[00:30] Cheers.
[00:31] Yeah, there's still some room in my drink for some some more talking.
[00:35] Well, speaking of drinks.
[00:39] I like that measure of liquid.
[00:45] Excellent.
[00:50] So speaking of drinks, this was a request from a fan, fan of the show, Mike Morrow.
[00:59] He wants to know about the punch, punch bowl, punch, drink, whether it is related to the
[01:08] word punch, as in punching somebody else.
[01:12] What's the history of the punch bowl?
[01:15] And where did the name come from?
[01:17] So I know a little bit about this.
[01:22] Just from the popularity of the punch bowl, I believe just from bartending is goes back
[01:29] quite a ways.
[01:30] I believe it started as a rum drink.
[01:35] And I think Victorian England, I mean, it's it's it's it goes back a ways.
[01:45] And it's been around a long time and then kind of faded away and turned into Hawaiian
[01:49] punch and has sort of recently made a, you know, and then you had to spike the punch,
[01:54] right?
[01:55] You know, I think of a punch being non-alcoholic.
[01:59] But at the Libertine when I was working, there was sort of, you know, as this craft cocktail
[02:07] sort of movement happens, they're bringing back the original punch bowl.
[02:10] And we made big old bowls of alcoholic punch for people.
[02:15] And they were quite the hit.
[02:18] And you know, the the old crystal big punch bowl, like, that's what that was for.
[02:24] It was a big deal where you would go have a big party with your punch.
[02:27] So that's my understanding of it.
[02:29] I don't have more understanding than that.
[02:31] I don't exactly have a date, but I believe they were rum when they started.
[02:35] And I believe it was probably Victorian England is my memory of it.
[02:40] So that's my history of it.
[02:41] But I don't know why that word is punch.
[02:44] I don't know if it's related to the word punch, like it punched you in the mouth
[02:48] or whatnot.
[02:49] So I wonder if you guys have thoughts.
[02:52] My first thought is I hadn't realized how violent the language was surrounding that
[02:55] particular trick, a punch spike.
[02:59] Yeah. Right. Yeah.
[03:01] Like, does it have something to do with how strong the concoction itself was?
[03:06] We used to limit tables to just one punch bowl because they're pretty strong.
[03:12] Guys, just messing up bowls, AMF's over there.
[03:15] I mean, yeah, my assumption was that it came from the idea
[03:20] that it wasn't just a simple drink, but it packed the punch.
[03:24] You know, OK, we'll get you drunk.
[03:26] But so I kind of got lost there.
[03:30] And your explanation was so in its original form.
[03:33] It was an alcoholic drink.
[03:35] Yes. My my my my understanding is that punch was created as an alcoholic drink
[03:41] and that the non-alcoholic drink came from came.
[03:45] Yeah, came later as, you know, because the kids, you know, kept getting
[03:50] into the punch bowl, but that's my understanding of it.
[03:52] I don't I don't really know.
[03:54] Is it is a rum like a Caribbean liquor?
[03:56] Yes. Yes. Yes. For sure.
[03:58] So how could there have been punch bowls in Victorian England?
[04:02] Well, so that's part of the the slave
[04:06] triangle and stuff like sugar cane.
[04:08] I mean, so so rum comes from sugar cane
[04:12] or from sugar. Right.
[04:14] So you make rum from that sugar and then you take it back to Europe.
[04:20] For sure.
[04:22] So when did a rum hit Europe?
[04:26] When did this slave triangle start?
[04:30] I'm guessing like sixteen hundred for fifteen, fifteen, fifteen hundred.
[04:35] So you're guessing it started in fifteen, sixteen.
[04:39] I guess I wouldn't have thought of.
[04:45] Well, yeah, I guess you wouldn't export the product.
[04:48] You'd export the recipe, right?
[04:50] I was just thinking to myself, like, you can't export water, right?
[04:53] Which is what alcohol is mostly water, right?
[04:55] You can't export something that heavy.
[04:56] It's not feasible.
[04:59] I think you would export the the realm.
[05:02] No, you could also just bring the sugar back to Europe.
[05:06] That's what I'm thinking.
[05:07] Right. And let you bring the recipe and then you can do it.
[05:10] But my understanding is that the.
[05:16] When you want to process things
[05:18] and take a raw ingredient and turn it into something else,
[05:21] the cheapest way to do that is at the source. Right. For sure.
[05:26] So you want to have your plant like right by the
[05:29] or your distillery very near to the the sugar. Sure.
[05:33] But when you've got such a I mean, the boats that we were sailing around
[05:37] back then were so small.
[05:40] Weight was the primary component back then.
[05:45] Sure, profitability. Yeah.
[05:47] I know that at least now
[05:49] there's a big deal about like a Puerto Rico.
[05:52] You've got to the law is that you have to age room for
[05:58] two and a half years in.
[06:02] You know, barrels.
[06:04] So I don't know if the rules were that back then when they first started
[06:08] making room, I don't know how long they aged them.
[06:10] But I'm wondering if you would age them on the island
[06:15] where you had the sugar, you know,
[06:17] or whether you would just age it during a boat trip.
[06:22] I don't know.
[06:22] I was trying to think about how to extend that.
[06:24] You're not necessarily just making room immediately, is what I'm saying.
[06:28] Right. Yeah, that would be my assumption.
[06:37] I mean, it definitely feels very Victorian England
[06:39] because it's just like a like punch bowls, like as we know,
[06:42] them are just like big, useless, fancy objects.
[06:45] Very Victorian. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
[06:49] I suspect that there were probably something less,
[06:52] you know, or ornate and ostentatious before that.
[06:56] I mean, do you actually I don't know.
[06:58] Yeah, rich people come up with very, very little culture on their own.
[07:03] You know, steal it from poor people, right?
[07:05] OK, well, then that's actually really good.
[07:08] I hadn't thought about that.
[07:09] But what if this isn't?
[07:13] You know, you said you're importing recipes, not actual rum.
[07:17] What if it's the the slaves or the pirates
[07:21] or the, you know, you know, that come up with the recipe
[07:26] and then that's taken back to Victoria and that popularizes it?
[07:32] Like, you know, what if it's the the ship crews or the, you know, the people?
[07:36] Because basically that you would you would sail to Africa.
[07:39] You would you'd pick up your slaves.
[07:40] You'd go to the Caribbean.
[07:41] You'd you'd, you know, get your sugar and then you'd go back to Europe.
[07:45] I wonder if in that process the alcohol is created.
[07:52] I mean, at some point, if, you know.
[07:54] If rum was the original thing in it.
[07:58] I mean, maybe it was was it a I guess the first
[08:02] wasn't it like a Caribbean tradition of some sort or hey,
[08:05] was it something that started in the Caribbean and that itself got exported?
[08:08] Sure, sure.
[08:09] That's also quite possible, because I mean, OK, so like
[08:14] a daiquiri is a very simple drink.
[08:18] It's assuming you have refrigeration. Sure.
[08:21] I mean, it's it's it's actually not.
[08:23] You don't even need it, right?
[08:24] It's not a frozen daiquiri.
[08:26] It's it's it's lime,
[08:30] sugar and rum.
[08:32] That's all it is.
[08:33] That's the entire drink.
[08:34] And I believe that punches were based on that.
[08:39] Right. And you would just add more stuff to it.
[08:41] A bunch of rum.
[08:42] You'd throw citrus in.
[08:43] You know, you think of that the sort of typical punch has like the
[08:47] the lime and the lemon and the orange floating around or whatever.
[08:51] Like, I mean, that's just that's that's a whole bunch of expensive fruit, right?
[08:56] Not if you're in the Caribbean Caribbean. Right.
[09:00] Exactly. Right.
[09:01] Not for the Europeans.
[09:03] This stuff is like, yeah, that would be right.
[09:05] That would be expensive. Right.
[09:06] So if you're just you're adding spices and fruit and, you know,
[09:12] into a rum drink, you're probably doing that in the Caribbean.
[09:16] Correct. And not starting that in Europe.
[09:18] So this is sort of interesting to me, though,
[09:20] because it wasn't much of the Caribbean uninhabited before.
[09:26] This is why I'm saying it's like this is why I'm thinking it's a slave
[09:30] development or a pirate or like ship crew development.
[09:35] That's what I'm thinking.
[09:38] Because it's not as if they like would have landed in whatever
[09:42] Domenica and all of a sudden there's like
[09:45] people there that have been refining sugarcane
[09:49] and brewing distilling their own rum like that came.
[09:54] Right. I mean, I guess I need a history lesson.
[09:57] I don't think they were making rum before
[10:01] the European showed up as slaves.
[10:02] I don't think so.
[10:05] OK, that's my sense as well, is that
[10:10] much I could I could be wrong inhabited. Yeah.
[10:14] None of this speaks to where the term punch comes from.
[10:19] Outside of maybe it was just a really strong drink and a punch in the face.
[10:22] Yeah, I mean, to me, I feel like that's,
[10:25] you know, we got to go Occam's razor on this one.
[10:28] And that's like the the answer that's staring us in the face.
[10:32] I don't know what else it could be.
[10:33] I mean, it's either that victory.
[10:35] You do. That's like we're cognate.
[10:36] Yeah, it gives you a jolly old punch might, you know, or something.
[10:40] That might have been Australia. I don't know.
[10:41] But maybe, maybe, you know, maybe we'll get a lot of fights
[10:47] when when they're drinking this.
[10:52] That happens.
[10:53] What's the thing that you guys always talk about when there's
[10:57] the two things rise up separately and then sort of become the thing?
[11:03] It's like the same thing parallel evolution.
[11:07] Yes, parallel evolution. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[11:10] So you're thinking it's probably not that you think this is probably directed
[11:14] connected to the origin of the physical punching.
[11:20] Convergent evolution.
[11:22] I'm sure that the term punching existed before the drink punch.
[11:27] Is that what you mean?
[11:28] And then. People described the drink.
[11:33] Right, that's our guess.
[11:34] OK, being having a guy. Yeah, OK.
[11:38] Especially if the punch came in Victoria,
[11:40] and I'm going you're probably not inventing a word at that point
[11:44] for a thing that already existed.
[11:46] So the thing that's strange to me about this is like punch bowls.
[11:51] I think of a specifically Victorian England, right?
[11:56] And rum, I think of as specifically Spanish.
[12:02] Or Hispanic, right?
[12:03] And the Caribbean likewise, right?
[12:06] It's not that there wasn't any inner trade.
[12:08] There certainly was.
[12:10] But that's who colonized the Caribbean, right?
[12:16] And we ended up with an English word for it.
[12:19] I mean, clearly we would.
[12:21] I mean, I guess my only question is, well, is this pre pre Victorian
[12:24] colonized the Caribbean?
[12:27] Who would have been George and those guys, right?
[12:33] I thought that the Spanish colonized
[12:35] like move the slaves right there, Dominican Republic.
[12:39] And in what, 1572 or something like that.
[12:44] I'm just putting out a date in the 1500s. Yeah.
[12:50] So how did it get to isn't that before?
[12:52] I think of Victorian England as like 17 to 1800s.
[12:56] It's like 1820. OK, yeah.
[13:00] So I feel like the Caribbean was colonized pre.
[13:06] Victoria, right?
[13:07] Certainly, but not by the English is my point.
[13:09] Oh, sure. So there may have been a tradition
[13:13] called something else prior to it.
[13:16] That was my only point, right?
[13:17] So yeah, right.
[13:20] It's not some like fancy English court
[13:23] drinking punch before other people had created it.
[13:26] Right. They may have.
[13:27] Yeah, gotten something similar from a different culture.
[13:31] Because again, yeah, I just don't.
[13:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[13:33] That high end Victorians came up with crap on their own.
[13:36] Yeah, no, I think you make a point.
[13:38] So then OK, so then this is based off my bad etymology is
[13:43] is they still they misheard
[13:45] the word punk or something like that.
[13:49] Right.
[13:50] Some Spanish word instead of right.
[13:54] Either that or, you know, they mixed a drink.
[13:56] Do you know how strong I was going to be?
[13:57] Got drunk, said that packs a punch and then started hitting each other.
[14:00] And then both are equally possible.
[14:02] OK, I like that. I like both of those options.
[14:07] This is pretty good.
[14:10] All right.
[14:11] Based off limited knowledge and.
[14:15] Lots of guessing, boo.
[14:17] Oh, well,
[14:20] we're way off the word punch is a loanword from Hindi.
[14:27] It's a drink was introduced from India to the United Kingdom
[14:31] in the early 17th century.
[14:34] The original drink was named a punch, which is Hindi for five.
[14:38] And the drink was made from five different ingredients.
[14:40] Spirit, sugar, lemon, water or tea and spices.
[14:43] OK, which all those things are true.
[14:49] We got the recipe of the punch first recorded in the documents in 1632.
[14:54] Right. We just got hung up on the rum thing.
[14:56] OK, around 1655, Jamaican rum came into the use,
[15:01] came into use in the modern punch emerged.
[15:04] OK, so so basically the punch recipe was there with not rum.
[15:10] Wow. OK, interesting.
[15:13] All right, that's a good one.
[15:15] So wait, OK, so it's not related to the word punch at all.
[15:19] No, no, no, no.
[15:21] Loan word from from India.
[15:26] Shout out to India.
[15:28] It's the first time India has made an appearance in the well, well done etymology.
[15:35] In Australia, a drink called Blow My Skull is a famous alcohol
[15:41] drink like it's rum, porter, lime, sugar and other ingredients.
[15:49] So what was the spirit then in the Hindi punch?
[15:52] It just says alcohol.
[15:54] It doesn't sort of spear grain, alcohol.
[15:57] Sure, whatever.
[16:01] Yeah, I don't.
[16:02] These weren't a bunch of, you know, craft brewers back then.
[16:08] Sure.
[16:08] A bunch of bathtub, grain, alcohol to pour in and get drunk
[16:12] and then put sugar and citrus in it.
[16:14] So it was palatable.
[16:15] We're talking about like the East India Company.
[16:17] These people spent months at sea on a cramp ship.
[16:19] Yeah, alcohol good.
[16:20] You know what?
[16:22] There is a second idea that some believe the word originates
[16:26] from the English punch in, which was a volumetric description
[16:30] for certain sized barrels used to transport alcohol on ships.
[16:35] Oh, they were transporting alcohol on ships.
[16:38] But indeed, my friend pure alcohol.
[16:41] I'm like, well, no, they did.
[16:43] I guess they did beer for drink.
[16:45] Yeah, well, they definitely shipped beer.
[16:47] That was the whole idea of the IPA.
[16:49] That's where that comes from.
[16:50] Right.
[16:51] But that's to feed the sailors.
[16:52] That's not for trade.
[16:54] Well, and the and the sailors are, I mean, and the troops
[16:57] on the other side.
[16:58] Right.
[16:59] But again, not for trade.
[17:00] It's not a money making in depth.
[17:01] Sure, sure.
[17:02] Because it's too heavy or it's heavier than other things
[17:06] that they could be transporting.
[17:11] Yeah.
[17:12] But that's why they hopped the beer so much.
[17:15] So that the the that's how you get an India pale ale
[17:19] because it was it had to last the trip from England to India
[17:23] without going bad.
[17:25] Correct.
[17:25] Yeah.
[17:27] So our best idea is that it's Indian, which would make sense.
[17:30] And our second is that it's connected to a size of a barrel
[17:38] that carries alcohol.
[17:38] Is that correct?
[17:41] Yeah.
[17:48] So according to history.com, punch bowls became ubiquitous
[17:53] even here like immediately.
[17:57] The founding fathers drank 76 of them at the celebration
[18:01] following the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
[18:04] Whoa.
[18:04] Wow.
[18:07] By the Victorian age, teetotaling punches
[18:09] ruled the day.
[18:10] So that's where we get that.
[18:12] OK.
[18:13] We're the non-alcoholic punch.
[18:15] Exactly.
[18:16] Because they were a bunch of nerds.
[18:19] And not in the good way, Joey.
[18:20] I see you're looking at me.
[18:22] I'm resurrected in the 2000s by mustachioed mixologists
[18:28] in the city of New York and San Francisco.
[18:32] And apparently in Indianapolis because that's
[18:34] where I learned my punch knowledge.
[18:37] Well, that was the requisite 10 to 15
[18:40] years after the coast.
[18:42] Right, fair enough.
[18:45] Wow, frothy egg white-based and sherbet versions
[18:49] grew popular up until the 50s.
[18:52] Oh, no, I've definitely served an egg white-based punch bowl
[18:56] before.
[18:58] Delicious.
[18:59] Was there sherbet in it?
[19:02] No, but I'm familiar with a sherbet.
[19:04] Probably should have been.
[19:07] We didn't have any sherbet on hand.
[19:09] Did you say, did it exist, or was it popular?
[19:11] Because I don't know that it's popular these days.
[19:16] What, egg white-based or sherbet-based?
[19:20] Either.
[19:21] Oh, come on.
[19:21] No, egg whites are delicious.
[19:23] No, no, no, I'm not asking if they're delicious.
[19:25] Makes them nice and frothy.
[19:27] I'm asking if they're popular.
[19:29] The punch bowls weren't that popular in general
[19:31] because they were super expensive
[19:33] and everybody had to agree on it.
[19:36] But they're real good.
[19:40] So what happened to that bar you worked at?
[19:42] They're closed right now, aren't they?
[19:45] They're all closed, Joey.
[19:46] They're all closed.
[19:48] Too many mustachioed mixologists.
[19:54] This is unfounded.
[19:56] It's on Didford's Guide.
[19:59] Has anybody seen this?
[20:00] No.
[20:02] It says that the punch bowl is the earliest cocktail.
[20:07] Which, you know.
[20:11] So how does one?
[20:13] Is that the first time that we mixed alcohol
[20:15] with something else?
[20:18] Yeah, I wonder if cocktail didn't really come into fashion
[20:22] until the early 20th century or something like that.
[20:26] Maybe even the 20s or something like that.
[20:28] I mean, what year was cocktail?
[20:30] No, cocktails are far older than that.
[20:32] So there's the grandfather cocktails
[20:35] that have been going on for like ever.
[20:38] Like a daiquiri or a margarita.
[20:41] These things are really old.
[20:43] They're basically just almost all grandfather cocktails.
[20:50] They're three ingredients.
[20:51] And they're based on a couple things.
[20:53] So you take a spirit, and then you sweeten it.
[20:55] And then you have to balance that sweet with either citrus
[20:58] or bitter.
[21:00] So that's how you get an old fashioned.
[21:02] Right.
[21:02] That's how you get an old fashioned.
[21:03] That's how you get a Manhattan.
[21:04] That's how you get a daiquiri and a margarita.
[21:07] They're all classic cocktails because they're
[21:09] three ingredients based on the same idea.
[21:12] That spirits are really hot.
[21:13] And the way that you change that is sweetening them.
[21:16] But then you have to balance that sweet
[21:18] with a citrus or a bitter.
[21:20] So those things have been going on for a long time
[21:24] before you start making bartender books.
[21:28] So I think that if we're saying
[21:31] that the punch bowl is the first cocktail or whatever
[21:35] based on this guy's random website,
[21:39] and that's what did we decide, in the 1600s?
[21:44] I think you're probably.
[21:45] Well, before that, we don't know.
[21:46] It was introduced to the Western world in the 1600s.
[21:51] From India, who's been doing stuff since.
[21:54] Yeah.
[21:55] But I think basically, since you, I always
[21:58] tell the story about the old fashioned
[22:01] comes from the idea of the wild west when you're just,
[22:06] you think of those old movies, and you're just
[22:09] pouring whiskey into a shot glass.
[22:11] At some point, people were like,
[22:13] let's make this a little bit more palatable,
[22:15] and you get an old fashioned, essentially.
[22:19] You have a cocktail culture in the United States
[22:22] by the late 1800s, so I think worldwide,
[22:27] those things have been going on longer than that.
[22:29] I mean, people have been drinking since Samaria.
[22:31] Right.
[22:32] But I would, my understanding was always
[22:34] that they didn't really come into vogue
[22:36] until the 20s, like the prohibition era, almost,
[22:41] because people started making shitty alcohol
[22:45] and selling it, and you needed to mask the taste,
[22:49] the crappy taste.
[22:50] I mean, I would have thought that all alcohol
[22:51] was shitty before 1985.
[22:54] Yeah, people have always been making shitty alcohol.
[22:58] As you drink your high life.
[23:00] Maybe even worse.
[23:03] Got him, got him.
[23:07] If I did a spit take, it wouldn't even matter.
[23:11] It wouldn't get on you.
[23:12] It would just get on my computer.
[23:15] Thanks, Joey.