If you’re in the Pacific Northwest, you could be drinking spodie cross state lines to the Midwest and it’ll turn to wop, harry buffalo or wapatoola. Want it to go down easier? Top with Mountain Dew.ĭepending on where you hail-and where you party-what you’re sipping could be called a dozen or more names. Recipes range from simpler, no-frills concoctions of fruit punch and grain alcohol to the New Jersey Turnpikes of big-batch punch: Everclear, gin, vodka, rum, tequila, triple sec, lemonade, raspberry lemonade, lemonade concentrate, Sprite, Kool-Aid. Now that we have the modern conveniences of powdered Kool-Aid, current recipes are as sporadic and numerous as the kinds of alcohol they purport to include. Be it during junior year rush or a Japanese air raid, jungle juice has always gotten its drinkers completely, utterly shitfaced. These 20 th-century glimpses of debauchery were something like early ragers, and though jungle juice has graduated from empty gasoline drums to igloo coolers, the ragers of yore aren’t all that different from a present day, run-of-the-mill frat party. jungle juice as “varied as the characters of the men who drank it.” Some soldiers became “exhilarated” others felt as though they were lighter than air, floating into some grain alcohol-induced lightness-a heaven before the inevitable hell the next morning. Be merry.Īnderson describes the mind-bending drunk from O.G. Step on up, it says, drag a solo cup through me. It tastes like turpentine shot through with sugar, but it exists, like the jungle juice of the 1940s, to serve you. The last thing jungle juice wants is to disappoint you. Underage license forbids you from buying vodka? The contents of your parents’ liquor cabinet will, in fact, work. ![]() Today, the drink is likewise slack with its rules: No grain alcohol? Gin works. In what Anderson declares one of “the American service man’s greatest contributions,” jungle juice was born. It was a mixture vastly greater than the sum of its parts, consumed in quantity, drunk down quickly and with purpose. In any iteration, it was a ferociously potent liquid that, though less classy, was not unlike the punches of our lawn parties. Depending on the “distiller,” the resulting beverage ranged from a fermented brew tinted golden-green from swamp water to a pale, 100-proof distillate. They turned to fermenting anything they could with sugar in everything from coconuts to gasoline drums to homemade, patchwork stills. The only reasonable solution was to go DIY. coffee, and lemonade,” soldiers were on a mission to escape a thirsty, sober fate. With no other options save for “chlorinated water, G.I. And military regulations-at least for those stationed in the literal jungle-forbade soldiers from importing liquor from nearby countries. Army, unconcerned with whether or not its soldiers partook in their evening cocktail, didn’t provide anything in the way of one. (Jungle juice deals in 30 racks and everclear, not short crust and chiffon.) Recipes aren’t written, but rather taught by a neighbor, a frat brother, an older sibling-all well-meaning missionaries passing on the good will of grain alcohol in trash cans.īack then, the U.S. Anderson defines jungle juice as “a name loosely applied to any of the spirituous beverages that were concocted by American soldiers in the Southwest Pacific.”ĭepending on where you hail-and where you party-what you’re sipping could be called a dozen or more names. But everywhere, each blend is its own brand of heirloom recipe, handed down much like your grandmother’s lemon meringue pie, but a lot less delicate. In the October 20 th, 1945 issue of the New Yorker, aptly wedged between an ad for premium beer and the world’s finest aged rum, Malcolm E. ![]() And, unbeknownst to many, it’s got roots. It’s swill, but it’s a familiar, time-honored swill- a stronghold in the legacy of early, formative drinking. Most commonly it’s defined as an astute blend of grain alcohol and fruit juice, dispensed from a trashcan or an empty cooler, plastic storage bin, plugged sink and, in an innovative move much before its time-pre-mixed and bottled in whatever was lidded and empty in a recycling bin. It asks that you drink plenty and remember little. In this agreeable canon there is, however, one outlier-a drink that’s been around almost as long as our beloved juleps that’s just as much a part of our folkloric drinking tradition: jungle juice. These cocktails are, in essence, our collection of Americanisms in booze. Strips we carry our Tom Collins across manicured lawns as accessories to temperate June weather, wide-brimmed hats and croquet. They’re a common alcoholic language: We sip juleps on Derby Day we drink Manhattans at steakhouses to stand up to our N.Y. ![]() Certain cocktails are inherently American-the drinks that define our parties, our happy hours, us as drinkers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |