This tour of early American alcohol shares recipes, “fun facts and anecdotes about our forefathers’ drinking habits with a 21-century sense of humor” (Chicago Tribune). In Colonial Spirits, legendary distiller Steven Grasse presents a historical manifesto on drinking, including 50 colonial era– inspired cocktail recipes. The book features a rousing timeline of colonial imbibing and a cultural overview of all kinds of alcoholic beverages: beer, rum and punch; temperance drinks; liqueurs and cordials; medicinal beverages; cider; wine, whiskey, bourbon and more. The book is spiced with delightful illustrations and liquored-up adages from our founding fathers. Grasse shares expert guidance on DIY home brewing, plus recipes like the Philadelphia Fish House Punch (a crowd pleaser!) and Snakebites (drink alone!). Hot beer cocktails and rattle skulls have never been so irresistible.

New England food and drinks writer Corin Hirsch explores the origins and taste of the favorite potations of early Americans and offers some modern-day recipes to revive them today. Colonial New England was awash in ales, beers, wines, cider and spirits. Everyone from teenage farmworkers to our founding fathers imbibed heartily and often. Tipples at breakfast, lunch, teatime and dinner were the norm, and low-alcohol hard cider was sometimes even a part of children's lives. This burgeoning cocktail culture reflected the New World's abundance of raw materials: apples, sugar and molasses, wild berries and hops. This plentiful drinking sustained a slew of smoky taverns and inns--watering holes that became vital meeting places and the nexuses of unrest as the Revolution brewed.

Includes "an historical outline of the origin, spirit and effects of the liquor-laws, as well as of the habits and circumstances of the people of Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania; and will readily perceive that in regard to Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, tha author has endeavored to avoid repetitions, by confining his review to the particular features in which the laws of the latter colonies differed from those of the former."

Includes "an historical outline of the origin, spirit and effects of the liquor-laws, as well as of the habits and circumstances of the people of Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania; and will readily perceive that in regard to Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, tha author has endeavored to avoid repetitions, by confining his review to the particular features in which the laws of the latter colonies differed from those of the former."

Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania