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Brandy Milk Punch
The New Orleans brunch drink, and the honest answer in a house that can't have a Bloody Mary
A kitchen with no tomato in it means no Bloody Mary, full stop, and I don't think that's a loss worth mourning when this is sitting right there as the answer. This is the actual New Orleans brunch drink, and it outranks the Bloody Mary in my city on any honest day. Brandy is the classic base; bourbon is the honest local variant a lot of home bars actually reach for, and either is defensible as long as you say which one you used. It's dairy, sugar, spirit, and a little vanilla, shaken hard and poured over ice with fresh nutmeg on top, and it batches beautifully for a brunch table or a patio crowd without losing anything.
How it's made
1Shake it like a dairy drink, because it is one
Cream and milk need the same aeration and hard chill citrus and egg do, a quick stir leaves it thin and separated instead of properly cold and slightly frothed.
- Combine 2 oz (60 ml) brandy or bourbon, 3 oz (90 ml) whole milk or half-and-half, 1/2 oz (15 ml) simple syrup, and 1/4 tsp (about 1 ml) vanilla extract in a shaker with ice.
- Shake hard, 15 to 20 seconds.
- Strain into a chilled glass over fresh ice. Grate nutmeg over the top just before serving, per glass, not into a batch, ground spice sitting on top of a pitcher goes dull and stale.
2Batching for the patio or a brunch table
This is one of the easiest drinks on this list to scale, but dairy separates a little sitting cold, and the fix is a hard re-shake or stir right before pouring, not a re-mix from scratch.
- Multiply the ratio above by however many are drinking, mix in a pitcher the morning of or the night before, keep it cold.
- Shake or stir the pitcher hard immediately before pouring to re-emulsify.
- Pour over fresh ice per glass and grate nutmeg individually at the moment of serving.
- If this is sharing shaker space with anything citrus-forward that day, rinse the shaker between the two, a dairy residue left in a seal can sour and taint the next drink through it.
Notes
No tomato by design, that's the whole point of this card. No pineapple, kiwi, or capsaicin anywhere in it. Contains dairy. For this household. Vanilla extract is a minimum 35% ABV spirit by federal standard, worth naming as a matter of habit, though this drink already carries 2 oz of brandy or bourbon so it doesn't change anything about who this is appropriate for.
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