Your Toddy is Hot

Saucyman, What exactly is a hot toddy? Is it supposed to be made with brandy or whiskey? - Mix Master B

Well there isn’t an exact definition - The three dictionaries I consulted agreed on the ancillary ingredients: lemon, hot water and sweetener (sometimes honey; sometimes sugar) but none come out and endorse one spirit over another. A survey of recipes in the Biblosaueca reveals Brandy is the most common alcohol listed, Bourbon whiskey second and Scotch whisky third.

Despite not medaling in this competition, rum seems to have started the toddy race. The hot concoction seems to have been born from the flip/sling/grog/punch tradition that dominated colonial drinking, or at least that is the way Andrew Barr reports in his book Drink; A History of Social Drinking of America. Flips were generally warmed by placing a hot poker – called a flip - into a tankard resulting in bubbling frothy drink, a forerunner of the modern cocktail. Rum, does occasionally warm up - leaving the blender to be mixed in a hot buttered rum, which unfortunately for the dairy and fat lovers, contains no actual butter.

It isn’t really clear when or why toddies and flips officially divorced from each other and became separate entities, but let's pretend toddies went there separate way because they didn’t like being getting repeatedly hit with a flip. Instead, toddies use warm to hot water, heated in a separate vessel, then added to both heat the drink’s contents and dissolve the sweetener.

A toddy doesn’t even need to contain alcohol, a hot cocoa is technically a toddy – containing hot water, sweetener and flavoring. Even less potent alcohols like wine and cider can be considered toddies, especially if they are spiced and sweetened, like mulled wine. Sometimes even using 80 proof bonded liquor, it is easy to make a drink a teetotaler would be proud of, well tolerant of anyway. Alcohol vaporizes at a very low temperature, depending on its concentration, alcohol disappears between about 173 to 200ºƒ (79 – 93 C). With water boiling at 212, it isn’t hard to reduce a toddy’s potency in the mixing process.

Many people recommend hot toddies for colds of the head variety, many more endorse the drink for cold of the temperature variety. For the former, there is no data suggesting toddies fight a viral infection any better than chicken soup, but some believe that the combination of relaxation, sleep and rehydration all help ameliorate cold like symptoms. For the latter, if you aren’t outside and a drink makes you feel warm and comfortable, one isn’t going to do harm.

As to a definitive answer to brandy or whiskey/whisky, I believe brandy is the preferred alcohol for today’s toddy but there is no reason a person couldn’t use Cognac, Bourbon or Scotch if that’s what they are into. I would avoid using spices in a toddy, just because spicing seems like an awful thing to do to a good distilled aged alcohol, even to a less than good brown liquor, but that is just me.

Some add Earl Grey tea, others recommend clove, cinnamon, and/or anise for the mix, I feel quite strongly, drinks should be simple to make - no more than 5 ingredients. More than that and you are going to wind up with something that is going to have 'on a beach' in the title. The most basic hot toddy mixture would go something like this:

2oz Brown Liquor
1-teaspoon honey
3oz boiling water
1 thick wedge of lemon

Choose a tempered cup or glass; coffee/tea mugs are good. Combine alcohol and honey and mix. Add water and lemon wedge, stir with teaspoon used for honey – drink as soon as it is cool enough.