We made this last weekend for an open house .... it was a big hit but caution ... very refreshing and easy to quickly drink too much before you ‘feel’ it!! We had a little left over, just put it in an empty ginger ale bottle & enjoyed it the next day - not as good as fresh, but still tasty. I also made an ‘ice’ ring ... used a circular jello mold, poured in a quarter inch of ginger ale and spaced lime slices/frozen strawberries around the ring and let it freeze, added some more ginger ale, froze & repeated until the whole ring was full. It was beautiful in the punch bowl!
Champagne Punch:
1 (12 ounce) can frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed (small can)
1 (12 ounce) can frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed (small can)
1 (12 ounce) can frozen limeade concentrate, thawed (may use 1 small can pineapple juice concentrate, thawed)- we used limeade.
1 (2 liter) bottle ginger ale, chilled
1 (2 liter) bottle champagne, chilled
MIX the juice concentrates in punch bowl (do not add water).
STIR in the Ginger ale then add the Champagne (do not stir after adding the champagne!)
** Note ** The Ginger ale and Champagne should be equal volumes.
I gather that at the time, liquor made an effective currency.
In very rural farms, if farmers had surplus crop or the distance to market was far, or the price of the crop was low, conversion of the crop to liquor made great sense.
It was highly valued, easy to transport, and was very fungible for sale or trade. It also had the added benefit of being much more trustworthy to consume than drinking water.
So a wealthy man like Washington spent a lot of time brewing and distilling as liquid assets. To make such an elaborate eggnog let all his guests know that he was wealthy.
Typical Colonial liquor was ubiquitous, and had names like Rattle-Skull, Stonewall, Bogus, Blackstrap, Bombo, Mimbo, Whistle Belly, Syllabub, Sling, Toddy, and Flip. Added to these were the still popular Hard Cider, wines, beers, rums and whiskeys.
Thomas Jefferson imported lots of French wines, John Hancock was accused of smuggling wine, Patrick Henry worked as a bartender, and there is still a popular Samuel Adams beer.