It’s 2016 everyone! Hopefully, your year is starting out better than mine, which has essentially been a drunken version of Groundhog Day with a significant amount of smudged eyeliner.
Now, I’m not big on making resolutions, but one thing I’d like to do this year is help maintain my friendships and foster new ones. A lot of us met in grad school through our publishing program and we’re all very bookish people. The idea of a book chat has been tossed around where we get together, eat, drink, and just talk about what we’re reading. So if you plan on hosting any events, this recipe is for you!
There are a couple reasons why I decided to make High Class Hunch Punch, and one of them included a bit of research. When I first mentioned the name hunch punch to the SBTB ladies, they weren’t really sure what I was talking about. Hunch punch is the Southern colloquialism for a disgusting concoction of cheap booze and fruit juice, often made in a big plastic garbage can or tub. Many a bad decision has been made on hunch punch. If you have another name for it where you’re from, I’d love to hear it!
Built by Jay Crownover is heavy on the class differences/opposites attract (one of my favorite tropes!), so I wanted to take a somewhat trashy drink and make it a bit fancier. Something to serve in a cute punch bowl rather than a container used for storing things in a dusty shed. Or you could make it for yourself and keep it in a pitcher in the fridge.
The awesome thing about punches as well is that it allows for boozy fruit, which is one of my favorite things on the planet. I chose arils (pomegranate seeds) because as my roommate put it, “They’re like the Gushers of the fruit world!” Let them soak in your glass and save them for the very end for an extra punch. Crownover writes some great tough, yet emotional, heroes and the burst of flavor you get from the arils is a perfect compliment.
This recipe went through several test rounds in my apartment and apparently, I’m a monster who can drink the 100% pomegranate blueberry juice straight up. My other roommates think it tastes like cough syrup and looked at me in disgust as I was working out proportions. So use a light hand on the juice is my only warning!
I also had a bit of distraction while trying to make and photograph this drink as evidenced by the cat butt.
Shopping List:
Pear vodka
Pear sparkling cider
Pomegranate juice
Pomegranate seeds/arils
Proportions for a personal glass:
½ cup of vodka
½ cup of cider
A splash of pomegranate juice
Plop in as many arils as your heart desires.
For a punch:
4 cups vodka
4 cups cider
½ cup of pomegranate juice
Whole container of arils
Modifications and notes:
- Chill everything!
- Alternatively, you can turn the pomegranate juice portion into ice cubes and drop them into the vodka cider mixture. I have some fun ice trays here that would be really cute.
- My grocery story was out of plain pomegranate juice, so I had to do with pomegranate blueberry. I think you could experiment with just about any fruit juice.
- For some extra bubbles, use seltzer water.
Happy drinking and happy 2016!
Ah, hunch punch – good times during college. We had “porch crawler” – a case of beer, a handle of vodka or everclear, and a tub of lemonade mix. Weirdly delicious (when you’re young!). There was also jungle juice, made in the plastic trash bins you mention, with potent floating fruit. Even now just the memory of that stuff makes my stomach hurt. Your version looks like something my *slightly* older self would like. Cheers!
We called them Hairy Buffalo parties when I was in school at the dawn of time. It was basically fruit juice and any type of clear alcohol – gin, vodka, grain alcohol. One glass was enough!
In Michigan and New York we called it Jungle Juice.
In Pennsylvania we called it Jungle Juice as well. Love the recipe!!
I’ve heard it called Jungle Juice as well, but we also had a specific one called Dutchman. That called for grain alcohol, and then, iirc, red Hawaiian Punch, Squirt soda, something else I think, and lots of fruit. I have no idea about where the name came from.
Here in Seattle – spodie (spoe dee) which was usually a jug of cheap vodka, monarch was a popular brand,or everclear if someone had made a roadtrip to Oregon to buy it (not legal to sell in Washington) and that red fruit punch stuff that came in those plastic jugs used for milk, traditionally served in a bathtub or garbage can. If someone threw in orange slices to float, they were fancy and it was sangria.
Caveat: people here tend to be from somewhere else, so i don’t know if it’s a local term or imported from another region.
There is so much wonderful euphemism potential in the name “Hairy Buffalo.” I could bask in all them for hours.
At my Midwestern university, we had Screaming Purple Jesus. Grape juice was the base of the “recipe” with cheap vodka and wine, plus whatever else got poured into a washtub or punch bowl. Almost 40 years later and I get queasy when I see Kamchatka vodka in the liquor store. The pomegranate punch looks tempting. Of course, I would make it with Grey Goose, not Kamchatka.
We used to call it Hairy Buffalo. Lord alone knows why.
But many a vad decision was made after drinking, to that I can attest.
In college in Louisiana we would sometime call it jungle juice, but most of the time it would just go by “vat”. I suppose because it was housed in a plastic garbage cans and drunk college student creativity only extends so far.
We called it “trash can punch” on the west coast
I’m from Texas and we always called it trash can punch. You did use a trash can, washed out of course, because it had to hold enough for a party. And it pretty much had whatever hard liquor was in the house mixed with a bunch of fruit juice so people wouldn’t taste how much alcohol was in it. 🙂
It was the Hairy Buffalo at BSU, too, low those many decades ago. Tried it once. As in a sip before I handed the cup back. I felt bad, as the guys who’d made it were having their first HB party, and were so proud of themselves. Just not bad enough to drink it.
We called it Wopatoola (sp?) in the wilds of Iowa back in the day. It included Everclear, Hawaiian Punch, fruit juice and pineapple at least.
Growing up on Army bases, there would be adult stairwell parties with army punch as the drink of choice where everyone would bring their clear alcohol and any fruit juices or mixers like grenadine syrup and throw it all in a trash can. Being the good little angels we were, we never ever ever snuck drinks of that. Nope, not one time.
In college in the south we called it jungle juice and made it in cleaned out coolers with fruit floating in it. Usually made with everclear, that fruit was deadly. Oh the hangovers. I’m getting a headache thinking of those morning afters. I think I need a greasy burger or piece of pizza to combat my flashback memory hangover.
Is pear sparkling cider alcoholic or is it just fizzy fruit juice? I can’t really read the label in the picture.
In my part of Florida hunch punch usually referred to lots of fruit soaked in alcohol. (Vodka, ever clear, grain, whatever). We usually took it to the beach in one of those big round orange coolers with the spout at the bottom.
@Lostshadows: It’s non-alcoholic! I got it from the same area in the grocery store where you can get sparkling fruit juices.
Omg, @LauraL!!!!! I graduated from college in Ohio about ten years ago and Kamchatka brought me *right* back! The county we were is was dry (ish). That is, they sold alcohol, but only to a certain proof. Kamchatka was like three dollars a fifth and has the distinction of being the only spirit to actually make me *less* drunk as the night went on. Yay, college!!!!
@Amanda, if you want to be extra boozy, you could buy perry, the pear version of cider.
@Mary Star: I always want to be extra boozy. Woodchuck and Magners both make an amazing pear cider.
I was an eastern NC college kid in the 90’s and we called it PJ or Purple Jesus. I don’t think I ever had any at a party though. My drink of choice was Boonesfarm wine that makes me shudder just to think about these days.
@Amanda, your group could be the Boozy Floozies!
My sib did an exchange term in Spain and informed me that the student drink of choice was a mixture of Coca Cola and cheap red wine. Cheap, as in the Cola cost more than the bottle of wine. (But then, Spain produces wine and Cola costs more in Europe than it does in the States. Or so I’ve heard.)
I have never enjoyed Coke & wine, but I was an exchange student to Spain twice, and she’s so right. Cola is SO expensive (or was then, too, in 96 and 91). I was just under the drinking age there the first time but was served anyway, and it did a lot for my budget to drink wine instead of Coke!
I went to university in eastern Ontario, Canada and we used Purple Jesus for the name of grape juice amd alcool which is 100 proof alcohol available in our liquor stores!
Amanda it isn’t pear cider whatever the manufacuteres say, that would be like saying lake ocean, yes they are both large bodies of water, but they aren’t the same. Perry is made with pears, cider is made with apples. *grumble grumble decline in english grumble grumble*
Oh, hunch punch. Ours was fruit soaked overnight in Everclear, lots of vodka, and Gatorade. Worst (or best?) party ever in college: every single person was passed out within an hour except the three of us who had actually made the punch. Apparently they were all adding vodka to their cups because it it didn’t taste strong. Since we made it, we knew better… And ended up spending the night chatting in a diner while our friends slept it off. Good times!
Y’all, every time I think of the words ‘Screaming Purple Jesus,’ I start giggling like a doofus. Thank you.
OK, Amanda, are you letting your CAT taste the punch or is a cat necessary for the recipe? (If so I have a big lazy one you can borrow for your culinary trip down hangover lane.)
I must say I was a non-drinker of anything but champagne until a memorable grad student party that involved hard cider and everclear. THE WORST HEADACHE OF ALL TIME. Everyone was stupid passed out drunk and the whole department couldn’t look an apple in the face for months.
Hooch! That’s what we called in college in Kentucky. Hunch Punch is the more common term in the rest of the South. Our recipe: soak the fruit- watermelon, cherries, oranges, apples, kiwi,etc- and that super cheap pink individually wrapped bubble gum in the gallon of everclear at least overnight. Add a fifth of vodka and a fifth of rum, two or three things of Hawaiian Punch, and two or three 2-liters of Sprite or ginger ale. We normally mixed it up in a cooler but the boys would do a trash can and quadruple the recipe.
I’m from an area of the U.S. with a significant Basque population, and at the annual Basque festival they claimed the coke and wine drink as their own. Having tried it, I was surprised that it was rather drinkable, though I’ve never been inclined to try it again. Far superior, IMHO, than the drink that is a local favorite among the Mexican-American population consisting of beer mixed with Clamato juice.
I’m British and I don’t think I’ve ever had anything like that. We used to drink Snakebite and black: lager, a clear cider (I think you call it ‘hard cider’? Alcoholic apple stuff, anyway) like Diamond White, and blackcurrant cordial.
These days, our summer party drink of choice is turbo Pimms – Pimms, vodka, prosecco, lemonade, strawberries and mint. Lethal, but yummy.