Feuerzangenbowle

Sunday, December 25, 2022

To all my readers, Happy Holidays, best wishes for a Joyous holiday season, and a prosperous new year.

Hmmm, Fire, Booze, Spices. We have them all in a German holiday tradition called Feuerzangenbowle, or Fire Tongs Bowl.

Basically a mulled wine with caramelized sugar added in the most SPECTACULAR way imaginable. A sugar cone is soaked in rum and melted over a simmering bowl of mulled red wine.

Please note; I do NOT run curated lists, nor do I get referral fees from vendors, and as such try to maintain a bit of neutrality. Alas, this is one time I must name, names, and link, links. The big river company has the sugar cone and the “Feuerzangenbowle” available as a set, including the spice mix.

I suspect this would make a fantastic presentation outdoors, on a fire-proof surface, say a patio, after a day of playing in the snow or shoveling the snow. But I would disrecommend performing this one inside.

If one decides not to play with fire, I think adding 2 cups of an excellent dark Indian rum (Old Monk) will approximate the taste without the fire. For the wine, I would go with a Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir, or my favorite Merlot.

There is a somewhat cult classic movie Die Feuerzangenbowle that this drink is central to.

From Wikipedia:

Feuerzangenbowle is a traditional German alcoholic drink for which a rum-soaked sugarloaf is set on fire and drips into mulled wine. It is often part of a Christmas or New Year’s Eve tradition. The name translates literally as fire-tongs punch, “Bowle” meaning “punch” being borrowed from English.

The popularity of the drink was boosted in Germany by the 1944 comedy film Die Feuerzangenbowle. It is a traditional drink of some German fraternities, who also call it Krambambuli, as the red color is reminiscent of a cherry liqueur of that name which was manufactured by the distillery Der Lachs zu Danzig [de] (in Gdańsk).

Feuerzangenbowle is prepared in a bowl, similar to a fondue set, which usually is suspended over a small burner (Rechaud). The bowl is filled with heated dry red wine spiced with cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise and orange peel, similar to mulled wine. The Feuerzange was originally a pair of tongs, but nowadays it is common for a purpose-designed metal grate mounted on top of the bowl to hold the Zuckerhut (sugarloaf), a 250-gram (9 oz) lump of sugar. The sugar is soaked with rum and set alight, melting and caramelizing. The rum should have at least 54% alcohol by volume (ABV), such as the high-ABV Austrian rum Stroh 80, and be at room temperature in order to burn properly. More rum is poured with a ladle until all the sugar has melted and mixed with the wine. The resulting punch is served in mugs while the burner keeps the bowl warm.

For some the ceremony is more important than the drink itself, celebrating the gathering of friends and conveying a notion of Gemütlichkeit.