Drinks by theme

Colonial Drinks: What American Colonists Drank

Beer and small beer, cider, punch, Dutch kandeel and French spruce beer: what the English, Dutch and French colonists of North America and the islands drank.

Updated October 29, 2026

Prices fixed by the Director General and Council of New Netherland, November 11, 1658, in Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland, 1638–1674, ed. E. B. O’Callaghan (Albany, 1868), p. 359. Internet Archive.

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A brown stoneware mug filled with hazy pale amber beer stands with a worn black leather bottle and a wooden scoop of malted barley on oak before a timber-framed wall.

Wine, Beer & Mead · 14 days total

Ordinary Beer, the Household Brew of 1623

Pale malt and a light hand of English hops, mashed, boiled an hour and drunk at a fortnight old: Gervase Markham’s everyday beer of 1623, scaled to a 10-liter home brew.

A blue-and-white Delft-style cup of pale golden frothy kandeel with faint steam beside a brass saucepan, one nutmeg and orange-red mace on dark oak by a leaded window.

Hot Drinks · 15 min total

Kandeel, the Dutch Hot Wine with Eggs of 1669

Rhenish wine and water thickened with beaten eggs and spiced with mace, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves: kandeel from an Amsterdam cookbook of 1669.

Two white faience cups with blue decoration and mounds of pale gray-brown chocolate froth beside a copper pot with a wooden mill through its lid, a rough cacao paste block and one brown egg on dark wood by a shuttered window.

Always alcohol-free

Hot Drinks · 20 min total

Island Chocolate Frothed with a Fresh Egg, Martinique 1722

Grated cacao, sugar, cinnamon and a whole fresh egg, worked into boiling water and milled to a thick froth: chocolate as the French islands made it, from Labat’s 1722 account.

What did colonists drink in America?

Beer first, wherever there was grain and a brewer: strong beer for those who could pay and small beer, the weak everyday kind, for the household. Cider took over where orchards grew, and by the 1670s rum came up from the West Indies.

The English settlers knew the household brewing of home, the “ordinary beer” of a 1623 English housewife’s book, and George Washington’s 1757 notebook makes small beer from bran, hops and molasses. In New Netherland the Director General taxed beer by the half barrel and fixed its price in silver, beaver or wampum; by 1679 Dutch-speaking farmers on Long Island poured cider and Barbados rum they called kill-devil.

French Canada was different again. A Swedish visitor found in 1749 that people of rank took chocolate or coffee at breakfast and red wine mixed with water at dinner, spruce beer was drunk in summer, and the common people drank water. In the French islands the everyday drink was a cassava beer, and the planters copied English mixed drinks such as sangaree.

Every recipe here comes from a book or record of the period, and the alcohol-free drinks are marked.

The common people drink water; for it is not yet customary here to brew beer of malt.

Pehr Kalm at Montreal, Travels into North America (1771)

What did the English colonists drink?

Beer brewed at home from malt, or small beer from cheaper bran and molasses, and punch for company. Sweet wort, the malt drink before it becomes beer, is alcohol-free.

A plain tumbler of nearly still golden sweet wort with a few bubbles on the inner wall stands with an unlidded glass jug and a lemon wedge on a white saucer on worn wood.

Alcohol-free version

1 hr 25 min total

Sweet Wort, the Malt Drink Before the Beer

Malt boiled with a few hops, chilled and cut with sparkling water: the sweet, unfermented wort that 17th-century beer started from, made as a modern alcohol-free drink.

A plain pewter mug of amber-brown beer with a thin loose froth stands beside a squat corked green bottle, with an iron-hooped wooden bucket behind on a rough plank table by a window and whitewashed log wall.

Wine, Beer & Mead · 9 days total

George Washington’s Small Beer from His 1757 Notebook

Bran and hops boiled three hours, strained onto molasses and worked a week: the small beer in the notebook George Washington kept as a Virginia colonel in 1757.

Clear pale golden milk punch in a tall-stemmed conical wine glass and a small loop-handled punch cup, beside a squat dark green corked bottle and a nutmeg on a brass grater, on white linen over mahogany before green paneling.

Punches & Cups · 1 day 5 hr total

Benjamin Franklin’s Milk Punch

Brandy steeped with lemon peel, then nutmeg, lemon, sugar and boiling milk, dripped clear through a jelly bag and bottled: Franklin’s 1763 receipt at a twelfth of the size.

What did the Dutch in New Netherland drink?

Beer above all, and wine and brandy by ship. Dutch cookbooks of the 1660s add a hot wine thickened with egg and a currant syrup for cold water; a century later, Albany’s Dutch families took their tea without milk.

A clear ruby-red currant drink in a plain glass beside a stoneware syrup jug and a bowl of red currants on their stalks, on pale scrubbed wood by a leaded window.

Always alcohol-free

Shrubs, Syrups & Cordials · 25 min total

Currant Syrup and Water, a Dutch Cooler of 1669

Red currant juice boiled with sugar to a thin syrup, three parts to two, and stirred into cold water: a thirst-quencher from an Amsterdam book of 1669.

A porcelain cup of clear amber tea on a saucer beside a teapot, a small dish of rough white sugar lumps and a plate with two buttered bread slices and thin dried beef, on a scrubbed wooden table by a softly lit window.

Always alcohol-free

Hot Drinks · 7 min total

Albany Breakfast Tea with Sugar in the Mouth, 1749

Black tea without milk, drunk with a small lump of sugar held in the mouth: breakfast tea as a Swedish visitor saw the Dutch of Albany take it in 1749.

What did French Canada and the French islands drink?

Spruce beer in a Canadian summer, Madeira sangaree copied from the English, and chocolate frothed with a fresh egg in the islands. The chocolate is alcohol-free.

A glass of hazy amber spruce beer with thin white foam beside a wooden cask, fresh green spruce sprig, toasted rolled oats and a capped brown plastic bottle on a rough bench in a whitewashed cellar.

Wine, Beer & Mead · 5 days total

Canadian Spruce Beer from a French Book of 1755

Spruce branches boiled until the bark slips, roasted oats and toast, molasses and beer yeast: spruce beer as Canada made it, printed in Paris in 1755, at one gallon.

Amber-brown Madeira drink with a dark toasted bread crust floating in a shallow white bowl, beside two stemmed glasses, half a lemon and a nutmeg on a grater on dark wood in warm shuttered-window light.

Cocktails & Mixed Drinks · 35 min total

Sang-Gris, Labat’s Madeira Sangaree from the French Islands

Madeira steeped with sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, clove, plenty of nutmeg and a crust of dark toast, then strained: the English drink the French islands copied, from Labat’s 1722 account.

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