Alcohol-Free Ale Cup, with White Grape Juice over Toast
Reader ratingsSpencer’s 1903 Ale Cup made without alcohol: a 0.0% ale and white grape juice poured cold over hot toast with lemon, sugar, nutmeg and a sprig of balm.
- Recipe makes
- About 7 3/4 cups, 10 small glasses
- Prep
- Total
Chill the alcohol-free ale and the grape juice for a few hours first. The balm comes out after about 5 minutes, and the cup is served at once.
Alcohol-free ale cup in a glass pitcher with toast and lemon peel, beside white grapes, lemon balm and small stemmed glasses.
The story behind the recipe
This is the Ale Cup of 1903 with every drop of alcohol taken out: a 0.0% ale in place of the mild ale, and white grape juice where the sherry and brandy went. The hot toast, the lemon, the sugar, the nutmeg and the sprig of balm stay exactly as Edward Spencer printed them in The Flowing Bowl.
A cup for the other guests
Spencer gave no alcohol-free version; this one is ours. His book did look after the guests who stayed off the ale, though. Among its soft drinks is a Superior Lemon Squash, a bottled lemon cordial poured over soda water. The ale cup was a different kind of drink, a jug for the table, and that is the part worth keeping: everyone pours from the same jug, toast and all.
In the same book Spencer wrote the Babylonians and Cleopatra into the history of beer, mostly wrongly, as told in Cleopatra’s Bitter and a Babylonian Sauce. The 1855 translators of Pliny called the ancient grain drink “beer, or rather sweet wort,” and a sweet wort with no alcohol at all is on our pages as Sweet Wort, the Malt Drink Before the Beer.
Read more about this recipe
Choosing the bottles
Use an ale labeled 0.0%. In some countries, one labeled only “non-alcoholic” may still hold up to 0.5%. A darker, malty alcohol-free ale stands in best for Spencer’s mild. Three quarters of a cup of white grape juice gives back some of the sweetness and fruit the sherry brought, and replaces its volume and the brandy’s. Unsweetened juice is enough, since the sugar on the toast sweetens the jug too. The cup comes to about 50 calories a glass, against about 90 for the original.
Recipe makes: About 7 3/4 cups, 10 small glasses
Ingredients
For About 7 3/4 cups, 10 small glasses. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for About 7 3/4 cups, 10 small glasses.
- White bread1 slice
- Lemon1
- Superfine sugar1 tbsp
- Freshly grated nutmeg1/8 tsp
- Lemon balm1 sprig
- White grape juice, chilled3/4 cup
- Alcohol-free ale (0.0%), chilled7 cups
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 1 slice white bread
- 1 lemon
- 1 tbsp superfine sugar
- 1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- 1 sprig lemon balm
- 3/4 cup white grape juice, chilled
- 7 cups alcohol-free ale (0.0%), chilled
Equipment
Large jug- Toaster
Citrus juicer
Vegetable peeler
Nutmeg grater
Long spoon
Instructions
Toast the white bread and put it, still hot, in the bottom of a large jug.
Pare one thin strip of peel from the lemon with a vegetable peeler, leaving the white pith behind, then squeeze the lemon’s juice over the toast.
Lay the strip of peel on the toast with the superfine sugar, the nutmeg and the lemon balm.
Pour in the white grape juice, then the cold alcohol-free ale, slowly down the side of the jug so it doesn’t foam over. Stir gently until the sugar has dissolved.
After about 5 minutes, lift out the balm. Serve at once in small glasses, leaving the toast in the jug.
Nutrition
50calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 7 3/4 cups, 10 small glasses
- Servings
- 10
Estimated from typical label values for 0.0% ale (about 20 kcal per 100 ml) and white grape juice (about 60 kcal per 100 ml), with lemon juice and sugar, for ten 3/4-cup glasses; the toast is not counted.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
The recipe is built on 7 cups of alcohol-free ale. Keep the grape juice at about a tenth of the ale when you scale.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
The changes from the 1903 recipe are the two swaps: 0.0% ale for mild ale, and white grape juice for the wine-glass of brandy and two of sherry. Everything else is Spencer’s, read the same way as on the original page: the juice of a whole lemon, a tablespoon of sugar, “a little” nutmeg or powdered allspice, and the balm out after about five minutes.
Spencer’s three imperial pints of ale come to about 1.7 liters, which we round to 7 cups. Some alcohol-free ales are sweeter than others; taste before adding more sugar.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
A modern alcohol-free adaptation of “Ale Cup (Cold)” in Edward Spencer, The Flowing Bowl: A Treatise on Drinks of All Kinds and of All Periods (London: Grant Richards, 1903), p. 55
See the original pages (scan at Internet Archive) (opens in a new tab)
Recipe details
- Drink
- Alcohol-freeMocktail
- Drink family
- Punches & Cups
- Region
- British
- Era
- Edwardian
- Source decade
- 1900s
- Base
- Beer & ale
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Occasion
- Dry January