This episode is brought to you by the Mazda CX-50. Move and Be Moved. Hey there, Kelly McEvers here, co-host of the Atlas Obscura podcast. For the next couple weeks, we're counting down to the holidays with 12 days of wonder. We are on day four now. In yesterday's episode, we spent the night in a giant palace made of ice.

And today, we're going to hear about a little-known holiday beverage.

Let me just tell you, it is weirder than eggnog.

Here's the episode.

Back in the 1700s, when little baby America split off from England, as far as Europeans were concerned, high culture didn't make the trip across the pond.

Yeah, we just weren't seen as good as, like, we weren't as fashionable, we weren't as literate, we weren't as good at anything.

Basically, they thought our painters, they thought everything we were doing was crap, except for cocktails. But even

gaining this minimal amount of respect took time. Because American mixology started, in part part with a type of mixed drink that Europeans

thought of as truly trashy. The hot ale flip. A drink made of ale, rum, spices, eggs, and finished

with a red hothot fire poker.

I'm Dylan Thuris, and this is Atlas of Skira, a celebration of the world's strange,

incredible, and wondrous places.

And today, we're taking a step back in time to visit the taverns of colonial America

and take a frothy sip of the hot ale flip.

That's after this. If the idea of mixing beer, rum and eggs together doesn't sound particularly tasty, well, I can understand it.

Describing to someone is like, oh, it's like

sweet hot beer with spices, like sounds awful. But like the last time I had it, I remember

being very tasty. That's culinary historian and author Sarah Lohman. Very quickly, here's Lomond's recipe for the hot

ale flip. It's basically a quick simple syrup made of brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and clothes,

and then you add brown ale, an egg and a shot of rum. After that, comes the fun part. Once the spice

eggy alcohol is in a fire safe container,

you pull a red hot fire poker out of the coals, shake off any loose bits of ash, and plunge

...