A Modern Twist on the Old Fashioned Method of Heating a Cocktail With a Hot Poker

Dave Arnold, the founder and president of the Museum of Food and Drink in Brooklyn, New York demonstrated to Eater how to heat a cocktail using a modern take on the Antebellum era method of using a hot poker straight from the fire.

If you going to a tavern prior to the civil war in the winter time, there would be a big fire roaring. If you were to order a hot drink, they would pull a red-hot poker out of the fire and stick it right into your drink. So what I have here is a modern-day version of the red-hot poker that doesn’t require a fireplace – it’s got an internal heater. Plunge it into an alcoholic drink and it ignites almost instantly.