A Dry Rabbit original · Thanksgiving
Clear Pie Punch
Spiced pear and pumpkin pie, clarified with milk into a crystal-clear punch for the Thanksgiving table. Makes about 8.
Alcohol-free. Nothing in it has alcohol.
Make it
You’ll need (serves 8)
- 3 cups (720 ml) pear juice, unfiltered
- 1½ cups (360 ml) strong rooibos tea, cooled
- ½ cup (120 ml) pumpkin purée, canned
- ¼ cup (60 ml) demerara syrup
- ½ cup (120 ml) fresh lemon juice
- 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice, with a pinch of salt
- 1½ cups (360 ml) whole milk, cold
Garnish: Freshly grated nutmeg and a thin slice of pear.
Method
- Stir everything except the milk together in a big jug and leave it to steep for 20 minutes.
- Pour the cold milk into a large bowl, then pour the spiced pear mixture into the milk, not the other way round, so it curdles cleanly. Leave it alone for 30 minutes.
- Set a coffee filter in a sieve over a clean jug and ladle the mixture in. Pour the first cloudy cup back through: it runs clear once the curds build up. Allow an hour or two.
- Chill it, then pour about 4½ oz over a clear cube in each short glass.
Make ahead. Make it a day or two before: strained and chilled, it keeps about 3 days (our estimate). It's best very cold.
Allergens and caffeine
- Contains milk: the milk is strained out as curds, but treat the punch as dairy, not lactose-free.
- No caffeine: rooibos has none. No egg, nuts or gluten as written.
Get everything for it
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The tools
- Clear ice cube mold
- Cone coffee filters
- Cocktail Kingdom Leopold Jigger
- Hand citrus press
- Fine grater
The pantry
- Rooibos tea
- Demerara sugar
- Canned pumpkin purée
- Pumpkin pie spice
Make ahead
- Demerara syrup. Stir ½ cup of demerara sugar into ½ cup of hot water until it dissolves, and let it cool. It lasts about a month, refrigerated.
From the store
Pear juice, Fresh lemon juice, Whole milk.
Buying in person? See where to shop zero-proof around Boston.
The Weekly Hop. Every Thursday, the alcohol-free picks worth leaving the house for. Free.
How we checked it
Dry Rabbit originals are developed and checked with AI, against the 42 tested recipes in The Dry Rabbit Cocktail Guide: sweetness and acidity per ounce, sweet to sour, dilution and the drink’s size against drinks made the same way, every ingredient’s alcohol, and whether you can buy it. One that falls outside the book’s range is reworked before it’s published.
The check’s notes on Clear Pie Punch
Reworked. As approved (½ cup of demerara syrup, 1 cup of rooibos, the salt as its own line) it measured sweetness 0.17 a finished ounce and sweet to sour 2.06, sweeter than any of the book's batches (to 0.12 and 1.57), with eight ingredients to the book's six at most. Half the syrup and half again the rooibos bring it to 0.14 and 1.68, inside the check's margin, with acidity 0.08, and the pinch of salt goes in with the spice. Clarifying with milk takes out some body and a little sharpness, which the check can't measure, so its numbers err on the sweet side. About 8 oz a serving by the check's sums before straining; it's poured at 4½ oz over a clear cube. Pear juice, canned pumpkin, rooibos and pie spice are at every supermarket in November. Contains milk. 0.0%.
Made it? Tell us how it was: the best originals come back next season.
More to make
From our book, free on the site: The Burrow, Rabbit Punch, Harvey, Crepuscular, Winter Coat, Bog Hopper.