The Old Fashioned is the OG cocktail. If you enjoy a good cocktail at home, chances are you’ve tried making this on your own. While it is a fairly simple cocktail, there a few tips that can take your Old Fashioned, and make it a truly great one.
To do that however, we need a place to start. Tradition calls for something similar to this; 2oz Bourbon Whiskey (or Rye if you prefer), 1 Sugar Cube (or teaspoon of granulated sugar), 2 Dashes of Angostura Bitters, and garnish of Orange Zest. Typically, this would be prepared in your glass adding the sugar and bitters first. Then if cubed, you would muddle to break down the sugar. Next ice, preferably a large cube, would be placed inside. Then your whiskey would be poured on top and then taking a barspoon, stirring it all together. Then Garnish with the orange peel. This method could make you an okay Old Fashioned, but it could also lead to inconsistency. The amount of sugar incorporated, the level of dilution, sugar sitting at the bottom, all of these will potentially be different every time. Let’s fix that.
First correction will be removing the granulated sugar. We will use instead, a thick demerara sugar syrup. (This means a 2:1 ratio. Two parts sugar and one part water.) This will make sure that 1), we get the desired level of sweet without over diluting, and 2) don’t have undissolved sugar bits at the bottom of our glass. Something else we will tweak is we will not be building inside the glass. This will make sure our ice is in prime condition for the cocktail and everything is incorporated together properly. We will also add to the previous recipe, lemon oils and orange bitters.
Here is how it’s done:
- 2¼oz Eagle Rare Bourbon Whiskey
- ¼oz Rich Demerara Sugar syrup.
- 2 Dashes Angostura Bitters
- 1 Dashes Orange Bitters
- Orange Peel
- Lemon Oils
•Method•
Add all ingredients to a mixing glass. Add ice and stir. Pour on-top of your ice filled glass. Next, take an orange peel and express it, squeezing the oils out above your glass. Rub it around the rim and drop in. Do the same with a lemon peel, but this time after expressing the oils, discard.
Ideally, you would stir this over a big rock of ice. That would help maintain the level of dilution desired. Smaller ice cubes will melt more quickly, and since we are pouring our Old Fashioned into a glass full of ice (or a big rock), we want to make sure that we are not adding too much water. While I did say to discard the lemon peel, you are more than welcome to garnish with it as well. This is how i prefer it. Many do not enjoy the extra citrus so I recommend trying it out for yourself and seeing what you prefer.
Cocktail Homecraft 