The Old Fashioned

Murky waters

My previous post applied my way of breaking down a cocktail to make it easier to understand to the Lemon Drop, a simple universally understood drink. You may not like the drink, but it is hard to quibble over how it is mixed or what it is doing. This week, I am going to wade into the murkier waters of the Old Fashioned. The Lemon Drop is made with three ingredients: vodka, lemon juice, and simple syrup. The Old Fashioned is made with three ingredients: bourbon, sugar and bitters.

Perhaps because its popularity, I have had more terrible Old Fashioneds than I have Lemon Drops. Making this drink too sweet, too alcoholic, or too watery is easy. There also seems to be a compulsion to over garnish it. Applying my “real world” mouth shape for a cocktail containing bitters, the causes of the failures become pretty clear.

Many recipes call for muddling a sugar cube with the bitters. It sounds authentic, but sugar cubes come in many sizes and shapes and one may be too little while two is too much. I strongly recommend abandoning sugar cube authenticity for simple syrup so that you get better control of the ratio of sugar to bourbon.

Moving from the “Fore” to the “Middle” we have to consider the choice of bourbon. For such a wildly popular liquor, bourbon is surprisingly constrained in variation. This means that you have both a wide latitude of choices that work pretty much equally well, but also the ability, depending on your palate, to elevate the drink. Alcohol is the engine of the mid section of your Old Fashioned experience, but it needs something to propel. In the Lemon Drop, the alcohol heightens your sensation of the lemon aromas. In the Old Fashioned, the most common flavors of bourbon are from the corn that must comprise 51% of the source of the sugars used for fermentation, and vanillins from the oak barrels in which the bourbon aged for 3 or more years. These are pretty mild aromas. Are there bourbons with bigger aromas?

This is where things get murky because bourbon selection is personal. I catagorize bourbon into two groups. There are sippin’ bourbons where I appreciate the liquor for what it is, and there are cocktail bourbons. Focusing on the latter, I look for bourbons with a high percentage of rye because rye brings spicy notes that increase the “size” of the mid mouth flavor, essentially creating a larger sphere. I have cycled through a several house bourbons. At the moment, my favorite is the “high-rye” version of Buffalo Trace, in part because it is also 45% alcohol instead of the more common 40%. Buffalo Trace produces two versions of their entry bourbon. They vary by the amount of rye in them so you have to pay attention to the labels. Other inexpensive high-rye bourbons are Bulleit and Jim Beam.

Another option is to replace some of the bourbon with rye. The rye grain provides fermentation sugar in rye whiskey adds a spicy, slightly fruity flavor to the liquor. Rye whiskies are also generally less sweet than bourbons. This gives you more control of how spicy your Old Fashioned gets. A complete replacement of bourbon for rye is still considered to be an Old Fashioned. The all rye modification is also very close to another classic cocktail, the Sazerac. In general, I use Rittenhouse Straight Rye Bottled in Bond. Those decorators on the name signal that it is 50% alcohol (100 proof). As with other cocktails that I plan to discuss, this extra alcohol can be key to a good drink rendition when working with sweet ingredients such orange juice which require significant volume to deliver recognizable flavor.

A risk of using a higher proof main liquor such as Rittenhouse Rye or Buffalo Trace is that you or your friends find the results too strong. I call this the Opah distortion of the "mouth shape”.

It can make people’s eyes water. Such drinks are often called “hot”, and, as Syrah and Zinfadel drinkers have discovered, the extra alcohol, already high in a cocktail, will shorten your appreciation of all of the flavors in the drink. You can manage this challenge by diluting your cocktail with a bit of cold water. You may need to experiment, but for spirit-only drinks such as the Old Fashioned with a 50% replacement of bourbon with Rittenhouse Rye, I find that half an ounce of water usually takes out enough of the heat without making the cocktail insipid.

Measure the water to control the dilution. Do not rely on the natrual dilution that comes when you cool the Old Fashioned by stirring it with ice. Spirit-only drinks are typically stirred; drinks containing fruit juice are typically shaken. There are good reasons for these maxims, but they are for another article. Keep your standard 30 to 45 second stir. Difford’s Guide has a good article on stirring technique. It is much harder to do science by trying to measure secondary effects like the dilution achieved by stirring 15 seconds longer than using a graduated shot glass. That way you will have a good idea how to change your recipe when you make your next Old Fashioned.

The other way to make an insipid Old Fashioned is to use wet ice. This is generally not a risk for a home cocktail enthusiast, but it is for professionals working with ice that has been hastily frozen in a typical commercial freezer. Good cocktail bars do not have this problem, but bartenders operating at temporary bars for large, ephemeral functions like conventions or meetings do. Because of the risk of insipidity from very wet ice, when at such events, I order my bourbon neat.

Finally, the “After” taste is, in my opinion, what makes the Old Fashioned a great drink. Your choice of bitters will take your cocktail from a sweeter, milder version of bourbon-on-the-rocks to something that you prefer. Orange bitters are used in a classic Old Fashioned. Chocolate bitters may work even better because the chocolate flavors are in harmony with all the sweet from the sugar and bourbon, but I agree with Peter Suderman that Mexican Chocolate or Mole Chocolate bitters can really elevate the drink. I am not a fan of spicy cocktails, but the smokey, mild heat of the ancho chile combined with the spice of the cinnamon, couched in chocolate and riding on the bitter flavors coming from the quinine, gentian, or the like, make the “After” of the Old Fashioned something special. These flavors are also robust enough that your palate will be able to pick them up even after several sips of alcohol which would numb your senses to more delicate aromas. Recently, I’ve gone back to orange bitters with a twist. My friend Matt Bufton gave me a bottle of his Smoked Orange Bitters. The smoke is a near like-for-like replacement for the ancho chile, and the classic orange notes are a bit cleaner on the palate than chocolate.

Old Fashioneds are usually served over ice in a rocks glass; actually, many people call the glass an Old Fashioned glass. The larger the piece of ice in the glass the better, because one large piece of ice has less surface area than several smaller pieces, and reduced surface area slows melt and therefore dilution. You can buy molds for large ice cubes (or spheres); however, the drink is only about 3 ounces so ice size is not worth the worry. If you do not have large ice cubes, use one cube from a typical ice tray or two from a typical refrigerator ice maker. I would put my effort into making sure my ice is free of odor or “freezer burn”. I cull all the ice in the freezer on Thursdays so that I have fresh ice for the weekend. Clear ice will make your Old Fashioned more Instagrammable, but it will not change the taste.

I would be remiss not to mention the garnish. The Old Fashioned is usually garnished with an orange peel, which adds floral, citrus aromas to the drink. Orange peel also pairs well with orange, chocolate, or mole chocolate bitters. As discussed in the Lemon Drop, use a vegetable peeler and try to take just the zest not the pith. Express the oils from the zest over the completed drink by curling the zest into an open tube and rolling the zest back and for two or three times with the open side of the tube over the drink surface. Stick the zest into the drink along the wall of the glass. You are ready to enjoy a classic. Save the orange wedge for the Ward Eight and the cherry for the Manhattan.