in the 2k10 i am learning to make cocktails. this is my mixology thread

I've been wary of using OJ as a mixer. Thanks.

xps yeah it is a rum liqueur, tho made with Batavia Arrack which is kind of its own thing. I feel like I've seen some around but I've never actually shopped for it.

We made some "mimosa" beer cocktails — with Miller High Life, of course — for some events a few years ago and orange juice is so weak on its own that we had to make orange syrup to boost it or you wouldn't get the flavor at all. There's a reason you only mix orange juice with vodka, anything else will override it.

kronan swedish punsch is i think the main one you can get in the usa, its base includes both batavia arrack and rum.....it's fine? idk it might be a more interesting historical artifact than actual cocktail ingredient.

I looked at my state's ABC website and Kronan is available, but as a special order. There's a new-to-me liquor store in Tupelo that I haven't been able to explore fully, but on quick glance they had a ton of stuff from the special order list, maybe they have punsch.

jaymc, didn't want to ignore your post, I'm tempted to make a bit of cinnamon syrup to try that.

Had a big party, made a bunch of negroni variants with Aperol, lillet and gin (plus grapefruit wedge). People loved it.

Further play with acid-adjusted pineapple -- I made some with a lemon profile instead of lime and tried a whiskey sour, a drink I've always been 'meh' about after my early enthusiasm wore off. Best whiskey sour ever, one I could definitely see prying myself away from rum drinks to order. (2 oz. Rittenhouse Rye, 1 oz. acid-adjusted pineapple, .75 oz. 1:1 simple syrup, 1 egg white; dry shake, shake with ice, double strain, garnish with a few drops of Ango)

so for the lemon profile it's just citric right? and citric/malic is lime?

I would like to try this w/ a pisco sour

xp yep

Do it! It's so easy, and the results are a lot of fun.

love that pineapple whiskey sour idea!!

confession time folks. when I make old fashioneds I use good bourbon. the $50 a bottle stuff people say you should never mix. like whatever, it tastes great with Squirt too. I don't even make them right lol

I used to mix drinks with Weller 12, back when it was $25 a bottle and everywhere. How things have changed.

I think old fashioneds are a fine use of good booze — they have a minimal amount of sugar and bitters, mostly what you're tasting is the base spirit. A different thing than dumping it into a whiskey sour e.g. (I love whiskey sours, but Four Roses is perfectly fine for that.)

Tho yeah, if you're putting Squirt in, that's not an old fashioned. I don't know what it is. But enjoy!

Wisconsin is famous for fussing with the Old Fashioned, hence the Brandy Old Fashioned, with this apt detail:

In Wisconsin, the default way to make a Brandy Old Fashioned is with a splash of Sprite or 7-up, making it “sweet.”

But, don’t think you have to stop there.

You can also make it with sour mix or a sour soda (often Squirt), making it “sour.” You can get fancy, and make it “press,” with a combination of 7-up and seltzer. Or, you can skip all the fanciness and simply add seltzer.

Oh lord, no. That way lies TGIF and the whole fruit-cup-in-a-glass approach.

Fun bit about the "old fashioned," it is as far as anyone knows the single oldest cocktail in the U.S. Also the original "cocktail," when that word first shows up around the beginning of the 1800s, it refers specifically to a mixture of whiskey, sugar and some small amount of bitters. Exactly why it was called a cocktail is disputed, there are (as common with drink history) various theories and claims. But the reason the "old fashioned" is called the old fashioned is that as the word cocktail came to mean mixed drinks in general, people who wanted the O.G. would ask for an "old fashioned cocktail" to specify which one they wanted. Or so the story goes!

Anyway, I think old fashioneds are unfairly maligned but it's mostly because of the ghastly overstuffed concoctions they became during the '70s/'80s Dark Ages. A classic old fashioned — whiskey, a touch of sweet (we use 1/4 oz 2:1 simple, which gives it a little viscosity), and dashes of orange and angostura bitters, stirred with ice — is really good. As are the rum and mezcal variants (with good rum you can dial back the sweet to very little, and with mezcal I like chocolate bitters in place of the ango).

But a properly made old fashioned is a fine showcase for a good liquor.

Per @DavidWondrich, this 1880 Chi Trib article is the earliest-known reference to the Old-Fashioned https://t.co/28d9zidxAX #cocktailsummit pic.twitter.com/eClsPwu3wA

— John M. Cunningham (@jmcunning) April 2, 2017

Also per David Wondrich:

“If you had an old horse you were trying to sell, you would put some ginger up its butt, and it would cock its tail up and be frisky. That was known as 'cock-tail.' It comes from that. It became this morning thing. Something to cock your tail up, like an eye-opener. I'm almost positive that's where it's from."

Louisville claims it too, they both have published recipes from the early 1880s. But the drink was long in circulation by then, it just took a while to move from "an old-fashioned cocktail" as a bar order to "an Old Fashioned."

And yeah that's one of the cocktail theories. There are others: https://tastecocktails.com/word-cocktail-come/

Yeah, I trust Wondrich, though! If he thinks that's the true origin, I believe him. He's well aware of the other claims.

The Old Fashioned is really taking off where I work. We are going through Ango at probably 3x or 4x the rate from when we first opened.

Lately I am trying not to lose my cool at customers who want straws in drinks served up, and even more WTF, a straw in their whiskey sour. Not even getting into the amount of single-use plastic I stick in a landfill every shift, it's just "oh ok, so you don't actually want to taste your drink, you leather-tongued eejit..."

I made some celery syrup a couple of weeks ago because I thought it would play interestingly with gin and lemon. It's pretty weird but not bad, just a matter of getting the specs right.

I was going to say, is the old-fashioned really unfairly maligned? Feel like it's been the default cocktail-bar order for a certain type of guy for at least a decade.

xpost Yeah you can kind of pick the version you want, it's just that in drinks history there's rarely really a single point of origin — it's usually something that has developed over time and then either somebody slaps a name on it or is the first one to put it on a bar menu or in a cocktail book. e.g. Jerry Thomas certainly didn't invent all the drinks in his 1862 book, but it's the first printed reference point for a lot of them.

In the 20th century there are more instances where you can specifically identify an origin, because of better documentation. And sometimes, like with the Moscow Mule, the story is well established and was known even at the time of its introduction.

And WmC, interesting to hear that about the OF. I order them out some myself, tho usually only at places that have good mezcal for a Oaxacan variation.

By "unfairly maligned" I mean by drink snobs. Mostly because there are a lot of bad ones out there. (I was just served one the other week, with a big hunk of orange in it — at most, you should have an orange twist, not a whole slice.)

Chasing cocktail history is super fun and also frustrating in the same way as chasing origin stories of folk songs — past a point you run into oral and regional histories and there's as much folklore as fact.

There is some celery drink precedent! Here's the history of Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda:

https://www.seriouseats.com/dr-browns-cel-ray-celery-soda-history

I love an Old Fashioned. We use a darker simple syrup made from turbinado sugar and generally stick to rye, for tradition's sake. I don't think we mix much with bourbon, which we stick to straight, bar the occasional whiskey smash.

Yeah a rye OF is really nice and the pepperiness plays well with the sweet.

Yeah, when I had the celery syrup idea, I did some googling and found some precedents. Hard to come up with anything truly new in the cocktail world.

I had a cocktail last night that either attempted to echo Gochujang paste or perhaps actually incorporated it. Gin, calamansi (I guess a kumquat-like Philippine citrus fruit?), lime, raspberry liqueur, with something providing some heat, or at least the illusion of heat. For sure it was pretty piquant.

Tho yeah, if you're putting Squirt in, that's not an old fashioned. I don't know what it is. But enjoy!

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Sunday, April 30, 2023 8:26 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well, it should be 50/50, but the stores I go to stopped selling it, so Squirt will do. I put green olives in it too. Whenever I make these in public people tell me "uhhh that's not really an old fashioned" but whatever it is I dig it. imo as long as it's got the bitters it at least tastes like one.

When we teach drink classes, we always tell people it’s good to learn recipes but the most important thing is making something you personally want to drink. So improvise away!

i’m confused about the comment that old fashioneds changed in the 70s and 80s. i thought that people just stopped ordering them for the most part.

There's a restaurant over here that does smoke-infused old fashioneds that are fantastic

Old fashioneds were a '70s cocktail staple, but that's when they sprouted orange wedges and maraschino cherries and overdid the sugar like they did with everything. They became disreputable like a lot of fern bar stuff.

Speaking of which, there's a couple here in Knoxville about to open a fern bar type place, '70s retro and all. I'd be skeptical except that they already run a really good, smart tropical bar and I trust their judgment. Could be fun.

Places referencing fern bars have been a thing for almost 10 years I believe.

Knoxville being Knoxville we actually have an original one that's still in existence, though it's about to close. Just in time for the revival.

oroboros of fern bars

Am I wrong in thinking that the resurgence in popularity of old fashioneds was almost entirely due to Mad Men, and that's when people generally started making them the "right" way again? A little ironic if that's the case, since the one time we see Don Draper make himself an old fashioned, he does it the "wrong" way (muddled cherry, soda, orange wedge). I assumed that was more accurate for the period, but maybe not?

They've been back for 20+ years, with the first wave of the cocktail revival.

yeah if anything mad men was nodding at the cocktail revival already in progress

ah that makes sense

I'm a Manhattan guy, and I recently discovered the Sour Cherry Manhattan. Luxardos and other fancy cocktail cherries have always been too sweet for me, and I like the contrast of the sour and sweet. Just get yourself a big jar of sour cherries from your grocery store.
2-3 ounces rye
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
Dash of orange bitters
Dash of Angostura bitters
1/2 teaspoon sour cherry juice
Stir with ice, then top with a sour cherry.

And regarding Negronis, I prefer Stanley Tucci's method of adding an extra shot of gin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srjk7qJ4PQ4

In the interests of full disclosure, for my Old Fashioneds I do put a small piece of orange in the glass and give it a single press with the muddler, mostly on the peel but a little on the pulp as well. I use demerara gum syrup instead of a sugar cube so there's no additional muddling involved. It's how I was taught the drink by a hotshot bar consultant when we were getting ready to open. I'm open to losing the orange piece but the regulars are very accustomed to it now.

I love orange with Old Fashioneds and with Manhattans. I use a mix of orange and angostura bitters when I make them at home.

I think the theory with using a sugar cube is that the distribution of sugar is less even, meaning (with a stirrer) the drinker gets to play with the sugar/booze mix as they drink. That could be a bug or a feature depending on your view.

In a bar setting, I can absolutely understand wanting to use simple syrup for the speed factor.

hi all

yeah I love stuff like that. it's why I like to use the one big ice cube, slowly changes/opens up the drink as you sip on it

Yeah big cubes are great.

I think an OF with a hunk of orange and even a cherry is drinkable, and I have drunk them including recently. I just think it interferes with the balance of the drink, which is delicate when done well. A small piece may be less intrusive, obviously.

Orange is interesting as a cocktail fruit because orange bitters and peels are important to lots of drinks, but actual orange juice is mostly useless except in glass-of-OJ drinks like screwdrivers. (Or mimosas I suppose, but let's just not talk about those.) It's just too mild, you need the boosted sour blast of lemon or lime to stand up to spirits. Grapefruit can add a nice layer, but it usually needs help — like in the siesta, where the grapefruit sits on top of lime juice.

Even a cynar julep, which is very grapefruit forward, uses an ounce of grapefruit juice revved up with a quarter-ounce of lemon.