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

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.

Just to be clear, I'm for orange peel, not orange wedges.

Yeah a nice orange twist is great. I just object to pulp.

Anybody ever do flaming/sparking orange peels? It's fun, adds a little theater and a little caramelized flavor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc6WEdQjZiQ

Cynar negronis are the best.

xp yes that technique is delicious, I am usually too lazy but love it in a bar setting

and yes to Cygronis

Our little cocktail service worked a corporate thing a few years ago, pre-COVID, and we calculated that the state sales managers would be less impressed by carefully balanced drinks than by burning shit. So we did old fashioneds with the burnt orange, then some drink I don't even remember that we smoked with a cedar chip under a glass bowl, and the best was margaritas with flaming lime halves on top. They loved it.

Fire good.

Until it sets the bar on fire, catching various spilled spirits and menus ablaze - which happened in the presence of a former ILXor a few months back. The Instagram looked intense but apparently the bar and waitstaff got things under control fairly quickly.

We had an incident with Flaming Dr. Pepper shots last year but I put the spill out before the bar top or any people took damage.

Yeah you don't want to accidentally end up in the molotov cocktail thread.

OK, I'm back. Sorry for being tetchy the other day. I love reading about cocktails and cocktail history and was excited to share some of what I've come across while waiting for my Sunday morning bagel order to be ready.

I agree that a lot of it is hard to pin down, though I do tend to trust someone like David Wondrich simply because he does so much exhaustive historical research and brings a scholarly skepticism to his work. So if he says that he's "almost positive" about something cocktail-related, I figure that's the closest we're going to the truth. (I think his research on the origin of the word "cocktail" was done in the service of The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, which he compiled and finally published last year. Back in 2017 or so, I'd invited him to write a new "cocktail" article for Encyclopaedia Britannica, and he declined, citing the demands of the Oxford project.) Btw, he also has a fun podcast called "Fix Me a Drink" that delves into some of the mysteries he's investigated.

I guess wasn't aware that drink snobs ever looked down on the old-fashioned, maybe because I didn't get into cocktails until after the 21st-century renaissance was in full swing and it wasn't difficult to find a well-made old-fashioned at a decent bar. It's never been a favorite drink of mine, though I certainly respect it. If I roll my eyes at the dudes who order it as a default, it's only because it seems unadventurous (and boringly gendered). It is, however, a good way to taste liquor in a way that's relatively unadulterated. If I ever bought some really good bourbon (instead of whatever's decent enough to mix with), I'd probably drink them more often.

I had a classic Wisconsin supper club brandy old fashioned the other night and it was excellent.

xp FWIW, I also quoted Wondrich's "cocktail" definition in an article I wrote a few years ago, so I suppose I'm a little invested in it. :)

there's no better source on cocktail history than wondrich, idk why that would even be a point of debate.

i guess i'm still looking for a source on who was looking down on old fashioneds? i acknowledge that they went through a fruit-forward phase but it's not as though there were all these other incredible drinks around while that was happening.

I had a classic Wisconsin supper club brandy old fashioned the other night and it was excellent.

That sounds great. Yeah, I think there's a place for the Wisconsin brandy old-fashioned. The NYT drinks writer Robert Simonson, who's originally from Wisconsin, has written approvingly about it. And if you're at a supper club in the state, it seems like a real when-in-Rome situation.

Wondrich is great, I meant no impugnment. I don't feel like he totally cinched the "cocktail" case, but that may be because it's not as fun as other theories. Or maybe it's plenty fun, I don't know. The horse's ass part has resonance at least.

On the old fashioned, I just meant that wherever it was first documented, which Wondrich is probably right about, it was a drink long in circulation. It was a baseline mixed drink.

I was in Mexico and we went to a really nice restaurant that had old fashioneds on the menu. I was pretty astonished by it. Wound up ordering it because, if I didn't, who would? Anyway...it was okay

I actually just had a rum old-fashioned earlier tonight. That's practically dessert, but delicious.

OK this is pretty fascinating as the recorded history of angostura predates the Jerry Thomas book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angostura_bitters

I mean

Originally used to help with upset stomachs of the soldiers in Simón Bolívar's army,