American Drink

November 8th 2011

So begins the Slate’s Troy Patterson’s article on everything you wanted to know about everything you wanted to know about the Old-Fashioned. The good, the bad and the foolish.

The old-fashioned: a complete history and guide to this classic cocktail. - Slate Magazine

Perfect for your Instapaper or whatever.

Posted at 1:06pm and tagged with: Old Fashioned,.

“

One cold morning many years ago, a grouchy old New Yorker cranked out a letter to the editor of the Times. Happens every day, I know, but listen: This was New Year’s Day in 1936, and this old timer—that’s how he signed the letter, “Old Timer”—unraveled a righteous jeremiad about the improper mixing of drinks. Writing three years after Repeal—and presumably typing through a hangover, with the hammers of an Underwood clacking at his temples—he surveyed the violence Prohibition had done to the martini, the Manhattan, and, foremost, the old-fashioned whiskey cocktail:

”

November 7th 2011

68 notes

Plenty of you already know the ins and outs of making an Old Fashioned, but let’s start the week out with a baseline.

Who better to set this standard than Chris McMillian. McMillian is something of a legend. He’s a fourth-generation bartender who’s been making classic cocktails long before they were popular (again.) This video was shot at the Library Lounge in New Orleans but you’ll find him at at Bar Uncommon these days.

New Olreans Best Cocktails: The Old Fashioned (by keithmarszalek)

You might want to click through to see the rest of his videos.

posted by seoulbrother

Posted at 11:48am and tagged with: Old Fashioned, Chris McMillian,.

November 6th 2011

Reblogged from americandrink|549 notes

Happy Old Fashioned Week!

Since there’s an extra hour to either stay out or sleep ~~it off~~ in, the week after Daylight Savings Time is perfect for Old Fashioned Week.

Last year’s stories: Old Fashioned Week 2010

Everyday Carry

posted by seoulbrother

Posted at 11:42am and tagged with: Old Fashioned,.

Happy Old Fashioned Week!

Since there’s an extra hour to either stay out or sleep it off in, the week after Daylight Savings Time is perfect for Old Fashioned Week.

Last year’s stories: Old Fashioned Week 2010

Everyday Carry

November 13th 2010

Cee Lo Green — Old Fashioned

26 notes

940 plays

Cee Lo Green - Old Fashioned

“My love’s old fashioned
But it still works
Just the way it is.”

To wrap up Old Fashioned week here at American Drink, ladies and gentlemen, Cee Lo Green.

iTunes : Amazon

Posted at 3:15pm and tagged with: Old Fashioned,.

November 13th 2010

Variations on a Theme

by seoulbrother

38 notes

I’ve always made Old Fashioneds with bourbon and orange peel. It was just how I was brought up, so to speak, but using rye or lemon? That was like learning pig latin for the first time and understanding what the big kids were talking about. That slight variation opened up new possibilities.

Chris Keil, owner of 1022 South in Tacoma, characterized the Old Fashioned as a drink with “few moving parts.” Their 1022 Old Fashioned, made with house-made saffron/cardamon bitters, is a formidable classic.

Their own Under the Volcano— made with cinnamon infused tequila, agave, Peruvian bitters and their Hellfire tincture— is built the old fashioned way but the flavors feel like something brand new.

Corey Lund, also of 1022 South, twisted my arm to try a Brandy, maraschino liqueur, lemon peel combo that had me speaking in tongues. The maraschino lent it a slightly nutty flavor and gave it a sweeter flavor profile without being cloying.

Variations

@michaelfaddis via twitter, hipped us to a cherry liqueur variation where you add the ice and booze incrementally.

Spirits and Cocktails’ Old Fashioned This one’s a hodge-podge, combining cognac, rum and bourbon, plus a recipe for old fashioned syrup.

Science of Drink Traditional and Muddled recipes.

The short of it is that there’s more than one way to make an Old Fashioned. Experiment on your own and when you dial it in exactly the way you like it, call up some friends and make a night of it.

Posted at 2:33pm and tagged with: old fashioned,.

November 12th 2010

But Wait. For I, Too, Am Quite The Aficionado of a Fancy-Made Old Fashioned Cocktail.

by sloganeerist

80 notes

Well, hell. With all this Old Fashioned talk, it’s getting so you gotta rewrite a recipe to get any facetime around here. Which is fine, because that’s what I plan on doing. Okay, not rewriting exactly. More like, eh, let’s say customizing.

I’ve often thought of the Old Fashioned as the Pizza of Drinking (and by often, I mean I just now thought of it), on account of…

1) It’s totally a go-to cocktail when you don’t feel like overthinking,
2) Nobody doesn’t love it, and
3) It’s usually best when you don’t go overboard with the cheese.

HAHA! Vaudeville!

Alright, think of it this way instead: The best pizza you ever had consisted mostly of crust, sauce, and cheese. So did the shittiest pizza. One key difference is obvious: the ingredients. But unless you’re subbing Grape Kool-Aid and Splenda for bitters and sugar, we don’t need to cover that base, cuz DUR.

After that, it’s all about good technique, and finally, those subtle variations every pizza chef brings to the table.

That said, if you’re interested in making traditional Old Fashioneds, I insist you do not start here. Not that my favorite recipe is more advanced or anything. It ain’t. But it should definitely be filed in the Variation category. So try the real deal. Mess around with ratios, different whiskies, muddle the lemon rind, don’t muddle it, use simple syrup, use sugar and water separately, whatever. You’ll get the technique eventually, and when you do, come back and try this variation on for size.

The Old Fashioned

by buzz

229 notes

If you want to get really good at making drinks, it’s important to develop a deep knowledge of your raw materials. Often, what distinguishes the best Martini you’ve ever had from an average Martini is that the bartender knew to pair the characteristics of a particular gin with the characteristics of a particular vermouth. Many of the classic tiki drinks created by Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic were only slight variations on a few basic formulas, differing primarily in the types of rum used. And in today’s cocktail world it’s often the recognition of a counterintuitive similarity between two disparate spirits that leads bartenders to create new variations on time honored drinks by substituting their base spirits. If you know your spirits inside and out, the world of cocktails is open to you.

Unfortunately, distilled spirits can be difficult to get to know on their own terms. Most are far too strong to drink neat and taste much other than burn. As we’ve seen previously, dilution can help make a fiery spirit manageable and release its natural aromatics, but dilution alone can also make a once vital dram feel a touch limp. What the would-be aficionado needs is a way to soften the edges of an unruly spirit so that its nuances can be appreciated without robbing it of its personality and zing.

Enter the Old Fashioned: so named because it is essentially the original cocktail—the no-frills combination of liquor, sugar, bitters, and water that 19th century Americans would have had in mind when they ordered a capital-c Cocktail (and which old timers eventually found themselves having to ask for by a more specific name as bartenders became more fanciful with their concoctions). A well-made Old Fashioned is, as I’ve heard the Brooklyn bartender and writer St. John Frizzell say, the drink equivalent of taking a nice cut of steak and seasoning it with a bit of salt and pepper. It keeps the spirit front and center, but makes it more palatable by simultaneously toning it down and enlivening it.