Classic Cocktail: Old Fashioned
2 oz Redemption High Rye Bourbon
1/2 oz Simple Syrup
2 dashes Woodford Reserve Aromatic Bitters
Build Syrup, Bitters, and Bourbon in an Old Fashioned glass and stir. Add a small amount of cold water or a large ice cube for dilution if desired. Twist an Orange peel over the drink and drop in.
I know you can argue and rant about what does and doesn’t go into an Old Fashioned that does or doesn’t make it an Old Fashioned, especially the abominations out in the Midwest, but I like to keep them simple. Sugar, Spirit, and Bitters with an Orange twist. I’m perfectly happy receiving them in a bar with whatever kind of Citrus peel dropped in and even a Cherry as a garnish on top to make things pretty, and I do personally hate when I get a horrorshow of muddled fruit on the bottom of the glass. What get’s my inner waxed-mustachioed-cocktail-hipster’s panties in a bunch when that drink is then loaded up with ice and some sort of carbonated beverage like a fucking Collins drink in a short glass. You can argue all day about what garnishes and bitters constitute a Classic Old Fashioned all day, but no version of the drink should ever be carbonated. Feel free to drink something made that way, enjoy life and do what you want, but, by it’s nature, it’s become something different than an Old fashioned. I guess this is a rant.
Now, of course, there is plenty of room for variations, swap out the Sugar for Maple and get a Maple Old Fashioned (if you use Maple Liqueur perhaps it’s a bit more akin to a Maple Manhattan?), swap out the Whiskey for Rum in a Rum Old Fashioned, etc.
If you really want to get pedantic, there is a rigid school of thought that a Whiskey Cocktail of Whiskey, Sugar, and Bitters is stirred in a mixing glass with ice and strained while a proper Old Fashioned with all the same ingredients is built in the glass it’s served in. For an excellent guide to Old Fashioned snobbery, check out Old Fashioned 101.
I know I get bent out of shape over names and words, ask my heathen friends, but at some point a duck is no longer a duck if it caws like a crow. You get something that is imitated, but different. FYI, that analogy doesn’t work the other way around as crows can, indeed, quack like ducks if they wanted to.
