Cocktailcrafting: Old Fashioned with Homemade Simple Syrup

Featured Ingredient: Homemade Simple Syrup

For my first foray into mixology (except we’re not gonna call it mixology, since that makes it sound absurdly pretentious) for the blog, I figured I’d start with a perennial favorite. Not a personal favorite of mine. More of a personal favorite of badasses such as Don Draper. The Old Fashioned, true to its name, is a venerable old cocktail that still sees enough play to render it relevant today. While the drink itself is not terribly complicated, it occupies the same niche as Martinis or Manhattans; it is a drink where the proportions, preparation and ingredients chosen make all of the difference. This is in stark contrast to drinks in which mistakes are easily masked using whatever terrible sour mix or faux lime juice the establishment carries (think sours and teas.) To make this drink, you’ll first need to choose a bourbon. As somewhat of a bourbon devotee, I like to use one with less of a sweet character, so as to strike a balance with the added sweetness of the fruit and simple syrup. I’m currently using Buffalo Trace, but that choice was more a reflection of the dearth of bourbons at our local grocery stores than an explicit endorsement. In practice, I find that anything even approaching Maker’s Mark is MUCH too sweet to use, and typically go with something a tad harsher. That having been said, everything is to personal taste.

Having chosen your bourbon, you should choose your fruit. Generally speaking, the addition of orange to a drink alters the drink’s flavor, while the addition of a cherry serves primarily to enhance the appearance of the drink. However, since the cherry is muddled in this drink (at least in my current variation,) it will alter the flavor slightly. Finally, choose a sugar to make simple syrup from. I followed Josh Sullivan’s excellent instructions on simple syrup, which can be found on his blog Post Prohibition Cocktails. It’s a good deal more informed and certainly better written than I’ll be able to come up with. I ended up doing a batch with plain white granulated sugar as well as a batch using the same sugar with the addition of about a dozen cherries. While I think I probably need to use even more cherries for a more noticeable flavor difference, crushing the cherries will let the juice give the syrup a lovely red color.

The beginnings of cherry simple syrup.

The finished products

At this point, grab yourself an old fashioned glass (or a lowball, or a large rocks glass, or a short tumbler, or whatever you want if you’re not a stickler for glassware) and place a wedge or two of the orange in the glass along with a cherry or three. The amount will largely depend on the type and size of your cherries/oranges. Go with your gut! Add about a half ounce (a splash, really) of your simple syrup to the glass and muddle them together. Next, fill the glass with ice. You may need to experiment with ice cubes of different sizes as well, since that will alter how much water gets added to the drink during preparation. Pour two ounces of bourbon over the ice (I use a bottle pourer to measure, but a shot glass should work too. Dealer’s choice.) finally, add a splash of chilled soda water. Kick back and enjoy! There are a lot of factors at work in an Old Fashioned and each person is going to have a different preference, so this one might take a couple attempts to get right.

Stay tuned! Next week we’ll be using a different featured ingredient and making something decidedly less minimalist!