The Perfect Old Fashioned

what's up guys welcome back to the educated barfly my name is Leandro demon Riva and today we are going to make an old-fashioned the old-fashioned was created sometime in the 1860s at the pendennis Club in Louisville Kentucky which is a gentlemen's club founded in 1861 it was said to have been created in commemoration of Colonel James E pepper who was a prominent bourbon distillery in the area and the story goes that somebody maybe James E pepper himself sat down at the bar and asked the bartender for a drink in the old fashioned way now when he said that the bartender kind of backwards read deep kind of backwards deconstructed what that would mean and created the old fashioned for the very first time doesn't make sense actually it does let me break it down so when we first started drinking spirits in this country we started making these first mixed drinks called bitter slings a bittered sling was a concoction of spirits bitters sugar and a little bit of water not ice because nobody could afford ice at that time well if you were a super rich you can afford ice but if you were the common man you were just putting a little bit of water in there and you were literally just doing that to get the spirits down because distillation was happening a lot in this country but a lot of low-class spirits was also happening so if you were the common man you were probably drinking something that was pretty rough after that as time went on as ice became more attainable for normal people bartenders started creating a drink called the improved whiskey cocktail which is basically a bitter sling with the addition of ice and then some sort of shisha ingredients from Europe such as orange Curacao or a maraschino liqueur so when the guy sat down at the bar to ask for a drink in the old-fashioned way to my mind what he was saying is give me a drink that's more like a bitter sling and not a improved whiskey cocktail which kind of failed to become a category in its own right really I mean we know about it because Jerry Thomas published it in his first book but nobody really makes those cocktails anymore so they didn't I mean they didn't become very popular in their day so that guy decided that he would make a bitter sling but he had ice because at the time that the the old fashion was invented ice was something that everyone could have so there you have it the creation of the old fashion hopefully I got all my history right I think I did I'm going to say a little bit more about it in the show notes I know a lot of people wait until I make the cocktail and they just want to fast-forward through all the history but I think the history is pretty fascinating so I'd like to talk about it the other thing I'm gonna say is that this is not the end-all be-all of old fashions this is my old fashion that I like I'm going to show you how to make my version of an old fashion but there are so many different bartenders creating awesome old fashions that I think I actually might make this a video series and we can just do deafening company's old fashion or milk and honey's preferred old fashioned and yadda yadda I can bring other bartenders in say how do you make your old fashioned to make an old fashioned that way so you are gonna see a lot of old fashions on this channel from here on out alright let's get into the cocktail so the other people don't get so irritated first thing we're gonna do is four dashes of Angostura bitters you notice that I'm dashing a little bit more because the Japanese bitters dasher provides you a smaller - than say an angle bottle if you're using an Angostura bottle put four in if you're using a bitters - ER put 6 - 8 in okay then what we're gonna do one cube of sugar a dash of soda on top of that sugar to help it dissolve and to make it robust kind of simple syrup a grainy simper saber if you will and we're just gonna model that alright there we go it's kind of nice and you know grainy and syrup like now we are using overproof rye I like rye because I feel like it balances the sugar out a little bit more it's a little spicier not as sweet as bourbon and this is bottled and bond so it's 100 proof I like to have an over proof it just stands up better to the ice and the other things going on in the drink we do two ounces of rye whiskey and then we use our ice but I'm actually gonna use an angled spoon is gonna be easier in this that's why I had the two spoons out there and we're just gonna place it in there and we're gonna give it a nice stir to chill our cocktail down I like to lift the ice up to just sort of let that sugar dissolve and really kind of help it whoosh around under there you want to stir this I mean right now I'm stirring this and I just kind of muscle-memory but you know a good thing to check for is chilling on the outside of the glass you know honestly once you get this thing down to temperature it's gonna stop diluting so you don't really have to worry if you're using good quality ice you don't really have to worry about over diluting or anything but I don't know forty to fifty seconds maybe there we go now a lot of people don't like the grainy quality but I like the grainy quality I'll tell you why because this is a drink that is going to evolve as you drink it it's gonna go from sort of stiff and kind of grainy which i think is a nice texture in the drink to kind of have in a sugar pop at the end of the drink and that sugar pop is great because what do you think happens when you drink just a mouthful of bitters rye whiskey sugar your dopamine releases and it makes you happy and then it leads you to you another your the next drink so that's why I do that there are some people who like to use simple syrup because they don't like that and that drink will still evolve it will get less sweet as it as the ice melts and as it as it dilutes but it's just not going to have the same dramatic evolution that you'd like a cube of sugar or like a teaspoon of sugar would have so we're gonna take our garnishes I like to do lemon and orange you saw me take a lemon in orange and just spritz it over the top like that you know orange is gonna be a little sweeter lemons gonna be a little sharper they're both gonna work beautifully in this cocktail then we're just gonna do that and then I like to finish it off with a look Sardo cherry now you don't have to have the looks art or cherry in there but I like to finish it that way you can take it off if you'd like or if you want a more traditional old fashioned you can just do an orange slice and call that a day or orange peel and call that a day but this my friends is my preferred old fashioned there you have it now let's take a sip of it now it's gonna be sweet you get a little bit of that sweetness but that rye whiskey and the heat from the the proof of the whiskey is really just gonna kind of come on through I mean I really a big fan of big bold flavors and this drink doesn't disappoint there you go my friends the old-fashioned you

Channel: The Educated Barfly

Views: 668,790

Keywords: Old Fashioned, Bittered Sling, The Pendennis Club, Kentucky, Drink The Series, The Educated Barfly, Classic Cocktail, Cocktail, Drink, Drinks, Bartender, Bartenders, Los Angeles, California, Modern Classic, Leandro DiMonriva, Cole’s French Dip, Stir, Roll, Classics, David Wondrich, Craft, Craft Cocktails, Tutorial, Cocktail Tutorial, Do It Yourself, Jerry Thomas, How To Mix Drinks, old fashioned, how to make and old fashioned, best old fashioned, old fashioned cocktail, anders erickson

Id: SeP3V3MtpxI

Length: 7min 42sec (462 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 03 2018