What is an Old Fashioned and where does it come from? | How to Drink

celebrate my 10,000th ounce of spilled booze I've decided to take a look at the place that Howard rink started the old-fashioned the very first episode I ever did I want to take a bigger look at the old fashioned and its history to do that we should start with the cocktail before the term or phrase old fashioned came into vogue which was about the 1870s there was just the cocktail a combination of sugar spirit bitters and very little else and so the phrase old fashioned came into vogue as a mechanism of implying that you wanted one the old way and the old way was you know because we're talking about old fashioned comes into vogue 1860s 1870s 1880s for sure the old way would have been prior to the 1860s early 1800s so we're gonna make a Jennifer cocktail I know that an old fashioned is typically going to be made with whiskey and we're getting to that at this time whiskey certainly was popular but Holland's gin or Jennifer would have been equally popular and to sort of illustrate the history of this drink we're gonna make this one with the Jennifer you would start by taking a lump of sugar and I have this Demerara sugar cube and and soak that with some bitters place that at the bottom of your glass you get that in there and now we want to add to that a wine glass of our spirit or two ounces of spirit in this case of two ounces of Jennifer and now I'm going to add three ounces of water remember this is 1800 1806 there's no ice the cocktail was meant to be served at room temperature who was not a cold drink that was for juleps the cocktail would have been a room-temperature drink we're gonna stir that up and do our best to get that sugar cube to dissolve now truly at this time they would have been using something called lump sugar it comes in a big cone typically and it's cut with sugar nippers which are little scissors it's a it's a different kind of sugar than is available today and instead of a spoon I would have been using a toddy stick and now if you wanted to you might have embellished this drink with a bit of grated nutmeg they put nutmeg in everything as Townsend's will point out and that is a cocktail a turn of the 1800s jennipher cocktail smells very nutmeggy [Music] sprightly enjoyable I find that to be just the right amount of sweetness and bitterness the Nutmeg actually mates to it really well I've never had this before by the way the old the buddha has a very unusual mouth feeling like that a lot it's not bad it's maybe not what you're thinking of when you think of an old-fashioned though first off it's not whiskey it's Jennifer Holland's there's no orange happening here and this drink the cocktail would have been by the 1860s something that every bartender had their own recipe for they frequently included dashes of absinthe Curacao lots and lots of fruit by that time there would have been ice in them they switch to Sears so I started using gums here or simplest here because the presence of ice makes dissolving that sugar impossible and in fact they were often served with a spoon and in some places called a spoon cocktail so that you could stir it up yourself it was like a breakfast thing it was a tonic to wake you up and start your day it wasn't really like just a relaxing kind of thing that was what juleps before I don't know if it's true or not but I have heard that the phrase cocktail comes from the practice of less than savory horse traders shoving a bit of peeled ginger up to the upper rectums of a horse they were trying to sell because it would cause him to hold their tail up and their tail and look healthy and so by the 1860s cocktail was a very complicated thing that involved many spirits we now call them and improve whiskey cocktail well my favorite drinks in some places it would've been called a Sazerac the formulation and recipe changed regionally and from bartender to bartender I'll just whip one up right now the way that they might have made in the 1860s somebody walks up to my my establishment and asks me for my house cocktail so I would go to bar spoons of gums here [Music] - of Curacao - of maraschino we - or - of absinthe two to four dashes of Angostura bitters and of two ounce pour of rye some disagreement what a lump of ice means but at my bar it means a big square of ice well to pare that down a bit now if this was a very fancy bar like a nice hotel bar in New York City I might even go so far as to carve this into the shape of a diamond and then I would stir it up with a stirring rod or a bar spoon pull a ribbon of orange peel or lemon with a match give the customer what they're paying for really show off here my skills as a bartender and now the drink is literally got smoke hanging off the ice there and there you have a rye cocktail as it might have been served at one of the better bars circa 1860 please I love this see now that's such a wonderful thing I mean the carousel is a little bit lost I could actually handle a little more Curacao in there it's just the right amount sweetness the Rye is extremely front and center all of the other little flavors that we've added just kind of rounded out and give it a longer evolution the Absinthe of course lingers quite a long time I like this drink a lot but not everybody did why didn't they was it because it didn't taste great to them or was it because there was a kind of an ideological thing that they didn't want their drink so fancied up you know they they felt like you know bit of a poof sipping from this you know with all those fancy ingredients in there like a city boy or something and it put people off and so when the old fashioned comes in I love it though I must be a puffy city boy and so when the phrase old-fashioned comes into vogue in the 1870s in the 1880s it is specifically calling back the old way you know I don't want one of them fancy city bar cocktails just make it the old-style way with none of them syrups in it okay so we get the old-fashioned the old-fashioned even when it was a new drink was a bit of a historical anachronism because what we're gonna do even though we're gonna use ice because they didn't mean a cocktail 18:06 style they meant a cocktail 1880 style they want it cold and wanted a little wet but they still want you to use the sugar typically instead of a syrup and they want that soaked sugar cube with bitters okay plenty of bitters in there they want typically rye again a two ounce pour of rye they want ice stir it up I will notice that there's still some sugar not dissolved at the bottom of my glass here to an order of an old-fashioned circa 1870 that would have been actually desirable that would've been a mark of its oldest and they want twist of lemon I think and now we have the 1870s old-fashioned not the 1870s whiskey cocktail lot less sweet because the sugar is less dissolved eminently drinkable though a great showpiece for a glass of rye you know we get all of those rise spiced there's a nice clean lemon up front kind of nose yeah strong lemon ogres no gum syrup so the mouth feels a lot less pleasing by the mid-century you know Mad Men period tastes actually ranged a little bit sweeter and somewhere the old fashioned evolved into a monstrosity that I've also I've heard referred to as an old fashioned of two or has a mid-century old fashioned in front Natalie it arsenic and lace is coming with a book about mid-century cocktails you should check it out and so let's talk about that let's take a look at the mid-century old-fashioned now the first thing we have to do to make a mid-century old-fashioned is mercilessly cut into our orange and produce from it a wedge now we're gonna take that whole orange wedge we're gonna put that into our glass I should have some really bad maraschino cherries I should have some some neon red ice cream sundae maraschino cherries by coincidence I don't so this particular mid-century old-fashioned is getting gussied up with some nice imported Luxardo maraschino cherries two of them quarter ounce of simple syrup to half an ounce a two ounce pour of bourbon [Music] the back of a spoon or a muddler to work these ingredients into each other and this drink would have a few ice cubes in it typically so I don't have small ice cubes but I'm just gonna crack some ice in there because we want Adam a mess of small cubes in our glass and a couple of dashes of bitters and then we're gonna stir that up a little bit and here we have the mid-century old-fashioned as horribly as I can bring myself to make it all I taste is orange juice it just tastes like orange unch Aries and a little bit of a little bit of the bourbon notes but this is gonna sound like I'm lying I'm not the bourbon notes that are not being masked that still show through when they mate with the orange and the cherry kind of tastes like an ashtray a little bit like there's a slightly acrid I don't know yeah like a shiness to the flavor so bad any one more glass I've run out of gold rimmed glasses so I'm gonna make the final old-fashioned my preferred today old-fashioned in this glass and this is the drink that I make when I'm all alone and not trying to impress anybody at all I think if you have the option a Demerara syrup helps you out here and I will do somewhere between a quarter and a half an ounce [Music] two dashes of Angostura bitters I prefer a bourbon old-fashioned [Music] the biggest ice cube I can get my hands on this one actually almost fits into the glass try to I turn it sideways like this when I'm when I have a half a brain to think to do so so that it doesn't splash back out of me and then I'll give it a quick stir I'll pull a rip off of this orange quick twist lots of expression from that guy that's how I make the old fashioned that I drink wood and there's no cameras around I'm not trying to impress anybody sometimes the simple will be in maple syrup if I'm feeling a little saucy as it was in our very first episode and sometimes it'll just be Demerara or regular simple syrup I won't go with a granulated sugar or sugar cube because as evidenced by our 1870s throwback reactionary cocktail it's not really dissolving very well and that is divine so first off the main ingredient of course is for rose to single-barrel which I happen to love and this amount of orange the skin of the orange is the exact correct amount of orange to incorporate into that it really does actually rather than a masking the flavor of that nice bourbon accentuates it that's that's lovely great aroma taste smells a little bit like mulling spice and I don't know just a warm good place it's a little proofing a little bit of fire on this but I like that [Music] it feels very nice in your mouth it's cold it doesn't suck the waters out of your mouth it doesn't it's not persimmon dry in that way it's just a really wonderful old-fashioned taste like as I've said before Christmas in a glass I maintain that that is accurate when it's done right will I flame an orange sometimes if my matches are within my eye line I might grab them and flame the orange peel made five old fashions for you guys it's pretty wild we didn't cover a Wisconsin old fashioned that should probably be its own episode but that's an old fashioned made much like a mid-century old-fashioned but with brandy instead of bourbon I mean there's infinite variations right because as I said when we talk about the cocktail every bartender would have had their own version of it and so it's funny too because of these drinks that I've made here my two favorites are my old fashioned and a cocktail let's put them head-to-head two-fisted drinking we should have a look graphic for that grassy earthy notes absentee evolution that highness note comes out at the very end [Music] very pleasing mouthfeel with the the use of gums here cinnamon peppery spices orangey arm he knows this features the Bourbon a lot more so here you get those caramel and vanilla notes some cinnamon I would say at an a you know you can taste the barrel a little bit better this is different very different this one shows off the spirit more than the bartender whereas this one there's more about the bartender I made five old fashions I made so many that I ran out of glasses and swish glasses that's enough that we made a cocktail of the turn of the 1800s we made the improved cocktail of the 1870s old-fashioned 1870 style we made a mid-century old-fashioned this old fashioned with bourbon the way that I like it five glasses of booze let's line them up knock them down here we go multi smoothness I mean it's like like it's very sweet in a very it's sweet like in a grainy kind of way [Music] oh wow it smells ok so if you've ever been to Epcot Center you know the scene in spaceship earth when Rome is burning this smells like Rome is burning which I love that taste great what was this one this was the improved whiskey cocktail yeah I love that drink this is a great drink I don't know why people got upset about this drink it's weird I think it had to be political I think people were politically upset about that drink so this is the old-fashioned 1870 style much drier much more acrid the bitter spirit focused than this this is a much more rounded incorporated exploration of flavors boy that was poetic of me and then this is the 1950s old fashioned of I don't know why I imagine that this is John Waters this favorite drink it's probably not but for some reason I think that John Waterstones Baltimore big hair oh no aw I don't like it what can I say about it it tastes like bad candy and then this is the old fashioned the way that I like it and I do very much that's great [Music] I'm on Twitter on how to drink I'm on Instagram and how to drink I'm on patreon at patreon.com slash how to drink and if you like stuff like this check it out it's a cool place I've got different stuff over there secret episodes I've got you know behind the scenes stuff and so next week every Friday is another cocktail I will see you guys next Friday with another drink on how to drink eeny meeny miny moe catch a tiger by the toe if he hollers let him go eeny meeny miny moe ah it's alright it's cool it's different it's very much like a punch it's very nutmeggy Townsend's would love it oh I need these fluids these electric lights

Channel: How To Drink

Views: 1,678,099

Keywords: htd, how to drink, mixology, tape brothers territory, alcohol, liquor, bartending, mixed drinks, how to, how to make, spirits, drink, cocktails, recipes, old fashioned, old-fashioned, old fashioned cocktail, old fashioned (cocktail), how to make an old fashioned, how to make an old fashioned cocktail, old fashioned recipe, 1800's cocktails, history of cocktails, history of drinking, drink history, historic drinks, whiskey, history of old fashioned cocktail, history of old fashioned drink

Id: DLk67oMq8Og

Length: 19min 54sec (1194 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ThisIsHowToDrink]

This week on How to Drink I'm doing a deep dive into the Old Fashioned tracing it's evolution from the room-temperature "Cocktail" of the 1850's all the way up to today's spirit forward speakeasy friendly drink in 2019. I make five drinks along the way, and truth be told there's probably a lot more I could have done with this drink (the cocktail "schism" that coined the name "Old-Fashioned" was tied to reconstruction era politics and that's a whole lot to unpack) but this episode was already twenty minutes long so I figured we save that for another day.

The 1850's Cocktail

• 1 sugar cube Soak with bitters

• ~ 2oz. -or- 60 ml. of spirit (I go with Genever here)

• ~ 3oz. -or- 90 ml. of Water (could be less)

• Stir till sugar dissolves

• Garnish with grated nutmeg (or the twist of your choice)

1860's Improved Whiskey Cocktail

• 2 bar-spoons of Gum Syrup

• 1 dash of Curaçao

• 1 Dash of Maraschino

• 1-2 dashes of Absinthe

• 2-4 Dashes Angostura Bitters

• 2 oz. -or- 60 ml. Rye

• Garnish with Flamed Orange Twist

1870's Old-Fashioned Cocktail

• Sugar Cube soaked in Bitters

• 2 oz. -or- 60 ml. Rye

• Stir over ice

• Garnish with Twist of Lemon or Orange

The Mid-Century Old-Fashioned

• 1 wedge of Orange

• 2 Maraschino Cherries

• 2 oz. -or- 60 ml. Bourbon

• 2 Dashes Angostura Bitters

• Muddle fruit and drink together

• bury in cracked ice and stir

The Modern Old-Fashioned

• ~ .25 -or- 8 ml. Demerara Syrup

• Two Dashes Angostura Bitters

• 2 oz. -or- 60 ml. Bourbon

• Stir over big ice

• Garnish with Orange Twist

[u/Coffee_and_Yoga]

Damn it, Greg! It's 10 am and now I want to make multiple Old Fashioned recipes.

[u/GatorChamp44]

Wisconsin can't be happy. They got snubbed.

Keep up the good work man!

[u/e_snoozosaurus]

Hey Greg, love your videos! They’re funny AND informative! My favorite thing to do after watching your new video for the week is to make that cocktail on my next day off.
I don’t know how you feel about unsolicited ideas for videos but you ought to do Hurricanes for Mardi Gras. Keep up the great work man!

[u/J_saucy]

Would love to see a Wisconsin and Oaxaca old fashioned to name a few next!

[u/ThisDerpForSale]

I've been looking forward to this all week and boy howdy did you deliver. Love the Old Fashioned, love your videos, love the perfect synchronicity of the marriage of the two here. Well done.

Also, this has gotta be the drunkest you've ever been from one single video shoot, right? I mean, you were hammered to the point of childlike glee at the end there. It was pretty entertaining.

[u/pseudalithia]

Saw this one in my YouTube homepage earlier and watched it immediately. Great video!

[u/Valraithion]

When I was a kid my grandmother almost always had one of those 50’s style old fashioned’s in her hand in the evening. When I first started getting into whiskey I made an old fashioned like that and thought she was retarded. I quickly found a recipe much closer in line to your modern old fashioned which is a favorite of mine. Keep making quality content.

[u/Evolone16]

Goddammit man, you got me again.

Your video channel has quickly become one of my very favorites on YouTube!

Last night I was out celebrating with friends (and had a little too much to drink might I add). I ordered an Old Fashioned at the bar but it wasn't very good. I've found that I enjoy my homemade ones much more than overpriced cocktails at the bar.

Anyway: I watched this video this morning and now I want to figure out the best way to make my homemade old fashioneds even better!

Might be tough though cause my fiancée is extremely hungover and the thought of alcohol is making her sick. I am doing fine, actually craving a solid old fashioned. Is it bad of me to make some and drink in front of her?? Lol