Now, here's where I'm going to take and differ from the rest of the process.
Many people will now take and stick a sugar cube into the drink.
I'm not going to use a sugar cube, I'm instead going to use simple syrup because sugar, like
we've already covered on several other episodes, doesn't dissolve well.
So I'm just going to put a dollop of simple syrup, eyeballing it on the bottom of the glass
because I'm comfortable with this glass, I've used it quite often.
The bartender from, or the owner from Milk and Honey in New York, he prefers using sugar
cubes because he says the sugar cube is a perfect measurement of sugar where it's really
hard to get that same level of perfection out of simple syrup and Sasha is all about
perfection in his cocktails.
I then added some bitters into that drink, which is an extremely important ingredient
in any cocktail.
You can never leave this out of an old fashion or a Manhattan or a champagne cocktail or
as we've seen in Martini, but bitters is extremely important, adds a spiciness to it.
Here's another place where things start going a bit different.
This is where you'd see a bartender stick an orange wheel, a half an orange wheel and
a maraschino cherry, maraschino being the artificial maraschino cherry into this drink.
I don't like doing that.
For one thing on the cherry, all the cherry does when you're muddling the cherry in the
drink is it leaves a carcass in the bottom of the drink.
It doesn't add anything to it flavor wise, I don't think at all because it's just simple
syrup essentially with a little bit of almond flavoring on it and I don't think that is
really appropriate to the drink.
Orange on the other hand I think works really well with bourbon and while the original
garnish for an old fashion was a wedge of lemon and orange wasn't even part of it at
all, the cherry and the orange came in in the mid 1900s.
I like the flavor of orange in this and so I'm going to add that later, but not at the
beginning because at the beginning if I were to muddle it here we'd have bits of fruit
in there and that's going to plug up the straw which I don't like doing.
So now we're going to take and actually add the ice, I'm just going to half fill the
glass with ice, I'm now going to take a small stir rod and stir it up, this is starting
the ice to melt a bit, mixing the bitter and the sugar, allow that to blend easier.
Now I'm going to take my orange and I'm going to take and using a vegetable peeler rather
than a channel knife or regular knife I'm just going to take and while holding it over
top of the old fashion glass and the ice take off a big chunk of orange peel, this would
have expressed some of the oils into the drink.
Now I'm just going to take and trim up the orange peel by cutting off the rough edges
and now I'm going to squeeze this over top just to get some of those orange oils into
the drink.
It's also going to get some of the orange oils onto the outside of the skin which I
think are really nice and then I'm going to add that into the glass.
I'm now going to take and measure off two ounces of bourbon whiskey, you can make this
with rye whiskey as well, I'm going to pour that over top of this ice that has already
had some of the orange oils on foot and now I'm going to add a little bit more ice, stir
again briefly, the importance here is I want some of the ice to actually melt and get into
the glass so that it softens up the flavor of the whiskey a little bit.
Now again here's where a lot of bartenders would also differ once they started making
the old fashion, almost finish it, they basically now take some soda and pop that off on the
top of it just to make sure the glass is filled up to the top.
Soda should never be part of an old fashion and you should never top the drink off with
soda or water.
If you're going to put any water into the drink that's only if you're using sugar because
what you're trying to do is make a sugar syrup at the very beginning as you're muddling
it and so you add just as much water as you do sugar, never any more than that.
Since I use simple syrup instead of sugar the simple syrup had the premixed water into
it so I never need to add any water whatsoever.
I now take and add a couple of straws and then here's where I think the cherry comes in.
I'll garnish the drink with a cherry because I think it looks so much nicer, unmolested
on the top of the drink rather than battered to a pulp in the bottom and there's the old
fashion cocktail.
