Old Fashioned 1/2 orange slice 1 cube sugar 2 dashes Angostura bitters 2 ounces rye or bourbon whiskey Muddle orange, sugar, bitters together until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Fill glass with ice, then add the whiskey. Garnish with a marachino cherry, and perhaps an additional orange slice. Serve with a swizzle stick and/or straw

Old Fashioned

DrinkBoy says: When properly made, this cocktail can represent the pinnacle of the bartenders trade. When done improperly, which is more often the case, it can be a disaster of mediocrity.

When you think of cocktails, it is often the Martini that first comes to mind. While it might be one of the more simplistic drinks in the cocktail category, for many the term Martini has become synonymous with, if not outright replace the label of "Cocktail" when talking about this style of mixed drink. An older cocktail then the Martini, is the Manhattan. It is similar in basic form as the Martini, but its ingredients are often considered to be more complex and robust in flavor, and so to many cocktailians it provides a much better representation of this category. Only a few other cocktails that have survived to modern day that comes from the era of the Martini and the Manhattan. There is one cocktail of similar lineage, but holds nowhere near the same level of respect and esteem as either the Martini or the Manhattan. This cocktail is the Old Fashioned. But instead of being held in any sort of awe, the Old Fashioned is often seen as just one of those old slop drinks that isn’t worth the time it takes to make it. And to taste it the way many modern bartenders serve it, it’s no surprise.

The oldest recipe that I have found going by the name of Old Fashioned, comes from "Modern American Drinks" by George J. Kappeler, and published in 1895:

THE OLD-FASHIONED WHISKEY COCKTAIL
Dissolve a small lump of sugar with a little water in a whiskey-glass; add two dashes Angostura bitters, a small piece ice, a piece lemon-peel, one jigger whiskey. Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass.

Which very closely resembles the recipe which you should be served by a modern day bartender, but for reasons that are just a little unclear, you will be served something almost, but not quite, totally unlike anything resembling this veritable cocktail. Usually you’ll find sitting in front of you something that might better be described as a "bourbon spritzer".

While every bartender will perhaps make their Old Fashioned just a little different, they will commonly make two very radical changes to this "original" recipe. The first is that when they muddle together the sugar, water, and bitters, they will also toss in a small piece of orange, and a maraschino cherry. An interesting diversion, especially since neither were even a garnish in the original. While the maraschino cherry doesn’t really add anything at this stage besides a mangled carcass and a little bit of extra sugar, the orange does provide some useful and interesting flavors that I think are a desirable addition. The second, and essentially fatal modification that will be performed, is that at the very end of the process, after making a drink that would otherwise be an excellent Old Fashioned, the bartender will reach for the soda gun and top the glass off with an ounce or more of soda. Such a sin should be viewed in the same light as ordering a finely cooked steak in a classy restaurant, and then smothering it with ketchup.

When the Old Fashioned is presented as a soda charged "highball", it is not surprising that few people feel any compulsion to order it a second time. I fully expect that the use of soda got carried away in this drink by bartenders not quite being sure what "a little water" meant in the recipes that they would read. It is easy then to imagine that over time, bartenders would perhaps get a little sloppy with this, until the amount of water equaled, if not surpassed, the amount of whiskey used. Another factor that would allow this variation to continue is that without a topping of water, a normal serving of whiskey in even an ice filled Old Fashioned glass will usually only half fill the glass. So another apparent benefit of the soda is that is allows the customer to be served a drink that is full to the rim, which at least until you tasted it would appear to be a better value then a half filled glass.

To pull this recipe back to how it should be made, it is important to understand the role that water would have played in this drink. Unfortunately, few bartenders realize that sugar dissolves far better in water then it does in alcohol. Unless you want to end up with a lot of grit left over in your drink, it is important to first dissolve it in a little water before you add the spirits. This is precisely the reason why many good bartenders will use simple syrup when making cocktails that call for sugar. Simple syrup is just a mixture of equal parts of sugar and water (or sometimes, twice, or three times the amount of sugar as water), which is mixed until it is fully dissolved. It would be perfectly fine to use simple syrup instead of sugar in making an Old Fashioned, but if you didn’t have simple syrup around, you could just mix the water and sugar in the glass to dissolve it first. And since simple syrup is equal parts sugar and water, you should only use as much water as you do sugar in your old fashioned to dissolve it.

So if you want to experience what an Old Fashioned should really taste like, I highly recommend that you use only a teaspoon of water to dissolve the sugar, muddle in the orange and bitters, and use the cherry only as a pretty garnish instead of mangling it in the bottom of the glass. But whatever you do, please, please, don’t top it off with soda.

If you are interested in some further examinations and explorations into the history of this cocktail, you might want to check out Renewing An Old Fashion