Old Fashioneds, good times!

Four o'clock, time to get drinking, if you guys haven't already started drinking already. This is my first time ever doing this. I have no clue if anyone's even out there watching, my name is paying attention, so this could just be for myself and cathartic, but if it is, I'm gonna make a cute couple freakin drinks and drink them anyway, because it's that time. Anyhow, so before we get started with this, if you're going to raise your game and be a professional drinker like me, I think there's some tools you need. So I want to talk about two things before we get started today. One are kind of tools that every bartender, bar Smith, someone who's gonna make drinks should have, okay. First one is a jigger, okay.

. This is what they call a Japanese jigger, two ounces on one side, one ounce on the other side. There's a million different kinds of figures. This kind of a normal American jigger got one and a half ounces in a one ounce pour. By the way, shot is an ounce and a half, it's not an ounce. This is actually a really cool one that I found on Amazon, it's oxo. If you take a look inside, it's actually got all your measurements on there, pretty cool.

The one thing about it, it's hard to use when you're grabbing your hands, you put it down on something. It's great to measure, otherwise it's not so good. Second thing, if you're going to be a start making drinks, you're gonna need a muddler. Okay, some people call these a pestle, I don't know why. There's the, you can find these the wooden like ground one, you could use the, you know, back end of a blunt knife, whatever, but a muddler, you're probably gonna want one of those.

You're probably going to at some point want a juice press. It doesn't have to be a big one, this is just a really small one, cheapo plastic one works super well, especially when you're making drinks, because you can squeeze a couple ounces of fresh lime or lemon juice without having to go through a lot of stuff. So super good, and then this is a bar spoon, good for two different reasons, for deep drinks, if you're drinking a ton with a big drink.

I'm also a lot of bar recipes, we'll have like spoon of this or spoon of that, they're talking about this kind of spoon, which is probably about two teaspoons, okay. But they're super helpful for stirring stuff, don't need one together, probably have them. Another thing at some point you're gonna want a shaker, right, this is just your kind of normal shaker. I like these that have the strainer on top, so I don't need to go all crazy with my actual strainer. This little guy, if you're like me and you like to make drinks for yourself, little personal shaker, these things rock. By the way, so those are kind of tools do you need There's a ton of substitutes you can use.

In there, you don't need a muddler, you can use a blunt enema knife or something like that. You don't have to have a jigger, you can use a real shot glass, that's fine. You just need to get your measurements down. At some point you're going to get to a point where you just pour the booze in there and you kind of know how much it is, but until that point, measuring is really good. A couple things that I think every bar should have, I think there's three types of liquors every bar should have. You should have some type of a bourbon or rye, you should have some type of a gin, I would argue probably a gin and the dry gin, so maybe two different types of gin. And a good vodka is just a nice decent plain old vodka. I think every bar needs those three types of liquor, so knock yourself out with those, I think you need bitters, right, I go with the kind of middle-of-the-road common everyday bitters. There's all

kinds of flavor bitters, for some drinks their profile lends themselves well to using different kinds of bitters. I've got some orange bitters here, I'll show you a variant of the old fashioned make tonight, which uses those. Vermouth, sure, that kind of stuff, you're going to find drinks that you like and you're going to want to get good ingredients for those drinks, so you know, think about those. If people actually watch this will do another drink next week may will do a Manhattan, or maybe we'll do like a really good old martini or something like that.

Some of these things make a difference in those drinks, and proper glassware for sure. Now you need some good highball glasses. Molly hates me because I have like frickin seven sets of highball glasses, but I wouldn't need seven sets that she didn't keep breaking him all the time, so Full disclosure, I do not break them, so that's kind of what you need. The old fashioned is an interesting drink, it's a staple, if made well they're super yummy, and there's a lot of variants for an old fashioned that you can use, that even if you don't like bourbon, I think I can find a version that you may like. Some Just thoughts on in general, old fashions.

You see a lot of people take a cube of sugar and they'll take bitters, now pour it on that cube of sugar and I'll put that with bottom the highball glass, and then they'll pour their bourbon in there. I say that's crap, it's old school, it's old fashioned, you don't get that nice sweetness out of the sugar, it tends to stay at the bottom, so I would highly Recommend using a simple strip, simple syrup, super easy to make, it's equal parts granulated sugar and water, that's it, just bring the water to a low boil, dumping the sugar, stir it up, it's done.

You can go buy this stuff super cheap at any store for like six, seven bucks for a big thing, it's just sugar water, right, when you start making these drinks you're gonna find that you're gonna start making your own syrups. There is one syrup that you can buy, like in particular, this stuff right here, it's called Bar Smith, it's old fashioned syrup, I get it at Safeway, you can get it just about anywhere, it is amazing, good. The one thing about the syrup I'm going to be using tonight, I'm gonna be using a Demerara syrup, mmm, which I made myself, I'll tell you guys what's in that, but the nice thing about the old fashioned is, depending on what kind of booze you use, if you use bourbon, typically Bourbons are sweeter, if you use rye, rye's a little bit spicier, if You use, like, that bar from the bar Smith.

stuff, okay, you can see the color, it's a dark color, it's got some really all natural spices and stuff in it. Here's your stuff, I'm gonna use it for my drink. This is called a Demerara syrup, this is just Demerara sugar, you can get it at any store, I get it at QFC, I take a half a cup of that, boil some water, half a cup of water, that's all it is, but it's really good. I highly recommend this stuff over just a normal simple syrup and drink like this, because the spiciness of it will really bring out a rye, and it will also enhance the sweetness of a bourbon, so either way you go, you're good, so that's kind of my thoughts on cube of sugar in This versus strip, Bourbons and Rhys this.

is a religious battle, right, I like them both. In order to, all, all Bourbons, all Eyes are all whiskeys, not all whiskies. are Bourbons, not all whiskeys are rye, okay, to be a bourbon you have to have 51% corn mash, there's an actual recipe That you have to follow that certified. that makes it a bourbon. Because of the corn, the sugar in the corn tends to be a Little bit sweeter, Rhys tend to have a. lot more rye, they don't have to adhere to those strict standards with a corn mash, they tend to be spicier, and I don't mean like spicy spicy but like them kind of allspice or cinnamon spicy, something like that, they tend to be really good, so with that let's go ahead and get started.

Like I'm gonna try to do stuff in front of you here if I can, the very first thing we want to do, if you want to take an orange and cut it up, we're gonna muddle this one, so let me grab a highball glass here, how about us, orange, I love these little cuties, and the reason why I love them is they're perfect for drinks, dude, especially if you're drinking by yourself, these are awesome because you're not wasting like a big ol' orange, you buy these in a bag, like six bucks, seven bucks, they're freaking awesome, so just take one of these, we're gonna cut a wedge out of it, okay, any special wedge, um, what I like to do is I like to rim the glass, okay, no dirty jokes, shove that in there, and we're going to use our muddler to muddle this thing, okay, so just really, okay, I got a relevant

hand, just kind of muddle that in there so it's all squished up, okay, that's it. If you're a drinker like me, you're gonna go for the big fatty cubes, these things are awesome, the reason why I love big ice cubes, it's because they don't melt as fast, to be quite honest, they'll keep your drink colder, they don't melt as fast as regular cube, but half the time I just use something out of the freezer anyway, but I have these on hand so I'm gonna use it, nice thing, so you can get these silicone molds on Amazon or any like Total Wine or whatever, super cheap, like four bucks for a tray of like eight of them, if you get that, make sure you get the silicone ones that are bendy because they're a pain in the ass to get out of there. So muddled orange, big ol' Fatty ice cube. Now comes the easy part.

Let's start with the bourbon, okay, and this is my house bourbon, this is, I believe, Black Powder, and these two ounces of this, I am starting to really like Buffalo Trace, it's kind of a house bourbon, it's an inexpensive bourbon, actually pretty tasty, it works really well in a lot of drinks, it's got a kind of a long tail and a nice kind of sweetness to it. Well, there's that, the next thing is the Demerara syrup, okay, we had, remember, two ounces of bourbon, gonna flip this over, I'm gonna use between a quarter and a half an ounce of the simple syrup, okay, depending on kind of how sweet you want it, I typically do about a third of an ounce, okay, pour that in there.

Okay, so it kind of looks like ass right now, want to take some bitters. Okay, if you shake the bitters in there, let's have a towel handy, and then all we're gonna do is stir, that's it, okay, now let's try this and see what I forgot. Oh, [bleep], I didn't forget anything.

Sings friggin' awesome, now that's good stuff, so let's talk about a couple of the variants, so this is what I would consider a pretty modern old fashioned. Old fashioned gets its name in lore, anyway, post-prohibition, where they made these whiskey drinks, and they made him a little bit sweeter because the whiskey sucked, and so post-prohibition, where all these drinks were made available and people were experimenting, people say, hey, look, I Want my whiskey the old-fashioned wet.

that's legend, I'm, where it comes up, so that's, this is a modern twist, right, um, most times I'll kind of go Don Draper on it, this is just a deal in maraschino cherries is a cheap old safe way, one with maraschino cherries, you can go one of two ways, you go cheap, really sugary, okay, I'm just gonna take one of those in a bar spoonful of the sugar juice and shove that in there and mix that bad boy up, that's one way to go, the other way's get some really good maraschino cherries, like those nice like almost black ones with the really thick strip, that's tough rock, so this is kind of the Don Draper grain, sometimes I'll muddle the cherry, sometimes it won't, [bleep], that's

good, that's really good, I got it, like I'm not lying, so, that's all there is to an old fashioned, super easy, right, two ounces or two parts of your favorite bourbon arrived, 1/2, 1/4 to 1/2 a part of simple syrup, I use just Demerara syrup, super super easy to make, equal parts of Demerara sugar, you can get at any grocery store, and water, bring it to a boil, shove it in there, let's bar Smith stuff is super good, super easy, and you can just buy it for like 5 bucks a bottle.

Few shakes of bitters, what else did I miss? Orange muddled Don Draper style, add the cherry, super good, now a lot of people don't like bourbon or rye or whiskering that stuff, although this is freaking amazing. Just one second, hmm, ok, that was really good, so I'm gonna do a variant on this with tequila, I'm gonna make it a tequila old fashioned, and I do not like tequila, let me just say, I can't stand it, Molly Love tequila.

She really, that's your thing, not mine, but this drink will please both crowds. I Recommend you use either or a spot o. Tequila right or in agave tequila, the agave tequila, a little bit sweeter, either resposado is just a little bit sugary more than the silver ones, this doesn't really work very well to silver ones, um, but we're gonna do the same thing, and if you like tequila, by the way, and you have a respond well to tequila, just a slice of orange, muddle on the bottom is the tequila, actually is pretty darn good by itself, so we're gonna repeat the steps, orange this time, I'm gonna muddle a cherry in there, okay, kind of mushing that up right there.

This time instead of bourbon will use tequila, um, a lot of is decanted for my liquor for a couple reasons, kind of like wine, in some cases the air can help it breathe a little bit, but you're really probably never going to notice it, for me it's easier to get right, I can just pop the top off instead of worrying about a stupid stopper or something like that, so to answer the Spot at akela and this I believe this is just Cuervo gold, right, so it doesn't have to be anything special, I'm not sure I've ever made this with Demerara simple syrup, so we'll give it a shot, see how it goes, okay.

There's a simple syrup there, put that in there, in this I am going to use orange bitters, oh, so by the way of the Don Draper version of the old fashioned, if you mix regular bitters and orange Bitters, it actually turns out pretty good, too. It's not bad. Okay, big old fatty ice cube, let's see, I got tequila, I got my bitters, I got my simple syrup, I got my muddled juice, my muddled fruit in there, okay, we're just gonna mix that bad boy up.

It's the other cool thing about these, bar spoon, making it super easy to mix. Okay, mmm, tasty, smells like tequila. I do not like to keel up at this drink. Oh, freaking a ray, that's money. So I hope you guys learned something today, hope you got some value out of this. If you guys like this, maybe next Friday I'll do another one, we'll pick another drink, maybe I'll put a couple of variants up there for you guys to decide, we can figure out what we want to make. I made a suffering bastard the other day, which I hadn't made for a long time. Suffering bastards are great for hangovers, there's a really good drink that I call the Kevin, which I recently learned how to make from a bartender who couldn't think of a better name, so he just called it Kevin. I'm thinking about

via Jeff Christopher, comma the Hagee, because I make it with love, and it turns out really well when I make it, but it's super involved, so we may start with something a little bit easier next week, maybe, like I said, a, a martini or Manhattan, something more classic, and then kind of work our way into, you know, some more crazy stuff. The way I look at this, we're probably going to be shut in for at least another month, so we've got three or four more drinks to make in the meantime. I hope you guys enjoyed this, I hope you get your drink on, help some of you followed along with me and you're Getting your drink on, so this is, oh.

another thing about drinks that I make, every drink I make has at least two shots of booze in it, every single one, okay, so you have to know yourself well enough to be able to make these drinks. The parts, when I say ounces, just think Of it as a part, so two parts of booze. according to a half a part of syrup, lots of some dashes of simple syrup, okay, so if you're gonna go with, you know, one ounce of booze, just back everything off. Okay, so super easy to make old fashions.

probably the one of the best drinks, wouldn't problem, my favorite drink of all time. We made it with bourbon, we made it with the tequila, I like in both ways of course, I prefer the bourbon way over the tequila version, but if you're a tequila lover, this shit's good, like you will like this, I guarantee it. So hope you guys had some fun, hope some of you fall along, if you guys want to do this again next week, let me know, we'll make another drink, it'll be fun. So I hope the support, cheers, everybody, and be safe, social

distancing, six feet, all that stuff, but I'll call, supposed to help the spread of this disease. So there you go, at least I think it does. Have a good weekend, guys.