Steve's Old Fashioned PBJ

Hello everybody. Four o'clock on Friday, the fifth of June, and it's drinking time. I don't know about you guys, but this has been one of the oddest weeks I can ever remember. It's been super challenging, you know, both mentally and emotionally, it's just been a draining Greek week at work, and then everything else is going on in the world today. Honestly, I'm an old dude and I've been around for a long time, and

I've seen a lot of stuff, and this is the probably one of the worst weeks I've ever experienced in my life, you know, there was an Iran hostage crisis in the gas crisis in the early 70s, I remember that when I was a kid, didn't really understand what it was all about, but I remember the implication for my folks and for their friends and their family, stuff like that's just a super weird time as a country, right, and then the dot-com bubble in 2000, I was actually down in the valley and I saw that firsthand.

I saw friends going from Ferraris on one day to the breadline on the next day. Super super impactful, super tough, and then 9/11, holy crap, I mean, what do I say about that? I remember exactly where I was. I remember watching it live on TV, and I remember one of my friends having to explain any what just happened, because I didn't, I just didn't, I didn't register, it was

such a surreal thing, right, but we came together and we rallied, you know, and then two wars in the Middle East, one of which we may never get out of, you had The financial clap collapse of 2008 and all the horrible things that came along with that, we've had swine flu, we've had a bowl of virus, but this last week I feel like we're being attacked internally and externally, right, externally we've got this global pandemic, this virus that no one can really control, and internally it seems to me like our souls are being tested, they're being ripped apart by racism in this country, and, and I, it kills me, it

tears me up inside, right, you know, and and all I really have is this meme that Probably all of you have been have seen as well, and you know, it's, it's this goes out to all of my friends of color, you matter, your life matters, your experience matters, your story matters, your opinion in your culture matter, I see you, I hear you, I value, I grieve with you, I believe with you, and I am with you, and

so I think we could all use a good drink after this week, so we've got two drinks this week, and these are really riffs on week one, so week one was old fashions, and this week, you know, one of the things that we did early on is we did a couple drinks just kind of set you up to make a bunch of different types of drinks. Old fashioned was one of those drinks. Old fashioned is really simple, it's, it's

a bourbon or a whiskey, or two whiskey, it's a bourbon, or I usually, something sweet and something a little bit bitter, right, so we're gonna start with the maple old fashioned, for those of you they don't like peanut butter and jelly, because that's really the focus of today's Steve's old fashioned peanut butter and jelly, and I'll tell you the story about how I came up with that, but the maple old fashioned, people been making this one for a long time, and it's super simple to make, what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring you guys down a little bit so that kind of see what I'm doing on the cutting board here.

Let's get at it, put out a glass. Okay, so the first thing we're gonna make is we're gonna make, the like I said, the maple old fashioned, super super easy to make. I'm using rye, I suggest you to ride with this, because we're gonna be mixing this with maple syrup, that's gonna be our sugar, and that's gonna be super sweet, rye and the spiciness of the rye usually makes it balance out a lot better than, let's say, if you're just going to use bourbon, which tends to be sweeter. I like this Basil Hayden's two by two,

It's one of my favorite rise, but you can have a man, it's quite a good smell, so like all of our drinks, if you haven't had a type of a whiskey, or type of an alcohol you're mixing with, something it's a good idea always to try some, so I'm going to try a little bit, which is really unfair, because I've had this a Lot before, so for a ride it's super interesting, it's got a nice spicy kind of a not a cinnamon, maybe like an allspice kind of a flavor.

It's got a longer tail, like it, you can feel it going down, so it's got a longer tail being typical, right, but it's super good, super smooth, super great for mixing, what we're gonna do is we are going to go glass, we're gonna get a Big ass ice cube, we're gonna put two ounces of rye in this, yeah.

There's my ride on top of that, I'm going. to add our maple syrup, and this is where you can kind of get creative. I got a Trader Joe's, for a lot of stuff they've got this really nice vanilla bean maple syrup, which is super tasty. If you like something with a kick though, this stuff is super good, it's this Vermont ghosted maple syrup. It's got ghost peppers in it, this stuff is a kick. So everyone swan, I'll make myself one of these, super spicy, if you like spicy drinks, really super good. Well, we've got 2 ounces of rye, we're only gonna use a quarter of an ounce of this maple syrup, okay? We don't need a lot, just need a little bit, super thick, okay, there we go.

Use a quarter ounce of that, look at that, it's just like cuts that thing right down, okay, we've got our regular bitters. Oh geez, there we go, few dashes of bitters. Mashing the cherry, I like to take a little cherry juice, just a little bit, put that in there and get this bad boy up, these little cherries a garnish in there too, so that is your Maple Old

Fashioned, super easy, it's just an old fashioned, we're just using maple syrup as the sugar now, so super easy to drink, it's your easy to make, really tasty, the Right, pairs really well with that maple. syrup, it's a good drink. I'm still, I'm still a fan of the regular old fashioned with my Demerara over this, but it's super goodness, a nice change, it, mmm, that's tasty. So there's that one, now for kind of the centerpiece of this particular episode, which is Steve's Old Fashioned PB&J. This is, is weird.

I think it was about last November, so I was a total wine, I go to total wine to get most of my booze, I was a total wine walking up and down the bourbon aisle, and talking to the bourbon guy there, I was looking for something particular. I think I was looking for some type of an aperitif or something, I couldn't find the right aisle, so it's talking with bourbon guy, we started talking about flavored bourbons, he's like, oh yeah it's like, oh, I've got a buddy, he just got this he pulls up a fifth a screwball I was like, I just got this, we just got this in like a few weeks ago, it's peanut butter flavored bourbon. I've got a friend who likes where's bite, he says the best thing, and I thought to myself, that's got to be disgusting, right? I love peanut butter, peanut butter flavored bourbon does not sound like a good thing to me, right.

And immediately my mind started turning, like, okay, what could I make with this? First of all, the fact that there was a peanut butter flavored bourbon blew my mind, I had to buy it just because, and it's not cheap, right? Most flavor bourbons like around 20 bucks screwball is about 30 bucks, so you know it's, it's the same prices, let's say Buffalo Trace, right? So it's, it's not a cheap flavor of bourbon, right, but like, dude, I had to try it. I mean, come on, it's peanut butter flavored bourbon, and I grew up on peanut butter and jelly, right? So I grab some immediately, thought sort of thing, what can I make with it, and my mind immediately went to old fashions, right, and I thought, what if I took an old fashioned and replaced the sugars with

something that fit in here, and figured out how I could use peanut butters of bourbon, and that's where this whole thing came out, right? It was just kind of a an attempt to make something cool out of peanut butter bourbon, right, because I had no clue. Now having, having done that, like this is a really good drink, and we're going to talk about some of the variants of the peanut butter, essentially peanut butter and jelly old fashioned, as we move along here, but you know you shouldn't start wonder about finishing the one you have in your hand, so let's finish this Maple Old Fashioned. I told

you guys, when direction this week we're muddling, right? So I like strawberry jam, nice thing about this stuff. In my head, like, what can I do, how can I, make this thing taste like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? What didn't, what I like, but like, okay, I need some strawberry jam. All right, so I have a couple different things, okay, what am I gonna use for the sugar in the old fashioned, okay, and I found this strawberry liqueur, right,

it's just drill, it's, it's a pretty inexpensive one, I think it's made about 20 bucks, I mean it'll last you forever because you won't use hardly any of it, right, and then like a well, mix that with an actual strawberry, bundle the strawberry, right, because usually my old fashions I used some oranges or cherries or both, I'd be super Good, so I grabbed some strawberry, right, said, okay, I'm going to muddle that bad boy, let's go ahead and muddle that strawberry up, some fresh strawberry, let's take it, muddle it up to a nice strawberry paste, essentially, that kind of good, like strawberry goop, perfect.

Okay, the next thing we're gonna do, after we muddled it, we're just gonna put in a big ass ice cube, if you guys haven't gotten bigger ice cube molds, I highly recommend it, get the silicon ones, are easy to do to pop things out with, you can get a mold of like eight cubes on Amazon for, like, they're under ten bucks, or you can go to any liquor store, or Total Wine, at BevMo, or whatever, they have them there, but there's, they, they work really well, and the nice thing about the big ass ice cube is, they actually last long in the drink, since I've got a bigger surface here, and the littler ice cubes actually last a little bit longer, don't dilute the drink as much, so we've got it muddled, strawberry, we've got a big ass ice cube, this is where you guys are gonna have to feel this recipe a little bit, I, my recipe calls for one and a half to two ounces Of peanut butter bourbon and one ounce.

of regular bourbon. Now some people Really like the peanut butter bourbon. and by the way, so this is, this is my Screwball, it doesn't come in this little baseball, the canter, I just have this and I put the screwball in it, but if you haven't had it, mmm, oh man, it smells like pepper, if you've never had this, oops, I highly recommend you go out and get some, just try it, like if you, if you like peanut butter, you're gonna like this, like it's actually just drinkable, you could drink this on ice, it's super sweet though, so I'm not sure I would do that.

But, having made this a lot, this particular drink a lot, I'm kind of dialed it in, this is one of my boozy er drinks, aside from the Vesper, actually a lot of drinks I've made a pretty boozy but what I tend to use is, I'll use an ounce and a half of screwball, the peanut butter bourbon, by the way, when I went to a Total Wine a couple of weeks ago, they had like four or five different flavors of peanut butter bourbon, right. that range from like twelve bucks to thirty bucks, right, and everything in between.

I haven't tried anything but screwball. there may be something better out there, so obviously there's a market for this stuff now, but you should try it. So I'm gonna use one and a half ounces of peanut butter bourbon, okay, I'm going to do equal parts and regular bourbon, so I'm going to use one and a half ounces, and this is Buffalo Trace right here, oh, storm trooper decanter, got an ounce and a half of that. Okay, I have found this.

What's that? Well, so we got to use this strawberry liqueur, right, so we've got the muddled strawberry, this is gonna be our sugar, right, so this is gonna replace our simple syrup, or, you know, in the last drink we use maple syrup, so this is gonna replace that, so we're gonna use 1/2 a part of strawberry liqueur in here. there we go, that's probably a little bit much, okay. again, this is just drill, it's, it's you

know, I, for pretty much any kind of, oh, flavored liqueur, I use this to make all kinds of different flavored flavors, but it, it's really good. So we've got our muddled strawberry, we've got one and a half ounces of screwball peanut butter bourbon, we've got one and a half ounces of Buffalo Trace, we have a half of an ounce of strawberry liqueur, and now we're going to use orange bitters in here, okay, a little bit more citrusy flavor to kind of balance out a lot of that sweetness, we've got a little bit of citrus to that, right, we're gonna mix this bad boy up.

That's the stuff, ma'am. So with this drink, like I said, when you're, when you're drinking it, you'll probably want to play with the mix between the peanut butter bourbon and regular bourbon. When I first started making this, I was using one and a half to two ounces of peanut butter bourbon. to half an ounce to one ounce of regular bourbon, and it's super peanut buttery, but that got to be a little too sweet for me, so I use equal parts peanut butter bourbon and regular bourbon. Some people like a little bit more strawberry, so I use a half an ounce, you may want to go one ounce of strawberry liqueur, but that might be a little bit too sweet, I know a lot of people probably don't like the sweetness, and so in that case I go, let's say, one and a half ounces of regular bourbon to an ounce of the peanut butter bourbon.

and stay with the half ounces of strawberry bourbon, or sorry, strawberry Liqueur and the orange bitters is way better in here than the regular business, because that's citrusy part of the orange bitters, actually lights this thing up. Mmm, no, strawberries, you sure, but this is a freakin closest thing to a look, to a liquefied peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I've ever had in my life, other than actually putting one in a blender and blending it and eating it, because I was hammered.

The cool part about this though is that you don't have to put the thing in the blender at all because you've already got this, and if you drink a couple of these, probably gonna be Henry anyway. Mmm-hmm, so you're all good. So a couple different variants on the old fashioned this week, we add the maple old fashioned. Two ounces of rye, 1/4 ounce of maple syrup. Some of you might like a little bit sweeter, if you do add a little bit more maple syrup, don't be afraid, you know, go to, go to a half an ounce cup of 3/4 of an ounce.

But the maple syrup is way sweeter than simple syrup or like Demerara or anything we've used before, so kind of add it in stages. I would anyway. So 2 ounces of rye, half an hour, quarter ounce of maple Syrup to, just three dashes for, to the bitters, and then some maraschino cherries to top it off, right, and a big-ass ice cube. You could use bourbon, I've used bourbon with this before, the bourbons actually really tasty.

The thing about bourbon is, it remember, bourbons a sweeter alcohol than a rye, right, so you're gonna get that sweet bourbon with the sweet syrup, maple syrup, and it might be too sweet for some folks, right, so that's why I typically use rye. With rye you get those nice spices, typically rise or a lot spicier, and those spices mixed with the the maple syrup, really I think pop for me, so that's, that's a super easy drink make, right. Steve's old-fashioned peanut butter and jelly, super simple, you're gonna have to pipe the bullet though and get some peanut butter flavored bourbon. I use Screwball but, like I said last time with the total wine, at four or five different flavored peanut butter bourbon zero it surprised the heck out of you, right, so I use equal parts, I do one and a half ounces of peanut butter bourbon, one half ounces of regular bourbon. I'm using Buffalo Trace, but you can, you know, it's dealer's choice. They're half an ounce of

strawberry liqueur, I use a the drill, four or five dashes of the orange bitters, and you make that over a muddled strawberry. It's amazing. Now there's a variant of this that you may want to try, my buddy Brian Weber actually likes this version better, where instead of using druid strawberries, they actually have a ton of different types of flavor liqueurs, and they've got a blackberry one, and if you use the blackberry liqueur with actual blackberries, to kind of simulate blackberry jam, it's pretty damn good, right. I like the strawberry version a little bit better.

My buddy likes the blackberry version a little bit better. You make them the exact same way. You could try different things, like maybe you like raspberry jam, right, that's your favorite jam. get raspberries to get a raspberry liqueur, trust me, they've got a flavored liqueur for just about any kind of freaking berries you can think of, right, but it's super easy, right. Equal parts, one and a half ounces of peanut butter liqueur, when I fast as a bourbon, half an ounce of the berry liqueur, I use strawberry for five, the orange bitters muddle strawberry, highball glass, big-ass ice cube. Thank you, drinky, oh damn, I needed a couple drinks at the end of this week, like always. I suggest you drink on an empty stomach, I think it personifies the flavor and really get you going for the weekend. I think in this case, but take care everybody.

It's been a tough week, it's been a really tough week I went tonight, I don't think any of us can deny it. We're in a weird place, all I can say though is there's hope, right, there's gonna be a good side to this, we're gonna come out of this thing better than we are now, and that's the best part about this country that we live in, right, and for my buddies that are overseas, are watching this, I know you guys are watching our country and in saying what the hell is going on. We'll fix it, we'll get right, don't worry, it'll just take us some time, and we need to do some soul-searching as a country, I think, but we'll get it done. I am a firm believer that in two, all my friends of color, just know I'm with you, I'm with every single one of you and I love you all, and with that Have a drink.

Next week, I think I may go with something a little bit more complex. My niece's boyfriend hooked me up with an aviator, I think we talked about a couple weeks ago, and I created a bastardized version of an aviator, I'm Sorry, in aviation. It's a gin drink, it's super good in Aviation and a Vesper, which is super good, super boozy, but really amazing, so we may kind of jump the shark next week and get to that one, and half of you like on, oh my god, see that's amazing.

Half you may say, Steve, yeah, that's a little too much, we'll figure it out again, I'll post stuff Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, go out and buy your stuff. And with that, god bless everybody, take care, be careful and love your brothers and sisters, cheers, guys.