🍹An Old But Never Out of Fashion Favorite

Happy August! As we inch closer to autumn, I want to explore a fan favorite cocktail. The Old Fashioned is available on pretty much every bar menu around the country. However, if your go-to order when drinking out is an Old Fashioned, you may have noticed some variations depending on where you order them. 

Now, the Old Fashioned is exactly what it says it is. It’s an old school classic cocktail that has stood the test of time over decades, but has also undergone some modifications. Have you ever wondered why some places use a cherry and some places don’t? That is actually one of the modifications I’m talking about. The “original” Old Fashioned recipe consisted of spirit, sugar, and bitter. Notice I said spirit and not specifically whiskey. We’ll get to that in a minute. Spirit-Sugar-Bitter. When cocktails first started becoming more commonplace in America, they were very basic recipes. This was in part due to the accessibility of ingredients. Saloons and taverns in the middle of the country couldn’t often get fresh ingredients, so they had to make due with what they had. This was a trend that lasted over several decades between westward expansion and the turn of the 20th century. 

In 1920, the world was just coming out of the trenches of World War I, the Jazz Age was kicking off, and women in the US were on the cusp of achieving suffrage rights. It was also the year that the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified. This amendment prohibited the “manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors”. This new law sparked a wave of illegal activity. Referred to as “bootlegging”, a term originally coined in the 1800s by traders who would carry a bottle of booze hidden in their bootleg when trading with Native Americans, the prohibited acts surrounding alcohol in the US created a whole new industry in moonshine. Moonshine is basically the alcohol that comes straight out of the distillation process of whiskey before it gets aged in a wooden barrel. Barrel aging a spirit helps give the liquor flavor, character, and an approachability not found in moonshine. Because so many people found moonshine to be intolerable, they started getting creative with their cocktailing. The addition of the cherry, or other macerated fruits, was originally done to make moonshine drinkable. Prohibition was repealed on December 5th of 1933 with the passing of the Twenty-First Amendment. This is the only time in our nation’s history that a Constitutional amendment has been passed with the sole purpose of undoing the ruling of a previous amendment. 

In 1942, just nine years after the repeal of Prohibition, sugar became the first household good to be rationed in the US due to shortages during World War II. In the 1940s, a lot of places that served cocktails did not serve food. Saloons, taverns, and speakeasies were often separate establishments from restaurants and because of this distinction, were often not able to get on the list for sugar rations. No sugar means no sugar cubes or simple syrup to make cocktails with. And so back to the cherries we go. Bartenders knew that they could use cherries or other macerated fruits and their syrups to sweeten drinks, so they would go to their local grocer and buy, what was at the time, basically pie filling. They would use the fruit and syrups in the cans in place of the sugar cubes or simple syrup that was most common for cocktailing at the time. Now, the 1940s weren’t actually all that long ago, so whether or not you get a cherry in your Old Fashioned at a bar is somewhat dependent on who trained your bartender/bar owner’s mentor’s mentor’s mentor. Cocktailing is a generational craft, and the skills we use are very much influenced by how we were taught and who taught us. 

This would not be a Haley’s Home Bar post without a recipe, so I would like to give you my signature Old Fashioned recipe and hopefully pass on a little bit of that generational knowledge myself. Recall back to the beginning of this post though, when I specified Spirit and not Whiskey. There was a reason for that. While an Old Fashioned out at a bar is going to be made with whiskey, don’t be afraid to get adventurous. The Old Fashioned is a style of cocktail and can be made with basically any dark spirit. Personally, if I’m in the mood for something lighter but still booze-forward, I love an Old Fashioned made with reposado tequila. For you tequila fans, give it a try. I promise you’ll thank me for it. 

Haley’s Signature Old Fashioned Recipe

2 oz. Dark Spirit (Whiskey, Aged Tequila, or Dark Rum)  

.5 oz. Simple Syrup

2 dashes Orange Bitters

Combine all ingredients together in a mixing glass, stir with ice, then strain into a rocks glass over clean ice or a big ice cube if you have one. Garnish with an orange peel spritzed over the top and a cocktail cherry on a pick. 

As always if you have questions, comments, or suggestions, send me an email at [email protected] and I will be happy to help. Have a great weekend and stay safe-cheers! 

Haley’s Home Bar is a space designed for helping you learn how to create delicious craft cocktails from the comfort of your own home. As you all know by now, a huge part of my platform is teaching thoughtful, respectful, and responsible enjoyment, and HHB is just another place for me to do that. I believe that craft experiences don’t have to be a fancy night out but can instead be something you can enjoy whenever you want. I also believe that thoughtful enjoyment is key to achieving that luxurious feeling that a perfectly crafted experience can bring. Tips, tricks, tool recommendations, pairing suggestions, recipes and more are all “on the bar cart” for you to explore and enjoy at your leisure, and I will continue to provide you with my weekly features and suggestions here as well.

Now, I will still be doing features here every week, but instead of it being all wine, I am also going to start incorporating spirits and cocktails into these posts as well. I invite you all to follow along on Facebook and Instagram at Haley’s Home Bar and be on the lookout for haleyshomebar.com as well.

Going forward, that will be where you can find archives of information including my posts here at the Torch, search for recipes both classic and modern, and see what’s pouring. As always, if you have any questions or comments or need recommendations, shoot me an email at [email protected] and I will be happy to help. Your barstool is always open-cheers!