Best Bourbon For Old Fashioned
Well hello there and welcome back to another episode of cocktails with Kira my name is Kira and I'm a whiskey-loving Irish gal who is on somewhat of a cocktail-making voyage of discovery if you are new here I have zero professional bar experience other than a passion for making mixed drinks at home and showing you how I do it
so feel free to stick around and we both might learn something because if I can do it you can do it so in today's video, we are going to be doing something that I have not yet done on this channel before and that is going back and revisiting one of my earlier cocktails so today we are going to be remaking the absolute classic and one of my personal favorite cocktails the old fashioned I'm going to be remaking the old fashioned in two different variations today
I'm going to be doing one with bourbon and another one with rye whiskey and the reason why I am doing this is because I need to get to the bottom of the bourbon rye old-fashioned debate and I would like to know which one I personally prefer because as of yet I actually don't know I do have a hunch as to which one I prefer the two whiskeys that we're going to be using for our old fashioned today are one a bourbon and I'm going to be using bullet bourbon I first tried this when I was doing a bourbon tasting video on the tri-channel immediately fell in love with it and now I just cannot be without it and the other whiskey that we're going to be using is of course
a rye whiskey and I'm using the wild turkey Kentucky straight rye whisky now as you can see this has been drank if you watched one of my latest vlogs where I was in county claire with some friends I actually made a rake of whiskey sours for them so we actually went through most of the bottle of rye but thankfully there is just enough left to make an old-fashioned so before we get into the history of this classic cocktail and I show you the two different variations that I make at home
I would like to take a second to tell you about my Patreon it is not only a way for you to support my channel but you can also avail of exclusive content and see all of the footage that is just too tipsy for youtube okay so let's take a brief look at the history of the old fashioned the old fashioned is one of the oldest if not the oldest cocktail out there the first mention of the cocktail on record dates all the way back to the early The 1800s we're talking about 1806 and back then the drink was referred to as old-fashioned
So this old-fashioned style is actually referring to a very old concoction that basically comprises of your whiskey bitters sugar and water things like ice were just not available back then the quality of alcohol would not have been anything similar to what it is today so this was a way of masking a poor taste or a really high alcohol content a lot of these whiskeys and liquors just didn't taste very good so it was away of making them essentially drinkable by the 1870s bars had access to a lot more ingredients and they were essentially making more exciting and fancier cocktails and with that growing interest in more exciting and newfangled cocktails there did exist a more purist group that still wanted their cocktails the old-fashioned way so that is brief and very general history as to how the old fashioned came about but since its creation, it has gone through so many iterations it has fallen in and out of style it is definitely having a moment it is so popular
Right now I think because of how simplistic it is it really stands out against all of the crazy newfangled cocktails that you can see out there and that's personally, why i love it so much it's so simple but it just works and because the old fashioned has gone through so many iterations over the decades people's opinions really vary as to how to make the perfect one my advice is to tinker with it try a few different methods and see which one you like the best because the old-fashioned that you like the best is the perfect old-fashioned for you and that my friends are exactly what I am here to do today so that is more than enough history talk for one video
let's get into the ingredients the ingredients for an old fashion are fabulously simple you're obviously going to be starting with your whiskey or your bourbon here I have my bullet bourbon and I also have my wild turkey rye whiskey we are also going to be using a sugar cube you can also use simple syrup if you like but I'm just going to go with sugar cubes for this recipe we're also going to be using the classic angostura bitters we're going to use this to soak our sugar cube we're also going to use a little bit of orange rind as a garnish as well and the final ingredient we are going to use in our old fashioned is of course the stunning luxardo maraschino cherries I did not have them back when I made my first old-fashioned video but since then you can bet your sweet ass that I've included these in every single old fashioned that I've made since then and they are so good [Music] so for both of these old fashions
I'm going to build them in the tumbler glass so I'm going to start with my sugar cube I'm going to get ones that are roughly the same size and then we're going to go in with a couple of dashes of angostura bitters I'm going to do the same for both let's do like three dashes, okay that's enough and then okay so that should be enough and I'm also adding a bar spoon of water to each and then I'm gonna go ahead and muddle them with the back of my bar spoon give them a good muddle and I've got two separate jiggers because I'm trying to be extra scientific about this
I don't want any cross contamination of the alcohols 60 mils into the glass and then on our other side we're going to do our bullet bourbon so let's go in with 60 MLS again of this in we go now that we have our whiskey in the glass I'm going to go ahead and get my garnish ready so now we're going to go in with our maraschino cherries and for me personally I have taken to adding kind of half a bar spoon ish of maraschino cherry juice and I'm also going to add a cherry as well so there is a bar spoon in here divine sweet sweet nectar okay so now that we have our ice
I'm just gonna give it a little bit of a stir now it is time to quickly do our garnish and then our drink is done so I'm gonna go ahead with my orange garnish and I'm to do something that i have not yet done on the channel and that is introduce fire so I'm going to go ahead and just gently and carefully burn the front of my peel just to like really release all the oils I think that should be enough and then I'm just gonna do a little bend and snap oh that works really well and then I'm gonna take this and rub it around the rim and the inside rim and the outside as well if you like of the glass give it another little twist and then just pop it in and let it sit in there nicely this is fun oh beautiful that was very satisfying
these are very fresh oranges there we have it we have two old fashions made in exactly the same method with the same ingredients we have our rye whiskey old fashioned and then we have our bourbon whiskey old-fashioned so if you will join me over on my cocktail drinking slash dr evil chair I'm gonna try these and we will finally put this issue to bed, it is the moment of truth I am very excited like I said at the beginning of the video
I do have a suspicion as to which one i may prefer but I have never actually done a comparative taste test like this at the risk of over diluting my drink I'm gonna get straight to it okay i think I'm gonna try the rye one first cilantro it's so nice oh it's delicious honestly I think this one is perfect just as it is but let's try the bourbon old-fashioned smells so good so of course the bourbon is going to taste sweeter again this has the mosquito cherry and a little bit of the liqueur in it as well so it is going to add to its sweetness i think I'm gonna have to try them again because they both taste really good damn it I thought this was gonna be an easy one to pick well shite
I feel like now is a good time to tell you that my suspicion is actually wrong my suspicion was that I would prefer a bourbon old-fashioned but upon making them and making the rye old fashioned in the exact same way I actually prefer the rye old-fashioned that is not to say that I don't enjoy this bourbon old fashioned is delicious it's a little bit sweeter it's a little a bit smoother whereas this has a little bit more kick to it so for the purposes of rounding off this video I'm gonna say that I prefer a rye old-fashioned at least the way that I make it at home what I need to do now is to try some different rye whiskies let me know in the comments which rye
I need to pick up next what do you use for your old fashioned so while I am sitting here enjoying my drink I thought I would answer some Patreon only questions I am having so much fun with my community over there if you are interested I will leave the link to my Patreon in the the description below it is a great way to support my channel but you can also avail of exclusive content and the footage that is just too tipsy for youtube so I have a question here from fishyerlinda great username and they ask what drink surprised you the most were it something that you thought would be bad which turned out to be quite the opposite the drink that surprised me the most has to be the sazerac that drinks just blew me away it's not that
I was expecting it to be bad i just was not prepared for how smooth and delicious it was I loved it because I have time I'm also going to answer another one I've got one here from don proctor who asks if you could travel anywhere in the world today where would you go and what would be the first cocktail you would order there that is a great question and actually, a very easy one to answer given my last answer I would have to say I would go to new Orleans I'm saying new Orleans because in my original sazerac video I said new Orleans and I got red fulfilled so yes if i could travel under normal circumstances, I would go to new Orleans and of course I would order a sazerac because it is their official cocktail gave the fact that
I loved the basic attempt at a sazerac so much if I went to the place where it originated and had one made for me it would probably be so good that i would just cease to exist then and there I feel like it could be a proper highlight of life so that is something that is definitely on my list so there you have it those are my two variations of the old-fashioned made in an attempt to figure out which one I liked better if you liked this video feel free to give it a thumbs up and if you'd like to see more cocktail ideas I will link a playlist up here I have so many other cocktails that you can make at home and if you have not already then be sure to subscribe to my channel i post new videos every single week and i would love to have you back for more thank you so much for watching and i will see you in my next salon