The short pour. The underwhelming bourbon. The superfluous steps. The smirking doofus lecturing us without a word. This video is awful.
The old fashioned is a drink for the people. But last week, a frankly disturbing viral video showed how it can be weaponized by the worst people at the bar: the hipster doofus.
Some guy on TikTok — I’m not going to further dignify his desperate plea for attention by naming him — posted a video of an entirely too formal craft bartender taking entirely too long to make what promises to be a thoroughly underwhelming cocktail. There isn’t a single word spoken in the two-minute, 21-second video. It still feels like an hour-long lecture at the Community College of Alienating Friends and Disturbing Customers.
This “perfect old fashioned” somehow takes a drink that can be made properly a thousand different ways and makes it wrong. It’s a minutes-long process for a beverage any dive bartender in the state of Wisconsin can make 10 times faster while tasting 10 times better. And while that brings up the debate on traditional vs. midwestern, bourbon vs. rye vs. Dairyland brandy variant and sweet vs. sour, almost every old fashioned drinker can agree: This guy needs to calm the hell down.
So, let’s discuss every aspect of this ridiculous video that’s remained lodged in my brain for the past week.
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in style with a host of cocktail concepts from some favorite brands, mixologists and bars. They’re the perfect companions to our line up of holiday recipes here. Remember to enjoy responsibly. The shamrocks, not you, are …
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in style with a host of cocktail concepts from some favorite brands, mixologists and bars. They’re the perfect companions to our line up of holiday recipes here. Remember to enjoy responsibly. The shamrocks, not you, are meant to be green…
3 large basil leaves, Chiffonade (cut into long, thin strips)
1 pint sugar
Directions
Cut strawberries into small pieces. Combine with basil and sugar and mix vigorously, slightly bruising strawberries. Cover and store for 12 hours. For cocktail, in a shaker, muddle strawberries. Combine remaining ingredients. Shake and strain into a rocks serving glass.
Bring the Guinness to a simmer in a saucepan and allow to reduce by approximately half. Add cinnamon and pink peppercorn. Whisk in Demerara sugar. Stir and simmer for 5 minutes, allowing mixture to thicken. Strain and cool. For cocktail, combine all ingredients in mixing glass, stir to chill. Strain and serve in a rocks glass.
Knock Out
Created by Sonny Verdini, Bar Manager, TRADE (Boston)
The Knock Out.
Ingredients
1-1/2 ounces Proper No. Twelve Irish Whiskey
1 ounce cinnamon syrup
3/4 ounce house-made ginger liquor
1/2 ounce lemon juice
3 dashes Angostura bitters
Directions
Shake ingredients into a single rocks glass. Garnish with dehydrated cinnamon sugar and lemon wheel.
Combine ingredients into glass and garnish with lemon and cloves.
Proper Irish Coffee
Ingredients
2 ounces Proper No. Twelve Irish Whiskey
4 ounces hot coffee
3/4 ounce simple syrup
2-3 ounces heavy cream
Directions
In a shaker, shake or whip heavy cream until slightly thickened (not completely stiff). In mug, add whiskey, hot coffee and simple syrup. Stir. Carefully layer thickened heavy cream until it covers drink. Grate nutmeg on top.
Place simple syrup in a julep glass with 5-6 mint leaves and muddle. Fill the glass halfway with ice. Add 1-1/2 parts D’USSÉ VSOP Cognac and stir. Add more ice and remaining D’USSÉ. Stir again until the glass is fully frosted. Top with ice.
Pour Irish Stout into the bottom of a cocktail glass. Combine gin, egg, raw honey syrup and orange in a shaker tin with ice. Shake then double strain into the glass.
Vermont Coffee
Vermont Coffee.
Ingredients
1-1/2 ounces Tom Cat Gin
Black Strong Coffee
1/2 ounce Maple syrup
Maple/Angostura Whipped Cream
Maple/Angostura Whipped Cream
Whip in a bowl or shake without ice in a shaker: 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, 1 tablespoon of maple syrup, 7 dashes of angostura bitters.
Directions
Combine ingredients in an Irish coffee glass, top with the whipped cream.
Add all ingredients and one cup of ice to a blender, Blend until smooth, pour into shot glasses, or a tiki mug for a full-sized drink. Garnish with fresh kiwi wheel.
Coco Moco
Coco Moco.
Ingredients
4 ounces good quality chocolate bar (dark 65-75 percent) roughly chopped
4 tablespoons brown sugar
12-ounce carton coconut milk beverage
6 ounces freshly brewed hot coffee
3 ounces Kōloa Coffee Rum
1 ounces Kōloa Coconut Rum (1/2 ounce per drink)
Directions
Combine chopped chocolate, brown sugar and coconut milk in a small saucepan over medium heat, whisking constantly until the chocolate is completely melted and the mixture is smooth. Pour 1-1/2 ounces (shot glass/jigger size) Kōloa Coffee Rum into a large ceramic mug or glass then top with 3 ounces hot coffee. Stir then top with half of the coconut milk mixture stirring well to combine. Repeat with other mug/cup. Garnish with whipped cream, lightly toasted coconut shavings, finely chopped macadamia nuts, and chocolate shavings.
Mix Demerara syrup and orange bitters in old fashioned glass and add a dash of plain water. Fill the glass with ice cubes and add Kōloa Spice Rum. Garnish with orange slice and a cocktail cherry.
Mint Julep
Ingredients
2 ounces Hillrock Solera Bourbon
1/2 ounce simple syrup
3-4 fresh mint leaves
Directions
In a rocks glass, gently muddle the mint leaves to release their oils. Fill the glass with crush ice and pour the bourbon and simple syrup over the ice, stir just long enough to blend ingredients and garnish with fresh mint.
Muddle mint with lime juice and a few ice cubes, add to a cocktail shaker with remaining ingredients, except club soda and shake. Fine strain into a cocktail glass with ice and add club soda. Garnish with mint sprig.
Add fresh ginger in a cocktail shaker and muddle until fine. Add all remaining ingredients and ice to the cocktail shaker. Shake and strain into a rocks glass filed with ice. Garnish with a rosemary sprig and a piece of candied ginger on the rim.
I have not been, in general, a tequila guy. Much of the blame here can be placed on cheap tequilas and the ubiquitous presence of Solo cups in college, and for the most part I’ve avoided it in favor of beer or whiskey. But as canned cocktails grow in popularity its place in the landscape is unignorable. There are gonna be a lot of good to-go tequila drinks out there, so I should probably get on board.
Turns out, Freshie’s Organic Tequila Seltzer is a decent to start.
It always bugged me that January and October were the two most popular months to give up drinking. I mean, I get why. January’s the start of a new year. October, uh, rhymes with sober? I guess it clears the runway to booze your way through the holidays, too.
But January and October are each 31-day months in the middle of football season. February, for the most part, has 28 days. It’s the backdrop to the Super Bowl, which is an obstacle, but otherwise only regular season hockey and basketball among America’s big five sports. If you need a get-right month, February is your guy.
I won’t be partaking personally — look for some on-location stuff from Phoenix breweries next week if all goes well — but I still opted to start the month off booze-free. Fortunately, I had a cocktail kit from Wilderton, and a five-step, 15-minute recipe, with which to kick off February.
Wilderton is a non-alcoholic botanical spirit made with grapefruit, orange blossom and herbs. It looks like magenta whiskey and smells, kinda, like pickles. And it came with the recipe for Rosy Cheeks, a booze-less hot toddy variation made with tea, vanilla syrup and lemon.
Let’s see how it tastes — and if it’s a proper substitute for a regular cocktail.
Epic Western’s Chispa Rita has all the hallmarks of a fresh margarita. And it’s completely crushable in a can or a glass.
Things have not gone so well for the Tennessee Titans.
Tennessee was once 7-3 with a 97 percent probability to win the AFC South for the third straight year. Now Mike Vrabel’s team is 7-9 and needs to beat the streaking Jacksonville Jaguars, in Jacksonville with its third-string quarterback, just to sneak into the playoffs.
But there is another. It turns out the Titans have multiple official canned cocktails. So if you’re at Nissan Stadium you can also find Epic Western’s tequila-based offerings to help you through the interminable slogs that have made up Tennessee’s 2022 regular season. After rolling through Spirited Hive’s lineup, it was only fair I give the its Nashville alternative a proper chance to put a silver lining on the franchise’s unpleasant 2022.
When I did a tour of Fever-Tree’s fancy-pants mixers last month, I noted the ginger beer was far and away the star of the show (with a nod to the sparkling grapefruit). Fever-Tree must be acutely aware of this, because it expanded that beverage line out to a new flavor this fall: blood orange.
That’s … interesting. When it comes to ginger mixers I’ve well versed with lime and cranberry and other bitter citrus, but orange and ginger is a new one for me outside of chicken dishes. Fever-Tree already has a handful of lime-based mixers, so doing something that could easily translate to a one-step dark and stormy or Moscow mule seemed like the more logical progression.
But no, instead we’re gonna take those old classics and add a little more citrus and see what we get. I can understand it. Fever-Tree is fancy stuff, so you’d expect it to default to something a little more involved than rum and Coke. But I still used it in a couple two-step cocktails because I’m a lazy man and I’m not about to pretend to be fancy here. Y’all saw me drink out of a dog bowl last week, I won’t insult you by suggesting I’m zesting lemons or making shrubs over here.
Here are the basic drinks I made instead and how Fever-Tree’s Blood Orange Ginger Beer mixed with both.
In honor of UMass-NMSU, I take all the worst things from my beer fridge and combine them into one surprisingly tolerable drink.
The worst game of the FBS schedule is upon us. Massachusetts and New Mexico State are about to wage war.
The two independents were left with little choice but to schedule home-and-homes with each other. It’s not like teams are clamoring to make road trips to Amherst or Las Cruces. Each provides the other with valuable oxygen as they attempt to pry some breathing room from the very depths of Division I college football.
In honor of this game, I’m going to use all the worst things in my beer fridge. My worst beer? Capital Brewery’s Lake House lager. It’s a light beer that was never very good, but lately Capital’s entire operation has taken a nosedive, so it’s gone from below average to *awful.* The worst liquor in my freezer? Wild Cherry Stolichnaya.
Shut up, I know.
How are we gonna pair those? With a classic summer-day-at-the-lake mix we called “Skippy” but you might know as a hop, skip and go naked. It’s basically just beer, vodka and lemonade. But since I’ve got some stuff lying around, I’m gonna add an extra step to the process and see what we get.
The goal is to turn two terrible base ingredients into something better. Welp, let’s see if I end up poisoning myself again.
The UMass-New Mexico State Disaster Bowl
2 12-ounce light beers
3 oz, whatever terrible vodka you have lying around (flavored or otherwise)
lemonade mix
one 8 oz Little Hug fruit barrel drink (fruit punch)
Mix all your ingredients together in a vessel capable of holding them all along with your shame at making this in the first place/acknowledging UMass as a football program. I used a dog bowl, but with the lingering pride to at least wash it thoroughly first. It belonged to my old pit mix Rainey, who I once saw casually eat an entire wasp nest on a walk.
Spiritually, this is the right attitude to have for UMass-NMSU. Stir up that lemonade mix thoroughly or else it’s going to look like a vengeful tree sprinkled pollen in your beer.
The end result is more than the sum of its parts. The cheap beer blends nicely with the lemonade. The wild cherry Stoli, bought a decade ago from a $5 bargain bin, normally overpowers anything it’s mixed with and makes it taste like cough medicine. Here, it blends with the fruit punch you loved as a child and haven’t thought about in a decade so it doesn’t really make an appearance.
It tastes sweet and extremely drinkable. It’s beer and liquor and sugar substitutes and it’s got a little fizz. I shouldn’t be super surprised — Skippy is a tried-and-true staple despite its objectively weird ingredients — but this actually worked out. I kinda regret putting this in a dog bowl. It’d probably be pretty good over ice.
Actually wait hold on lemme get a ladle.
OK yeah I was mistaken. This is somehow worse. Confining it to a small space appears to have angered the beverage.
Still, this is better than it should be. Does this mean Saturday’s least anticipated FBS-FBS matchup is going to rise to the occasion? I mean, maybe! These two combined for 71 points when they played last season, so anything’s possible, right?
Recipes plays a utilitarian role in Thanksgiving; we expect to have certain dishes – turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce – as a matter of historical tradition. But for Halloween, recipes get cloaked in gimmicks, a phenomenon that is not only tolerated …
Recipes plays a utilitarian role in Thanksgiving; we expect to have certain dishes — turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce — as a matter of historical tradition. But for Halloween, recipes get cloaked in gimmicks, a phenomenon that is not only tolerated but embraced. Scary Eye Cookies? Why sure! And you can pair them with Zombie Slime cocktails while you’re at it. Below, we round up some of our favorite Halloween recipes in three key categories: pumpkin, cookies, and cocktails.
Dr. Pepper. Rum. Vodka. Pineapple. Coconut… coffee creamer? Well, if it works, it works.
Texas A&M is coming off a home loss to Appalachian State and spent the last week cease-and-desisting any unauthorized videos of its deeply uncomfortable yell practices. If any fanbase in the nation could use a drink, it’s the Aggies.
The Aggies’ shot at redemption comes in Week 3, where they’ll host 13th-ranked Miami and potential first-round quarterback Tyler Van Dyke. The Hurricanes have won their first two games by an aggregate score of 100-20, but that was over Bethune-Cookman and Southern Mississippi. This makes things a little less impressive.
Still, Miami-Texas A&M is one of only two games between ranked opponents in Week 3. And since the other involves BYU and I’m not yet ready to figure out a cocktail for the Cougars, well, let’s make something boozy for the confluence of Aggies and Hurricanes.
Dr. Pepper may be a Waco product, but I’m fine associating it with all things Texas rather than Baylor. Miami is the southernmost major U.S. city in the contiguous 48 states. Since this is a game of “close enough” let’s use that as an excuse to incorporate tropical flavors into an ice cold beverage capable of carrying you through triumphant wins and upset losses.
The Tropical Pepper:
1.5 oz pineapple rum
1.5 oz vodka
9 oz Dr. Pepper
one splash, Coconut Creme Coffee-Mate
one lime wedge (optional, not seen here because what I thought were limes in my kitchen were actually granny smith apples)
I used some garbage rum that had been lingering in my freezer. I also used some extremely cool vodka. Javelin Vodka has pledged 100 percent of its proceeds to Razom, a charitable organization that has raised more than $62 million in humanitarian aid for Ukraine.
I’m looking forward to giving Javelin a proper review later on, but I will say it blends great here. I tipped in entirely too much, and this never truly felt overpowering or burned.
Making the drink is simple enough. Add ice, then booze, then creamer and top with soda. Give it a stir, and it’s ready to go.
The end result tastes a little like a bushwhacker with piña colada undertones (and with the added benefit of being several factors easier to make). The carbonation of the Dr. Pepper keeps the drink crisp and the creamer, despite creating an unsettling effect in the glass — I suggest using an opaque cup, if possible — helps erase the fact that my efforts counting out seconds while pouring vodka in no way shape or form reflect an accurate pour.
I initially bristled when I first tried this but it gets better as it goes on in a way that isn’t related to the three shots of liquor within. It’s got a nice blend of flavors and even the splash of Coffee-Mate stays muted. As a mixed drink this works, even if it’s an ungodly amount of sugar if you’re going with the full-blood versions of the creamer and soda.
So far, this is my favorite creation — though, fair play, it’s only Week 3 and the previous two drinks were a moonshine bomb and a Fireball old fashioned. It’s dangerous, though, thanks to both the potency of the booze and the sugar involved and how easy it is to drink. Approach it with caution.
I pride myself in an encyclopedic knowledge of all Rhode Island’s garbage cuisines. I’m not talking about lobsters or fine seaside dining. I speak to the glory of pizza strips and hot weiners and stuffed quahogs and frozen by-god lemonade.
This makes Loyal 9 cocktails a mystery. Their labels say “Founded in R.I.” with the iconic anchor of our flag next to the statement. But nothing on the official website says a thing about the best damn state in the union.
Digging further into the matter brings up Sons of Liberty’s Loyal 9 vodka, distilled with “local Rhode Island corn” which I assure you has never been a sigil of Rhody pride. It also suggests there’s a limit to how much the whole process can be scaled up, since:
a) tiny state, and
b) while farms certainly exist and thrive, they are far outnumbered by strip mall sports bars where everyone refers to each other — friend, foe, family member — as either “guy” or “kiiidddd.”
My extremely localized concerns aside, I’m happy for a change in pace. It’s still summer, and a canned cocktail is a great poolside drink since you can’t bring bottles an– oh my goodness, it’s 9 percent alcohol. OK, so, only bring like two or three or else I’m gonna start RKOing kids off the diving board again, and they told me I used up my one warning. Hey man, it’s fine, we’re all having fun here.
Right, sorry, where were we?
Loyal 9. Canned cocktails. Uncarbonated and packing the punch of an actual mixed drink and not a hard seltzer. Let’s go.
(No adults were ejected from the pool during the sampling of these beverages.)
