Coffee Old Fashioned

Taking the traditional combination of American Bourbon Whiskey, aromatic bitters and sugar that comprises the original Old Fashioned, we have added a subtle hint of coffee.

Ingredients:

50mls Old Forester Bourbon
10mls Coffee Liqueur
10mls Sugar syrup
3 drops Coffee Bitters

Method:

Build over ice in a mixing jar and stir well. Strain in to an ice filled rocks glass and garnish with 3 coffee beans.

The Old Fashioned probably wasn’t always called the Old Fashioned, why would it be? At this time the mixed drinks of the era had exciting names likes The Kiss Me Quick, The Gum Tickler, The Flash of Lightning and the Almagazoolum. Compared to these the Old Fashioned sounds decidedly, well old fashioned. In fact we are of the belief that this is most likely where the name originated. When these fashionable, popular and startlingly named new drinks first arrived and the age of the cocktail was upon us, well those that yearned for simpler times, who thirsted for an uncomplicated glass of whiskey, sugar and bitters, as they had enjoyed for years, would ask for the “Old Fashioned drink.” The olden days equivalent of walking into Starbucks and asking for “just a coffee.”

This hasn't stopped a mythology from surrounding the drink, nor has it stopped people from trying to attach names and locations to its history. The most oft told tale is that the Old Fashioned was created at The Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky, by a certain Martin Cuneo. Now, the Pendennis is a wonderfully old fashioned and much revered place and it would make a very appropriate birthplace for the Old Fashioned. Rather inconveniently for our story though, the first mention of the drink appears in print some twelve months before the club was founded and even Martin Cuneo’s own book of drinks doesn’t mention it. Indeed recipes for whiskey cocktails that constitute an Old Fashioned in all but name had been printed as long ago as 1869, some twelve years before The Pendennis Club opened. 

Still, there is a good reason it has stuck around, even with its antediluvian name. In America you all too often find your latter day Old Fashioned clouded by a squashed up cellulose cherry, a slice of orange or even a slice of pineapple. And don’t even ask us what they do to it in Milwaukee, we’ll just mention that it involves 7-Up and leave it there. We enjoy the simple combination of bourbon, sugar, bitters, and ice, and have taken the liberty of adding a smidgeon of coffee to it, which will doubtless outrage the purists.