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My name is Connor and together we're gonna live the high life on a low budget. Welcome to the Schmucks Guide to Society.
Okay I’ll bite. What's an Old Fashioned? I’ve had ‘em, I’ve liked ‘em- at least I think I liked ‘em. Do people like Old Fashioned's or are we all just trying to justify the fourteen dollars we put down to prove that we can grow our own testicle hair?
Either way, I drink 'em a lot but I don’t know what they are and I bet neither do you. I called up my bartender friend Marcell and this is what he said.
Marcell: An old fashioned is a whiskey drink you can make with bourbon or rye, stirred with a few drops of bitters and a crushed and dissolved sugar cube topped with a peel of lemon or of orange.
In retrospect I coulda saved us the phone call and just googled that, but thanks Marcell!
Anywho, after our call I’d set out on a quest to make the best old fashioned I can and share it with you all. I scurried to my liquor cabinet to check our ingredients.
In my cabinet I had a third of a handle of Maker's Mark, an affordable but still classy bourbon, and nothing else.
Looks like I’m going shopping.
I scramble for my car keys (drive responsibly, kids) and rush to the store. This is where our story takes a sad turn, for it’s almost 9pm here on Long Island and the supermarkets and liquor stores are closed!
I see the man locking up the liquor store and I beg him to open up for one more purchase. He sees the anguish in my eyes and kindly unlocks the door so long as I promise to pay cash. I agree (but hope that at the last minute he’ll take venmo).
I scoured the store for bitters, oranges and sugar, but found none. I accosted the clerk, “Sir, do you have any oranges?”
“No” he replied, “This is a liquor store”
I grew desperate. “Do you have any cubes of sugar I could break up and then dissolve into whiskey?”
“No” he repeated, “This is a liquor store”.
Damn this broken record of disappointment.
“Do you have any bitters?”
“No,” he repeated a third time, tearing at my soul “this is a liquor store!”
I am defeated, until I remember that bitters in fact, have alcohol in them!
“Sir,” I commanded, “bitters have alcohol”.
He stared stunned. I had won, or so I believed for only a moment as soon as he turned to me and said “yes, but according to New York state law Angostura bitters are too high in alcohol content to be considered a liquor and are instead sold at supermarkets as a cooking supplement.”
The agony of loss overwhelmed my body as I went back to the street with nothing but a fun fact. Feeling a failure, I stumbled into my neighborhood seven eleven where I discovered they sell sugar and oranges there. What luck!
I buy the first orange I see in the cooler and coat my pockets with packets of sugar and away I go to finally enter the world of elderly fashionable drinks.
I returned home in an excited daze, and I got to work. It could have been hours, it could have been minutes- I diced, I mixed, I stirred, I pounded like an ancient blacksmith slaving in the forges of Mount Olympus and after throwing out the oranges for being too moldy and tossing out the sugar for being non sweetened splenda, I had finally concocted the most superior old fashioned my taste buds could muster.
Here’s the recipe:
Take a glass,
Fill with ice,
Pour two fingers of whiskey,
Punch yourself in the schpfantz
Take a sip.
The Long Island Old Fashioned. Designed by me for you.
They really grow on you after four.