For Tales of the Cocktail 2012, the bartender competition was to craft the perfect Old Fashioned using the basic recipe of spirt + sweetener + water + fruit. I’m not exactly a bartender, but I can still have fun coming up with my own Old Fashioned using homemade bitters and locally-produced aquavit.
(I thought I was rather clever using this combination, until I found another blog that came up with a very, very similar recipe a year ago. Ah, well.)
The drink is built around the Aquavit – Private Reserve from North Shore Distillery. The preferred bitters would be any that have a pronounced chocolate and/or coffee aroma. If you’re out of grapefruit, you could use an orange peel in a pinch — but grapefruit works so unbelievably well with aquavit, you’ll be missing out if you substitute.
Aquavit Old Fashioned
2 oz. aquavit
.25 oz simple syrup (1:1)
swath of grapefruit peel
couple dashes of chocolate / mocha bitters
In a rocks glass, muddle the peel with the syrup & bitters. Add ice, add aquavit, stir, and serve.
-J.
The entity known as -J. would be at home in a place like Carcosa or Night Vale, but instead lives near a far more dreary place -- Wrigley Field. He is the patron Addisonian of whisk(e)y and tabletop games, and is often adorned with a waistcoat & his ridiculous mustache.
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