Apple Old Fashioned

Simply Happy Foodie

Makes 6 cocktails

Apple Old Fashioned over a large cube with a fan of apple slices, beside cider reduction, cinnamon and orange peel

An autumn Old Fashioned sweetened with apple cider boiled down with cinnamon instead of sugar, batched ahead so it pours straight over the ice.

Ingredients (Apple Cider Reduction)

2 cups apple cider, no sugar added
1 cinnamon stick

Ingredients (Batch)

12 oz Bulleit Bourbon
3 oz apple cider reduction
3 oz cold water
6 dashes Angostura bitters
6 dashes black walnut bitters (Fee Brothers), or a bar spoon of nocino per drink (see Notes)

Ingredients (Garnish)

6 orange peels
18 thin apple slices
a squeeze of lemon

Directions

Apple Cider Reduction

Boil the cider with the cinnamon stick in a wide pan until it measures ½ cup. Take out the cinnamon stick and let it cool. That's enough for 8 drinks.

Batch

Stir the bourbon, reduction, water and both bitters in a pitcher or bottle.
Chill in the freezer at least 1 hour, or the fridge at least 2. It won't freeze.

Serve

Slice the apples thin and squeeze lemon over the slices so they don't brown.
Pour 3 oz over a large clear cube in each rocks glass.
Express an orange peel over each drink, rub it along the rim, and discard it.
Fan three apple slices on the rim of each glass.

Notes

Why the water. Stirring with ice adds about ½ oz of melt to each drink. The batch gets it up front, so it tastes right poured straight from the cold pitcher. Three ounces a glass is a normal Old Fashioned; the big cube makes it look smaller.

One or two at a time. Skip the water and the chilling: stir 2 oz bourbon, ½ oz reduction and a dash of each bitters with ice about 30 seconds, then strain over the cube.

From Simply Happy Foodie's video, made there one at a time with Buffalo Trace and barrel-aged bitters.

The fan in the drink. Cut the slices from one piece of apple without cutting all the way through, so they hold together, then spread them and stand the fan in the glass.

With nocino. A bar spoon of nocino (about ⅛ oz) in each drink puts walnut under the apple without crowding it. It takes the place of the black walnut bitters, and the reduction stays as it is. For more walnut, go to ¼ oz a drink, and then trim the reduction to a scant ½ oz, since the nocino brings its own sugar. Stir one single before committing a batch.

12 oz Bulleit Bourbon
¾ oz nocino (Nux Alpina)
3 oz apple cider reduction
3 oz cold water
6 dashes Angostura bitters

From the bar shelf. A dash of orange bitters brightens it, and more so with the nocino, which takes some brightness away. Save the cinnamon demerara syrup for a reduction that comes out tart: a bar spoon at most, since the reduction is already the sugar. Cherry bitters would fight the apple.

The notebook opens with The Craft, a short field guide to building a drink.