Smoked Old Fashioned Recipe
Smoked Old Fashioned Ingredients
2 oz / 60 ml Bourbon, 100 proof or higher (I used Bulleit Barrel Strength)
1 barspoon / .25 oz / 7 ml Demerara simple syrup
2 to 3 dashes Angostura bitters (or a blend of Angostura and barrel-aged bitters)
Lemon or orange peel
A pinch of wood chips for the cocktail smoker (cherry or maple)
How to make a Smoked Old Fashioned
Add the demerara syrup and bitters to a mixing glass, then the bourbon. Fill with ice and stir 20 to 25 seconds, until the outside of the glass frosts.
Strain over one large clear ice sphere or cube in a rocks glass. Express the peel over the drink and drop it in.
Smoke it, two ways. With a lid-style smoker or a skull smoker: set it on the glass, add a pinch of chips, torch them until they catch and smolder, and let the glass fill. Lift the smoker off when smoke starts leaking out of the top, about 30 seconds. With a smoking gun: fill the chamber with chips, cover the glass, run the hose under the cover, light the chips and fill the glass with smoke before or after the pour. Either way, wait 20 or 30 seconds before the first sip so the smoke has time to settle on the drink.
Bourbon: this is one drink where proof matters. The smoke, the sugar and the ice all push the whiskey down, so an 80 proof bottle disappears. Bulleit Barrel Strength, Old Grand-Dad 114, Wild Turkey 101 or any bottled-in-bond bourbon holds up. Rye works too.
Bitters: Angostura alone is fine. Doc's blend is Angostura with Fee Brothers barrel-aged bitters, and the barrel notes do match the smoke.
Wood: cherry is the easiest, maple is sweeter, hickory gets bacon-y fast. Skip mesquite. Torches ship empty because butane can't go through the mail, so grab a can locally.
Peel: I usually drop an orange peel in an old fashioned. Lemon is what Old Fashioned Ways uses, and with the smoke it's brighter. Try both.
A smoked old fashioned is the regular drink with one extra step: you fill the glass with wood smoke before the pour, or set a smoker on top after it. The drink underneath doesn't change. Two ounces of bourbon, a barspoon of demerara syrup, a couple dashes of bitters, stirred and served over one big piece of ice. The smoke sits on the surface and in the glass, so the first few sips taste like a campfire and the rest tastes like an old fashioned. That's the right balance. If every sip tastes like smoke, you used too much.
This version came out of a glass I won from Doc Martinez at Old Fashioned Ways: a BenShot rocks glass with a bullet in the side, plus a sample of Bulleit Barrel Strength and his bitters blend. At 120 proof the Bulleit doesn't drink hot once it's stirred and sitting on ice, and the barrel-aged bitters pick up the smoke. I smoked it with cherry wood through a smoking gun. The skull smoker from my Halloween Short does the same job with a torch and a pinch of chips, and so does a $20 lid kit.
Which smoker to buy is its own question. I tested the ones worth owning, from a $16 skull to a $300 bubble gun, in the cocktail smoker kits guide.
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