Aug 14: How to Make a Brandy Old Fashioned, Wisconsin Style

(Do you see a theme with my daily blogging lately? Lots of 'how to' posts. Hope you don't mind)

I never really cared for mixed drinks because college most likely ruined them all for me. I can still smell the cheap, rail rum whenever someone talks about a 'Rum and Diet' and it makes me want to gag. And really, all hard alcohol usually makes me gaggy because I scorched my taste buds back in the day with the crappy, gut-rot stuff out there. And therefore, I have always stuck to beer and wine for my ultra-sophisticated self. Because somehow my taste buds were not ruined from beer and wine experiences in college. Go figure.

Until my father-in-law introduced me to a Brandy Old Fashioned. My eyes have been opened to the glory of a mixed drink again, ladies. Erin has always raved about these and I never thought I was tough enough to try one until Tony changed my mind;) I mentioned this drink in a DiTL post earlier this year and I will re-use those same pictures because I'm lazy. But the interesting thing about this drink is a standard Old Fashioned is made with whiskey, but in Wisconsin we are known to make ours with Brandy. And my father-in-law claims that WI is the state who consumes the most Brandy out of everyone in the USA, so I guess people really dig their B.O.F.'s. ;) I can understand why, too. 

I pride myself on getting really good at making these drinks, and so I should probably share my 'recipe' in case you want to take a stab at it, too. Trust me when I say that I know it sounds gross and very 'old man-ish' but it's awesome. And that's coming from someone who doesn't love hard alcohol. 

Ingredients:

sugar

bitters

orange slice

maraschino cherry with juice

Brandy (we like Korbel)

soda--we like 50/50 or Squirt. 

Also, I should note that there are two kinds of Brandy Old Fashioneds: a sweet, or a sour. I like the sweet much, much better. The sour has lemon/lime concentrate instead of the soda and I have to have carbonation in my mixed drink, so I prefer the sweet version. 

We bought a muddler from Crate and Barrel kind of like this one, which is fine but we probably could have just used a wooden block from Truman's collection to get the same effect. I do like to muddle it, though, instead of just smashing stuff together with a spoon. 

Let's get to it:

1. Put a teaspoon of sugar in the bottom of the glass

2. Bitters: we like a lot of them, so we do about 6-7 shakes. And we like the Angostura Aromatic Bitters brand.

3. Slice of orange

4. A cherry plus a little bit of the juice

5. Then it's time to muddle! Get wild here. It's fun.

6. Ice: Nate is very specific with needing 4 cubes here. Totally overdone.

7. Brandy. This is where you can play around with how much booze you want in your drink. I don't measure anymore and depending on the day, I 'accidentally' make ours a little stronger than expected. ;) But I think the standard is about 1 oz or something, about a shot of Brandy.

8. Fill the rest with your soda. Again, I like 50/50 the best but Squirt works, too. We use canned soda and if we are making two drinks, it might empty the can completely depending on the amount of alcohol we use.

9. Ta Da!!! Ahhhhh. I hope you enjoy as much as we do! These aren't the fastest to make with all of those ingredients (cracking open a bottle of beer is much more efficient) but they are pretty yummy for a special occasion. Or a Wednesday night after the kids go down.