So awhile ago, on an old website of mine, I shared my recipe for this Smoked gin old fashioned. If you think I’m a bad writer now you should of seen me back then!
That post became one of the top and the most visited recipes on the website. It’s so simple. An Old fashioned, with Gin instead of bourbon and a tad bit of smoking involved. Other then the smoking its a super simple mix. And yet people seemed to really like it. I guess the most simple drinks are most of the time, the best drinks.
That being said, it was in dire need of an update. Especially for people who don’t own a smoking gun. So this is my new and improved smoked gin old fashioned recipe.
The First Ever Old Fashioned
When we think about the humble Old Fashioned, we think bourbon. But the thing is, if you take a look at the history of the Old Fashioned which you can do here. You’ll learn about the first mention of the word co*cktail, to which the old fashioned was named after. And nowhere mentions Bourbon or whisky of any type.
If fact, if we try to trace the origins of the first ever written recipe for an Old Fashioned we come across a book published in 1862 by American bartender Jeremiah Thomas, better known as the father of bartending - Jerry Thomas.
Jerry Thomas is regarded as a founding father of bartending and in his 1862 book Jerry Thomas’ Bartenders Guide: How To Mix Drinks, he lists a recipe for an Old Fashioned co*cktail which was as followers;
“Crush a small lump of sugar in a whiskey glass containing a little water, add a lump of ice, two dashes of Angostura bitters, a small piece of lemon peel, one jigger Holland gin”
Notice anything different about that recipe? Like the fact it is a gin co*cktail. It is a gin Old Fashioned.
Gin Old Fashioned
You could very well use that as proof that the Old Fashioned was actually a gin based drink, not whisky.
The truth is that an Old Fashioned was a way to make a drink not a specific recipe, so people would use whichever sugars and spirits they had. But the fact is, one of the most popular options and much regarded as the grand daddy of the Old Fashioned was in fact the Gin Old Fashioned. Also known as - the first ever old fashioned.
Brief overview of the Gin Old fashioned History
Okay, so when I say “the first Old Fashioned co*cktail was made with gin” you should take that with a pinch of salt. Basically, the history is really murky. This is one of the oldest co*cktails to date. Your grand parents grand parents were calling this drink old.
Not only is super old, its super popular, which means everyone wants to know a fella who lays claim to it. But I digress… I could go on and on about this all day so to keep this from being a 5000 word essay, lets just cover a few stand out points.
The Old fashioned was born from a time when people started mixing up co*cktails with multiple ingredients and flair. People would ask for a co*cktail “the old fashioned way” meaning spirit, sugar, water and bitters.
So you see, it wasn’t always a whisky base. You could have an old fashioned co*cktail with any spirit base, from bourbon to brandy.
However, a co*cktail still didn’t have the name “Old Fashioned” this was still just a term to describe a style of co*cktail. Tracking the first mention of a co*cktail in this style with the actual name “Old Fashioned” is difficult.
One of the first known comes from a book released in 1862 by the godfather of bartending Jerry Thomas entitled Jerry Thomas’ Bartenders Guide: How to mix drinks. In that book Jerry has a co*cktail named “Old Fashioned Holland Gin co*cktail” the recipe was as follows "Crush a small lump of sugar in a whiskey glass containing a little water, add a lump of ice, two dashes of Angostura bitters, a small piece of lemon peel, one jigger Holland gin. Mix with small bar spoon. Serve." It’s easy to see how the Old Fashioned we know today came from this exact recipe.
Which gin to use?
London dry gin will be your best bet and easiest/cheapest to get. The drier the better. You want to avoid any over riding flavours other then juniper. Stick to traditional, juniper forward London dry.
Barrel aged gin are another great choice for this. Barrel aged gins are made to be sipped neat and so they work perfectly in smoky hard-hitting co*cktails like these.
The perfect sipper
This co*cktail easily makes for the perfect sipping co*cktail. If you love these hard-hitting classic co*cktails, then this one will work perfectly. It’s as if a Old fashioned and a Negroni had a co*cktail baby. That’s probably the best way I could describe this taste sensation.
Smoked Old Fashioned
Smoking this co*cktail gives it that woody, aged taste that you would get with Bourbon or Rye. So don't let the Gin in this co*cktail fool you into thinking its going to be massively juniper forward. This is an Old Fashioned through and through. So check out the recipe below for the Old Fashioned Gin homage to Jerry Thomas and his 1862 guide on how to mix drinks.
Don't want to buy a co*cktail Smoker?
If you don’t want to commit to buying a smoking gun just yet, well, there are other ways around this. The best substitute would be to smoke the glass instead of smoking the co*cktail.
How to do this? Grab yourself a blowtorch, I know, I know. You may not have a smoking gun or a blowtorch but not to worry, you could use the flame on a gas oven, or a powerful lighter. Just be careful, fire is dangerous you know.
Anyway… lay your oak chips on a surface you don’t mind being scorched. Such as a chopping board or piece of slate. Then blowtorch the life out of the wood chips till they start smoking, grab your glass, put it upside down over the chips and leave it to infuse whilst you mix up your co*cktail.
By the time your co*cktail is ready the glass will be fully infused with the aroma of smoke, which carries over into the taste of the co*cktail just as well as the smoking gun. Just without the flair of firing up a gun.
