The Apple Cider Old Fashioned Challenge – Can This New Whiskey Work?

In this video, I’m whiskey hunting in Sarasota, Florida to find a unique whiskey that inspires me to create a brand-new Old Fashioned. After blowing my budget and picking up more than a few interesting bottles, I stumble across a single malt whiskey finished in apple cider casks that becomes the base for this new cocktail.

I’m paring this cocktail with a green apple tincture and a pear simple syrup to create something that toes the line between crisp barreled apple cider and the traditional single malt flavor profile all whilst sticking to standard Old Fashioned ratios.

If you’re into creative cocktails, whiskey experiments, or just want a new take on the Old Fashioned, this video is a good starting place. Check out the rest of my segment on Old Fashioned cocktails for even more new ideas!

Cocktails:
Orchard and Smoke
-2oz VDC Apple Cider Cask Whiskey
-.375oz-.5oz Pear Simple Syrup
-3 dashes Green Apple Tincture
-Applewood Smoked

0:00 Intro
1:32 Dive Wine and Spirits
3:25 Holiday Liquors
6:14 Total Wine
8:31 Choosing a Whiskey
10:02 Whiskey Review
11:33 Cocktail Creation
15:19 Cocktail Review

#oldfashioned #applecider #mixology #whiskey #drinkrecipes

Welcome to an Odyssey in Mixology and to the final part of my segment on old fashions. Today I’m going whiskey hunting to find something new and interesting that I can then make a brand new old-fashioned cocktail from. Now, if you haven’t liked and subscribed, then please do so. But above all else, enjoy. So, I’m doing the first half of this video in Sarasota, Florida. Let’s put the whole Florida bourbon scene into perspective. Seeing any highly allocated bottle sitting on the shelves near MSRP is almost an impossibility. Even the two common allocations like Eagle Rare and Buffalo Trace is either impossible to find at a decent price or only just now starting to become more common in some of the bigger box stores. Now, that being said, there’s a lot of variety in Florida stores, and as long as you’re not hunting for a specific allocation, there’s plenty of opportunity to find less common bottles at good prices. Now, with whatever bottle I find being for an old fashioned this video, I’d like to end up with a whiskey, but preferably one that’s interesting and finished or just a great deal on something a bit more special. So, if you want to skip to the start of the cocktail, then the timestamp is below. But the next few minutes will be me exploring some of the cooler and more interesting liquor stores in Sarasota. The first store on my bottle hunt is Dive Wine and Spirits. The coolest feature about this store is that behind this wall is a cocktail bar, and it’s very good and absolutely worth checking out if you’re ever in the area. Anyways, the first bottle to catch my eye is this High West bourbon aged in Barbados rum barrels. It’s an interesting choice, but maybe a little bit tame for what I’m looking for in this video. There’s a cool selection here, and I think Dive might have the largest selection of Starlight bottles that I’ve ever seen. This bottle just drew me in because of the cool label, but it’s kind of an interesting one, even if I’m not going to use it for this video. Walking down the other aisles, I found a surprisingly large Mscow selection, including a good number of Belmagway bottles and a few bottles of Real Monero Largo, which is one of my latest favorites. It’s just a little expensive for this trip though, and I’m looking for more unique bottles for both the bar and this video. The first big score of this video is this bottle of Kasa Satsuma gin, and it’s very rare to find these in Florida. Moving on to the laores, there’s a few different types of Tempest Fugat spirits, which are all generally fantastic. I also found this interesting bottle of bitter pomegranate laor, which I’ve never heard of. It’s one of those things that I have to try before buying, though, because generally pomegranate is a bit of a miss on a flavor scale for me. This next bottle is exactly what I’m looking for when I go to these kinds of liquor stores. This is a balsamic herbal leor made from Mediterranean ingredients, but inspired by some of the French herbal leors like chartreuse. To me, it’s an easy justification for the $56 price tag, and it’s something that I’m going to really enjoy trying later on. Dive Wine and Spirits was a great store with fair prices, a unique selection, and a cocktail bar that I really enjoyed. I didn’t buy any whiskey, so that doesn’t help me for the old-fashioned, but I did buy these local gin bers offscreen, so my total came to $13. The next store, Holiday Lors, is a Reddit recommendation. Immediately after walking in, you can tell this is a cool shop. The Buffalo Trace is priced like I’d expect, but they have a Blue Weber Agave Vodka on clearance for $12.99. This is something I tried at a tequila festival and loved, so it’s an easy pickup for the bar. In the corner, there’s also a 400 KO tasting pack for $19. Having never tried the Tobala or the quiche varieties, it’s another instant buy for the bar. I also picked up the 750ml bottle of agave nectar. I tend to go through agave nectar faster than simple syrup. So a quality brand like Senor Muay in this bottle size is always a good find. This store has a great selection of foreign bottles including many Brazilian kashas and a brand of Serbian spirits and loras that I’ve only ever seen once before. I’ll add some to the bar soon, but unfortunately not in this trip. The main Laoris also had some bottles that I was unfamiliar with, like this Peruvian macarroot laour, but it’s again one of those things that I’d like to try first before buying. I also found some of my favorite bottles, including Churro, the King’s Ginger, Sue, St. George’s Pear, Nixa, Munions, Papa, and Rocky’s. Prices were all normal, but there were a few deals mixed in like that for five farms Irish cream for $20 instead of its normal 30. I’ve tried Coke’s entry-level Espedine MScow before, and it was fine for a budget bottle, but to see their Tobala mscal at this price is insane. It’s one of the best deals in the store and an instant buy. This High West double rye whiskey is also a good deal, but not something that I want to use as a base of my old fashion. The highly allocated bottles like Blandon’s, Stag, and Eh Taylor are all at secondary prices, but they’re not the worst that I’ve seen, even if the Russell 15 is definitely up there. Again, this is fairly average for the area, and the really good deals on other bottles more than makes up for it in my opinion. The final shelf in the store is also the most impressive. We picked up a Kira 15-year Japanese whiskey, this cider cask finished single malt, and a hot honey rye for a total of $55. The whole trip would have been worth it in this shelf alone. What can I say about Holiday Liquor? Well, this is one of my favorite hodgepodge stores of all time. It has an extremely diverse selection that I would think would be constantly changing and insane deals on weird bottles that I didn’t know I wanted. I picked up a lot of stuff, including a flavored rye whiskey that I’d seen elsewhere for three times the price, a 15-year multi-finished Japanese whiskey, and a craft single malt aged and apple cider casks. Now, this is the kind of interesting that I was hoping to find for this video. Now, these and the other bottles I got came out to $144. which is just an incredible deal for the amount that I got. Moving on to the big chains, Total Wine and More is up next. Starting the whiskey aisle, this single malt from Pandaran stood out to me. I’d normally pass on something like this because the box doesn’t tell me anything about its production, but it’s a single barrel at 120 proof with tasting notes that I like the sound of. For the sale price, I’ll take a chance, but it’s definitely not for an old-fashioned. This on the other hand could make for a really interesting cocktail. Javar is an Ecuadorian agave spirit, but this one is aged in red wine barrels. It’s not tequila or messcal, but it is related to them. I want it, but unfortunately not in this trip. This last bottle is one that I’ve been wanting for a while. Casterellian vodka is distilled from Greek olives, and you really can taste it. It’s a sipping vodka with hints of naturally occurring olive brine. I tried it a few months ago and whilst it’s not game-changing, it’s hung out in the back of my mind when I’m looking for a clean and uncomplicated spirit. Total Wine can be a bit hit or miss, but ultimately it brings a huge selection to people’s backyards. And I like how different locations will add local bottles. It just makes less of a copy and paste chain. Now, for whisies, I picked up the 5.1 limited edition Pandaren Single Barrel Select Cask Strength Bottle. It’s not really something that I needed, but I felt that it was a good deal, and surprisingly, I don’t have too many non-heated single malts. Now, this and the Castellian vodka came out to $133. Finally, on my way out of town, I went buy a ABC liquor and ended up purchasing the newest Compass Box release for $55. The Crimson Casks is an intense red wine and cherry finished blended scotch that replaces the story of the Spaniard release that I really liked. Now, I didn’t show it, but I also went to three other local stores and whilst I had fun, I didn’t really find anything that stood out to me more than what I already bought. So, all in all, this is my haul for the day. And it also means that I spent a grand total of $435. Now, this is a bit of a bar refresh for me. So, usually on these trips, my budget is quite a bit lower. At some point, I’ll do a tasting video trying all of these, as well as a few other bottles I’d recently bought, but not on this trip. For now, I’m going to jump right into choosing a bottle for this brand new old-fashioned cocktail. Filtering down to just the whisies, I’m left with this. And right off the bat, the Hot Honey Rye is a fun bottle, despite the negative association with flavored whisies. I actually quite like this one a lot, but it makes my job a little bit too easy because this by itself on ice is pretty much a completed cocktail, just very high proof. On the opposite side, the Kajiraa 15 is a really nice whiskey, but it’s a shame to waste that on an old-fashioned. Even if, full disclosure, I was trying to get a green tea and shiso leaf cocktail to work. It’s a really good starting point for a drink, but by no means does it need a 15-year fancy Japanese whiskey to make it good. I’ll probably try it again with Toki or days. Now, the Pandarin is too high proof, and frankly, it’s just not interesting enough to be anything more than a base. I do like it. It has lighter single malt notes, and for what it is, I’m very happy I bought it. But that leaves me with these two bottles, which are arguably the most interesting. For the front runners, a wine old-fashioned actually sounds like a really cool challenge to me. I was thinking about everything from custom Bordeaux bitters to a wine foam. So, that’s probably in the future. But, for this video, as you might have seen from the title, I’m going to end up making a apple cider old-fashioned that exaggerates the subtly tangy and crisp apple and oak notes that come forward in this surprisingly good bottle of whiskey. This is an American single malt whiskey that’s distilled, aged, and bottled by Virginia Distillery Company. They’ve aged it in XBourbon barrels before splitting it and aging it again in a combination of French Cavados Casks, layered apple brandy barrels, and apple cider barrels from Potter’s Craft Cider. These then get recombined, filtered, and bottled. It’s not age stated, but I would guess it’s somewhere between 2 and 4 years. I mean, by itself, this makes for a light single malt with the expected oak flavor, but frankly, a little bit more bite than I would prefer. That being said, it has notes of pear, bright apples, and other fruit like loquats or hints of orange. I mean, there’s an almost imperceptible tanginess to it. The wood lightness goes really well with the bright green fruit notes, and it creates an obvious apple cider finish. The apple cider isn’t forward enough to detract from the single malt or or strong enough to come off as a flavored whiskey. So, I actually really like how they’ve chosen and balanced all of the different barrel impacts. I mean, it does help that I really like apple cider, so I am a little bit biased, but I’m still very surprised by how much I like this given the bites that it has. Single malts have more of a simple and dusty flavor because they lack the red fruits that are common in bourbon. Now, this is due to them being distilled from 100% malted barley, hence the name single malt. So to keep this single malt old-fashioned refreshing when adding my bitters and sweeteners, I need to offset that dustiness with something brighter. So instead of bitters, I’m going to make a green apple tinure to add some green fruit tartness to the flavor. Now tinctures are like flavor extracts without the bitter component. And luckily, they’re really easy to make. Using a small scale, I’m going to measure out 75 g of a high proof neutral grain spirit, followed by the peel from an entire Granny Smith apple and two mint leaves. The mint leaves just adds a little bit of extra complexity to the apple. Now, I’m going to let this sit for 3 days, but after that, I’m actually going to replace the used apple peel with a new one. This compounds the apple flavor, and I’m going to let that sit for another 3 days before filtering. The last ingredient is 10 g of apple cider vinegar to create that fermented apple note in most fresh apple cers. Now, you’d think that a green apple tinure would be really hard to use in other cocktails, but it actually goes with a lot of different things. On the easier side, it can be added into margaritas to give that little extra pop of green fruit flavor. On the more complicated side, it can go really well with other kiki or mai style drinks. Now, regardless, I’m going to pair that green apple tinure with a pear-based simple syrup. Green pear and green apple are similar, but using both adds some extra depth to this cocktail without really being perceptible as a different fruit flavor. Now, that depth is also common in apple cers because after apple, pear is the most common base for a cider to be made from. Pear simple syrup can be made by either blending or chopping fresh pear and mixing it with water and sugar. To start, I’m going to bring 1 and 1/2 cups of water to an almost boil and then add my 1 cup of pear slices. I’m going to let this sit at heat for about 5 minutes and the evaporation from this is why I add some extra water. Over this time, the pear will start to become soft and mashing it will release some more juice. The heat gets dropped to low and I’m going to add 1 cup of cane sugar to hopefully make a final syrup with around a 1:1 ratio of sugar to water. I’m going to again let this sit for about 5 minutes before cutting the heat and letting the syrup cool down. It needs to be strained and lightly filtered before bottling, but this will last a couple weeks at minimum. Now, blending is the more efficient way to do this, but chopping still works fine. We’ll say if you blend the pear, I’d skip the extra water and pear softening step in the beginning. The garnish for this drink could be an apple skin or a cinnamon stick or even nutmeg, but I’m actually just going to smoke it with apple wood and then use this brass tray to leave a really interesting design in the ice cube. Now, smoking it brings back some of the darker wood flavors that I’ve been minimizing with the other lighter fruit ingredients. So, the smoke is fleeting, but there’s enough residual applewood smoke kind of lingering in the glass to fill the aroma with it. It’s a very invasive smell, like with most smoked drinks, but I still really like it. And there is enough of the whiskey kind of peeking out in the background. It’s really good. And I’m going to call this drink the Orchard and Smoke for obvious reasons. Now, whiskey old-fashions are generally dark in both color and flavor, but this leans into the bright flavors of barreled apple cider. Even the color itself is much more akin to watered down apple juice than a dark whiskey. Part of the apple cider is just the pear and the apple, but the inclusion of the vinegar in the tincture is important in creating that fermented flavor. I mean, as a whole, this is an extremely smooth drink flavored to a point where it’s obviously apple cider, but paired wonderfully with a single malt. This kind of reduces the bite from the single malt whilst enhancing all of the flavors. Now, the wood flavor, not from the smoke, is still there. There is some subtle astringency and overall it’s really enjoyable because I’m adding the primary apple cider flavors that you’re tasting in this drink. You could argue that you don’t need the apple cider finish whiskey to get the same cocktail. And that’s kind of true. I made a version of this drink with both Compass Box’s Pete Monster and a Johnny Walker black label. The Pete Monster version was good, but I had to drop the applewood smoke and the black label was just okay. the flavors conflicted a bit more than the Peep Monster version and way more than the original version. Now, when using this bottle, I think everything just goes together a bit better because the whiskey is already tailored to that flavor profile. All in all, you don’t need this bottle to make a version of the Orchard and Smoke that’s enjoyable. But if you do come across it and make this drink, it will be better because of it. The Orchard and Smoke is a refreshing old-fashioned that toes the line between barreled apple cider and a new world single malt forward cocktail. It’s a unique combination that goes far beyond other apple whiskey cocktails that make use of Crown Royale or whiskey and store-bought apple juice. Making custom ingredients for a single cocktail isn’t always worth it, but this time it is. As with a lot of my cocktails, this one starts simple, but it has underlying depth to all of the flavors. It’s not my favorite old-fashioned, but I will drink this regularly and surprisingly more often than most of its bourbon counterparts. That’s it for my video on making a new and creative old-fashioned from a bottle I found whilst whiskey hunting. In the next video, I’m going to do a full review and make some cocktails with this Kota Panden Leor. Now, if you like the video, then please like and subscribe. And as always, thank you so much for watching. Cheers.