I once saw a blog post about a guy with a card with his preferred recipe for the Manhattan that required it to be stirred and included a bold "Don't Shake My G D Manhattan"
Perhaps all you need to do now is include the URL to Martin's site.
Martin,I'd be VERY happy to translate that to portuguese.Well done!
I was also a bit surprised at ice being optional, but if made well, I'm sure it would be just fine. It's surprising how such a simple drink can cause so much confusion.
I made the mistake of ordering one from a table in a bar here in San Francisco during our cocktail week. The server came back to the table three times to clarify what I meant to make sure they made it correctly. It was at one of our better bars in town and I know that whichever way they made it, it would have been done well, but I'm guessing they were feeling a lot of pressure from out-of-town cocktail people. And I was even more than willing to change my order, but as a last chance I said "just a Whiskey Cocktail" and suddenly everything was fine.
Perhaps "Old-Fashioned" is just too nebulous of a name nowadays? Maybe we could start calling it the "Old-Old-Fashioned"? The Old-Fashioned-Old-Fashioned?
On one of the last pages of my copy of Jacques Straub's "Drinks" (a 1948 print), someone added a recipe for a quart of Old Fashioned mix:
1/3 Cherry juice
2/3 Water
1 oz bitters
That just looks bad. Is / was it a common thing in the US, to have OF mixes ready?
Bottoms Up Havana Cocteles Ginger
jmrtnko: I was also a bit surprised at ice being optional
I was also a bit surprised at ice being optional
Why the surprise? After all the Old Fashioned does hark back to a time before ice became the norm...
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Evo-lution: Why the surprise? After all the Old Fashioned does hark back to a time before ice became the norm...
Quite, quite true. With the old spirit, sugar, water, bitters mixture, I suppose I had never quite fully considered the nature of the water until that point. Today, water is added largely through melt, and relatively few drinks do not see ice. In the early 19th c. it would have been the reverse, and the water they mention is probably largely that used to melt the sugar.
I certainly do prefer our more easily refrigerated times, but I'll have to try one warm some time.