Beer Old Fashioned
Apparently it’s my 400th post! Thanks for sticking with me this far. I’m having a blast learning and sharing and of course, eating and drinking.
I don’t think I ever really stopped to consider just how closely related are beer and whiskey. Their early lives are remarkably similar, starting with a warm soup comprised of the sugars released from some grain. This mix (+ hops for beer) goes on to be fermented— if it’s beer, that’s about it; if it’s whiskey, it goes on to distillation (in fact, it’s sometimes called “distiller’s brew” pre-distillation). Okay so what if you added hops to the mix as if you were making beer, but then distill it?
This is how “beer whiskey” is made. It’s a thing! And if you’re like me and appreciate both beer/hops and whiskey, then it’s a *really* good thing. What better way to start off Old Fashioned Week (yes that’s also a thing) than with this beer-centric OF? My approach here (as is often the goal with an OF) was to accentuate the best parts of the whiskey. To that end I leaned into the hops and used a reduced IPA syrup. For the bitters, I used grapefruit because they pair ridiculously well with hops. The result is amazing— it’s honestly just a slightly sweeter, slightly hoppier version of the spirit itself. It’s absolutely delicious.
