Welcome to Tricks Made Easy. Today we're taking a look at the classic and the modern old fashion and what the main differences are between them and how they came about. Something to keep in mind is that prior to 1850, cocktails don't really exist and the reason for that is ice. Ice was incredibly expensive before refrigeration became cheap when you could just make ice. Prior to that you had to cut ice in the polar regions and ship it down or cut it from lakes during the winter time and store it throughout the year. But after you have cheap ice, you can make cocktails. Prior to cheap ice, you'd pretty much have punches where you might have a block of ice in it and you'd have kind of two separate styles of punch. One with either a good spirit where it's just spirit sugar water and bitters, which is the old fashion. And then other punches where maybe the spirit was a bit rough and you'd try and put in whatever sort of citrus you have and maybe a bit more sugar to round it out. So let's get to it. In the classic style we have one cube of Demarera sugar which is just unbleached sugar. We're going to add two dashes or three dashes of angester of bitters depending on how much bitters you like. And really what you're looking for is to have a slightly soaked cube with a little puddle around it. If you're adding much more, the bitters are going to start to become an overriding flavor which isn't wrong if you enjoy that flavor in your cocktail. But I'd recommend doing it in the classic style and then experiment. Next we're going to add half a teaspoon of soda water and we're going to muddle it together. Now we highly recommend that you use seltzer water because it's going to kind of lift the flavors that you're combining. If you use flat water, it just kind of muddies everything. Next we're going to add two ounces of the whiskey of your choice. Next we'll add one large cube of ice. And now in a drink like this, I highly recommend using large format ice if you can. The whole point being that you're using really nice products so you don't want to over dilute it. And because it's going to get slightly diluted throughout the drink, it's actually going to change the flavor throughout. And you're going to be able to enjoy the difference in flavor from sift to sift. But if you have a lot of really small bits of ice, it's just going to get really watery really quickly. Next we're going to add an express peel of lemon and an express peel of orange. Just gives it a faint hint of citrus. And it's a little characteristic that I think really elevates a classical old fashioned. Now we're going to take a look at the modern old fashioned. Now the thing that we have to understand is that the whiskey industry as a whole face a decline in both quality and just overall marketing from a period of about the 60s until the late 90s. Brands that were really awesome started basically churning out rot gut in the Americas. And during this time we also had our palette shift from whiskey to clear spirits. And the flavors were just much sweeter. So to combat this we have the modern old fashioned. So we have a cube of sugar just like in the classic. But now we're introducing a cherry and an orange slice along with our bitters. And just like in our classic we're going to add half a teaspoon of soda water to help integrate everything. Next we're going to muddle it all together. Next we're going to add two ounces of whiskey. It's not very nice. And this might be the moment where you're asking. Well if you have nice large format cubes of ice, why aren't you using that for the modern old fashioned? And the reason is because pretty much in the 70s up until the early 2000s just like with the focus on quality of ingredients had fallen away with bourbon and other cocktails. So too did it fall away with ice. This is when instead of seeing really nice cut ice pre-prohibition and shortly thereafter we go to just the ... ice or hotel ice or pillow ice that became the mainstay in bars until the re-emergence of the craft cocktail movement. So we're just going to give it a quick stir. ... ... cap that off a little more ice. And garnish it with a cherry. Sometimes folks would garnish this with another slice of orange as well but to me that is a tremendous amount of citrus. And there you have the modern and the classic old fashioned. Now I'm a big proponent of drink your drinks however you like. But if you're going to use a really nice whiskey and something that has a muddle cherry and orange, maybe don't. Because this drink was really designed to cover up inferior whiskey. Whereas if you have a great bottle, a classical fashion is going to make it shine all the more bright. Thanks so much for watching. 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