It’s reasonable to associate the Old Fashioned with American whiskey despite its origins as a spirit-agnostic cocktail recipe. Rye and Corn distillate aged in charred oak casks tastes great with a touch of sugar and bitters, brought to a sippable proof with a little water and finished with a twist of citrus essential oil to heighten the olfactory experience. This version works so well, it’s no wonder whiskey has muscled all other spirits out of their Old-fashioned treatment.
It’s also reasonable to want to have your favorite whiskey act as base for your Old Fashioned, but some whiskeys work better for this treatment than others. Thankfully, there’s a simple method for determining the optimal spirit for the experience you want from the Old Fashioned. For instance, do you find yourself consistently asking your bartender to make your Maker’s Mark Old Fashioned less sweet? It might not be their technique. It’s likely that while Maker’s works for your palate when drank neat, the addition of sugar makes this already-quite-sweet bourbon even more sweet.
Let’s start here: there are three main types of bourbon: what we’ll refer to here as “classic” or “high corn”, “high rye” and “wheated.” As defined by an act of Congress in 1964, bourbon must be made in the United States (read: not exclusively in the state of Kentucky), contain at least 51% corn in its mash bill (grain recipe) and be aged in charred, new, American white oak casks. (A quick technical note: mash bills are typically represented as a percentage breakdown of their constituent grains with this construction — Corn/Rye/Malted Barley. So, Jim Beam’s standard recipe that becomes everything from Bookers to White Label to Knob Creek will be seen on bourbon forums as 76/12/10, meaning it contains 76% corn, 12% rye and 10% malted barley.)
“Classic” bourbon typically contains between 75-80% corn, 8-15% rye and finished with a small amount of malted barley to facilitate fermentation in the mashing stage. This ideally results in a balanced bourbon in which the more assertive flavors of rye are balanced by the sheer amount of corn. Some classic bourbon brands include the aforementioned Jim Beam brands, Elijah Craig and Buffalo Trace.
“High rye” bourbons, as the name would imply, contain more rye in them than the norm — somewhere between 15-30% rye. I think of these bourbons as showing distinctly drier and earthier on the palate than their more corn-heavy cousins. They exist at a perfect crossroads between American rye and wheated bourbon — enough sweetness and body from the corn backbone, met with the grassy and spicy character of the rye. This style encompasses your Bulliets, Old Grand Dads and Evan Williamses.
Wheated bourbon simply switches out the rye in a typical whiskey mash bill for wheat. This style has become very popular to the American palate (or perhaps a particular milieu of American drinker) with the rampant cult success of Pappy Van Winkle. Wheat is a softer, sweeter and rounder grain than rye and, when compounded with corn in a bourbon mash bill, makes for a distillate that’s often perceived as distinctly “smooth.”
While we’re here, “smooth” is a bullshit term to describe whiskey. Bad whiskey can be made smooth by throwing enough water at it to hide its imperfections. Remember that 80 proof spirit didn’t come off the still or out of a barrel at that exact proof. If you’re drinking 80 proof spirit, that distiller’s trying to hide something or stretch their profits (likely both).
A close friend of mine is a cheesemonger, and he similarly hates the word “sharp.” Our frustration with these descriptions comes from the fact that these words, despite their frequent use, don’t really signify anything in the contexts they’re usually used to signify meaning. When a guest tells me they like how “smooth” something is, I’m usually left to assign their perception to a cause that they, very understandably, don’t have the vocabulary or technical understanding to describe. This is the task of any server, bartender, sommelier, etc.: to translate their guest’s approximating language to the product that they never could have known they’d like. This is how we humbly “introduce” guests to new experiences and pay our motherfucking bills.
This brings us back to Maker’s Mark, the sweet tea of bourbon. The sweetest of all bourbon brands, in fact. I’m sure by now you’ve pieced together that Maker’s is a wheated bourbon. Indeed, I’d consider Maker’s the standard bearer of the form, still more recognizable to your average drinker than the Weller line of wheaters from Buffalo Trace that perfected the style. I’m always tickled when someone asks me for an Old Fashioned or, god forbid, a Manhattan with Maker’s. It’s just so sweet already, it doesn’t need any more sugar thrown at it. I assume this request must be from a fellow Southerner, similarly raised on Mountain Dew and vegetable casseroles calling for refined sugar.
If that’s your jam, I’m certainly not here to tell you that you’re wrong. That’s not interesting. I’m here to make the case for knowing your called bourbon’s mash bill well enough to know how its corn, rye or wheat will respond to the sugar you’re adding to it. While I find Maker’s and even your Wellers to be too sweet to take the sugar, Elijah Craig and Old Grand Dad are examples of, respectively, classic and high rye bourbons that take sugar and bitters exceptionally well. Instead of compounding sweetness, when you make an Old Fashioned with a rye-heavy bourbon or, hell, a true American Rye Whiskey, you are playing sugar off of the spicy and earthy flavors of the challenging rye grain. As with food, the more parts of the palate a drink hits by balancing disparate flavors, the more unique and satisfying the experience.
