#LastDrinkOfTheWeek – Gin Old Fashioned for World Gin Day

Despite my having a small pile of limes in the fridge and a bottle of bourbon staring at me from my booze cupboard, I decided that I couldn’t let the third year of World Gin Day pass me by without mentioning it here. I may have spent most of World Gin Day itself, June 15th for 2013, with a Dodd’s Gin and tonic in my hand (from The London Distillery Company, who I will one day write about more fully on the blog) but Sunday is my evening for experimentation, so a Gin Old Fashioned it is.

I am a fan of the Old Fashioned, as I have mentioned on the blog before, having been introduced to the world of cocktails through it. For years it has been my preferred way of drinking a variety of aged spirits (especially bourbon, rum and tequila; as well as rye whiskey in a Sazerac, which is essentially a little twist on the idea) but so far I’ve not really tried it with a white spirit.

The Old Fashioned itself is simple enough that a ‘recipe’ deserves the scare quotes – sugar, bitters, spirit, ice, stir, drink. However, While Angostura bitters is generally a good all purpose bitters for dark spirits I suspect that it may not be quite what I’m looking for when using gin.

I first started thinking of using an orange bitters, but my limited gin collection doesn’t really contain anything with a big orange citrus hit to match it. I then considered Tamborine Mountain bitters, with its spicy character a match for the more earthy, spicy flavours in many gins, but it’s still sunny outside and I’m pretending that we have a ‘summer’ in the UK, so I wanted something a bit fresher.

I went for my fallback gin and tonic additive – ‘Dr’ Adam Elmegirab’s Dandelion and Burdock bitters.

I’m not a fan of actual D&B, having filed it away in the same compartment of my mind as Root Beer (the ‘tastes of chemicals and death’ cupboard), but the bitters are quite different. They have a sweet liquorice and anis note in amongst the bitterness, and don’t seem to add a spicy heaviness to drinks, as many of the other bitters in my cupboard do, making it perfect for my plans.

These are my favourite glasses. Heavy and great for both drinking out of and use in hand-to-hand combat

I had some sugar syrup to use up, so decided to go for 1/2 a measure of 1:1 syrup (about 1/2 a sugar cube, I think), 2 good dashes of bitters and 75ml of Plymouth gin. Stirred with ice, strained over fresh ice and served ungarnished, as I didn’t have anything appropriate to top it with. Sweet, citrusy and with a nice liquoricey tang.

Thoughts, suggestions and improvements gratefully received.

Now to do magic with anchovies and pasta. One of the easiest magic tricks.