 Welcome to Drinks Made Easy. Today we're taking a look at the classic and the modern old fashioned 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 would 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 fashioned and then other punches where maybe the spirit was a bit rough and you would try and put in whatever sort of citruses 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 Demerara sugar which is just unbleached sugar. We're going to add two dashes or three dashes of Angostura 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 would 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 sip to sip 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 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 fashion. Now we're going to take a look at the modern old fashion. 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 rotgut in the Americas and during this time we also had our palate shift from whiskey to clear spirits and the flavors were just much sweeter so to combat this we have the modern old fashion. 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 topped with ice 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 fashion 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 reemergence of the craft cocktail movement just going to give it a quick stir kept 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 in the classic old fashion 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 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 classic old fashion is going to make it shine all the more bright thanks so much for watching please be sure to like subscribe and click on the bell icon so you'll be notified anytime we release a new video and if anything in this was unclear or you want to know more information about the classic versus modern old fashion please be sure to leave a comment below