The One Drink and the No-Drink
Brown-Butter Bourbon Old Fashioned Is Worth the Four Hours
Browned butter washed into bourbon, then maple, walnut bitters, and one big cube. The technique is worth doing and it also takes four hours, and both of those are true at the same time.
The parts that change whether this works tonight.
- Makes
- about 8 drinks worth of washed bourbon
- Equipment
- saucepan, jar, freezer, fine strainer, coffee filter, mixing glass
- The method
- 6 ingredients · 10 steps
From this recipe’s own yield and timing lines. Nothing here is a guess.
Serve alongside
Salted pecans and a piece of aged cheddar, or plain shortbread if this lands after dinner. Fat-washed bourbon already coats the mouth, so the food has to be dry and salty or nothing registers past the second sip.
Tools
A small pale-bottomed skillet, so you can actually see the butter turn. A clean jar with a lid. A wide shallow dish or loaf pan for the freeze. Coffee filters and a fine strainer. Mixing glass and bar spoon, or a pint glass and a chopstick. A tray that makes one large cube.
Ingredients · swaps in parentheses
Unsalted butter. Bourbon (rye, for more spice). Maple syrup. Walnut bitters (pecan). Aromatic bitters. An orange for the peel. One large ice cube.
Magic
Freeze the wash flat. Pour the jar into a wide shallow dish before it goes into the freezer and the butter sets as one solid disc you lift out whole, instead of a scattered slick you chase around with a spoon. The filter afterward runs clean rather than clogging twice. Not feeling brave? Freeze it in the jar and spoon the cap off in pieces, working fast and keeping everything cold.
Gotcha
Filtering warm. As the bourbon comes up toward room temperature the last of the fat goes back into solution and walks straight through the coffee filter. You find out at the first sip, which arrives slick and leaves a film on the glass. Filter cold, and refilter cold.
Brown the butter further than feels comfortable. Most people pull it at pale gold, which smells lovely in the pan and disappears entirely once it is diluted into a cup of bourbon and then into a drink. You want the milk solids properly amber and the smell somewhere near toasted hazelnut. Short of burnt, long of cautious.
That single decision is most of the difference between this and an ordinary Old Fashioned. What the wash gives you is not butter flavor exactly, it is weight and a toasted top note, and a texture that makes the whiskey feel rounder without any sugar being added to get it there.
The particulars
Active prep: 15 minutes
Rest and chill: 4 hours
Makes: about 8 drinks worth of washed bourbon
Glassware: rocks glass
Equipment: saucepan, jar, freezer, fine strainer, coffee filter, mixing glass
Ingredients
- 2 ounces brown-butter-washed bourbon
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
- 2 dashes walnut bitters
- 1 dash aromatic bitters
- 1 orange peel
- 1 large ice cube
Wash the bourbon
Where the time goes
- Brown
- 5 minCool
- 1 hrShake
- 3 hrFreeze
- Remove
- Refrigerate
- Brown 2 tablespoons unsalted butter until the milk solids turn amber and smell nutty.
- Cool for 5 minutes, then combine with 1 cup bourbon in a clean jar.
- Shake and rest at room temperature for 1 hour.
- Freeze for at least 3 hours, until the butter forms a solid cap.
- Remove the fat cap and strain the bourbon through a coffee filter.
- Refrigerate and use within two weeks.
Scrape every bit of the browned solids into the jar. They are where the toasted flavor actually lives, and leaving them in the pan is the most common way to end up with a wash that tastes like nothing in particular.
Stir the drink
- Combine washed bourbon, maple syrup, and bitters in a mixing glass with ice.
- Stir for 20 to 25 seconds.
- Strain over a large cube.
- Express the orange peel over the surface and set it at the rim.
Glass and ice
One large cube, and it is not a style preference. A washed spirit carries more texture than a plain one, and small ice waters that texture down inside three minutes. The single cube keeps the drink cold while it slowly opens, which is the whole point of an Old Fashioned served this way.
Chill the rocks glass if you can. Room-temperature glass plus one cube is a drink that arrives right and drifts.
Batching
Combine 16 ounces washed bourbon, 8 teaspoons maple syrup, 16 dashes walnut bitters, and 8 dashes aromatic bitters. Refrigerate for up to one week. Stir individual portions over ice, or add about 4 ounces filtered water to the batch after tasting and pour it very cold straight over the cube.
The pre-diluted version is the one to make when people are arriving. Taste it before you commit to the water, since bourbons differ in proof and 4 ounces is a starting point rather than a rule. Keep the washed bourbon refrigerated and treat it as food, because it is: if it smells off, it is off.
The zero-proof route
This is one where I will not pretend. Fat washing works because ethanol is the solvent carrying the aroma, and a nonalcoholic whiskey alternative does not have enough of it to pull anything meaningful out of butter. Washing one produces cloudy, greasy disappointment.
Go around it instead. Brown the butter and whisk it into the maple syrup while both are warm, so the syrup itself carries the toast. Build 2 ounces strong roasted barley tea, 1 teaspoon brown-butter maple syrup, 2 dashes alcohol-free walnut or aromatic bitters, and stir over the same large cube with the same orange peel. It is a different drink and a genuinely good one, and the roasted grain in the tea does more of the whiskey’s job than a zero-proof whiskey substitute can.
What to eat with it
Nothing delicate. Aged cheddar, a bowl of salted pecans, cured sausage, or dessert if you are having it: pecan pie, anything with brown sugar, a plain shortbread. Chocolate is fine but keep it dark.
Then there is the jar. For two weeks there will be a container of butter-flavored bourbon in the refrigerator, and every single person who opens that door will ask you about it.
Part of Drinks & Zero-Proof.
Where this goes next
The next thing you will need.
Cook alongside
Recipe