Choosing a Sugar for My House Old Fashioned

Sugar is largely sugar, but in a 3-ingredient cocktail, every ingredient matters. And not all sugars are created equal for your cocktails

Most of the time, when you decide to start making cocktails at home the first thing you’ll do is buy a bottle of premade simple syrup at the grocery store. And most of the time, you won’t like it. So you’ll search for “best simple syrup” and probably end up making a simple half-and-half of table sugar and water. And you’ll like that better.

If instead you’re like me, you’ll fiddle with “best sugar” to use and discover that, for you, that’s turbinado. And it will be so long since you made that decision that you can’t really remember why. But, that will be the sugar you use when you make simple syrup at home.

But now, it’s time to examine that a bit more closely. After all, not all syrup needs to come from pure granulated sugar. So, I wanted to test an Old Fashioned with 3 different syrups: Turbinado, local honey, and agave. All were made with the same ratio, the same amount of bitters (more on those later), and the same bourbon (Woodinville).

With 1:1 Turbinado Syrup

I know in the past I’ve called for using a “heavy” syrup where you use twice the amount of sugar as water, but I’ve come around to the simplicity of 1:1. You taste a deep, nutty sugar throughout the drink here, but it’s strongest at the front. That nuttiness then highlights the fruit in the bourbon as it gives way. The cherry and plum notes are very accentuated here throughout the drink. As it dilutes, the wood character comes through with more strength but the drink stays balanced.

With 1:1 Arizona Honey Syrup

I liked the idea of bringing Washington and Arizona together in this cocktail, and local honey felt like a good way to do it. I diluted the honey in an equal amount of water to create a syrup light enough to dilute fully in the cocktail. The first thing you’ll notice is that the color here is significantly lighter than most Old Fashioneds you’ll see. The floral notes in the honey come through very strongly at first, and those notes also highlight the lighter wood notes versus the heavier stone fruits. Some fruit, especially some apple, comes through more strongly as the drink dilutes, and the wood takes a back seat as a result.

With Agave Nectar

This is the only syrup that I didn’t make and bought off the shelf - I couldn’t find any “pure” agave strong enough to handle dilution. The sugar is less present at the front of the drink and very strong on the finish, so the cocktail starts with the strong oak character of the bourbon. But then the sugar is so strong on the finish that the fruity notes you expect don’t tend to come through. The balance improves as the drink dilutes, but the bourbon generally feels a bit overpowered here.

Results

Regular ol’ brown sugar crystals win out here. Maybe it’s just because it’s what I’ve used for years, but I thought it best-highlighted the character of the bourbon without getting in the way and changing the profile completely.