Joaquín Simó's Old-Fashioned Recipe: 3-Bitters Perfection

Joaquín Simó's Old-Fashioned might be the single best argument that a three-ingredient drink still has room to improve. One bourbon. One syrup. Three bitters. That's the whole trick — and it took a Tales of the Cocktail Bartender of the Year to figure out the ratios.

Here's the thing. Most home bartenders learn the Old-Fashioned from a laminated menu or a well-meaning uncle, muddled cherry and all. This version strips it back and then rebuilds it with rich demerara syrup and a trio of bitters that make each sip land in layers.

If you already know your way around the classic cocktails every home bartender should know, consider this your graduate course. You'll have it memorised by the weekend.

Joaquín Simó is one of the most decorated bartenders of the modern craft cocktail era. He cut his teeth at New York's legendary Death & Co before opening Pouring Ribbons in Alphabet City in 2012 — the same year Tales of the Cocktail named him American Bartender of the Year.

Why does that matter for your home bar? Because Simó built his reputation on precision. Not flashy garnishes. Not smoke domes. Just relentlessly dialled-in specs on drinks people think they already know.

The Old-Fashioned itself goes back much further, of course. The 'whiskey cocktail' — spirit, sugar, bitters, water — was already being called 'old-fashioned' by the 1880s, when drinkers pushed back against the fussy new liqueur-heavy drinks of the day. Sound familiar? Every generation has its cocktail purists.

Simó's take honours that 140-year-old formula while quietly upgrading every component. The sugar cube becomes rich demerara syrup. The single bottle of Angostura becomes three complementary bitters. The bourbon gets a proof bump so it can stand up to ice.

Let's be honest: plenty of 'signature' Old-Fashioneds are just excuses to charge $18. This one earned its reputation the hard way — in blind tastings against dozens of rival recipes, where balance wins and gimmicks lose.

If you're still building whiskey confidence, start with our guide to the best whiskey cocktails for beginners and circle back. This recipe rewards a palate that knows what a baseline Old-Fashioned tastes like, because the upgrades genuinely jump out at you.

Three decisions separate Joaquín Simó's Old-Fashioned from the one at your local pub. Each is small. Together, they're transformative.

First: the proof. This recipe wants a bourbon around 100 proof (50% ABV). Why? Dilution. A properly stirred Old-Fashioned picks up roughly 20% water, dropping the finished drink to around 32% ABV. Start with a gentle 80-proof bottle and you end up with whiskey-flavoured water. Start at 100 proof and you land exactly where the drink should live — warm, structured, sippable.

Second: rich demerara syrup. Standard simple syrup is white sugar and water at 1:1. This build uses demerara sugar at 2:1 — double strength, half the water. Demerara is a partially refined cane sugar with natural molasses left in, so you get toffee, caramel and a faint smokiness that white sugar simply cannot deliver. And because the syrup is concentrated, one teaspoon sweetens without thinning.

Third: the bitters trio. Angostura handles the classic baking-spice backbone. Orange bitters echo and amplify the citrus oils from the garnish. Chocolate mole bitters — a Bittermens bottling Simó helped make famous during his Death & Co years — add cacao, cinnamon and a savoury depth that makes people ask what your secret is.

No muddled orange wheel. No neon cherry drowned at the bottom of the glass. Those additions crept in during the mid-20th century and stuck around like the questionable drinks in our look back at 90s drinks. This recipe politely shows them the door.

Here's your full shopping list, with measurements in both US and UK systems. The beauty of this drink is that everything except the bitters is probably already in your kitchen.

• 2 oz (60 ml) bourbon, 100 proof — Wild Turkey 101 (50.5% ABV, ~$27/£38) or Old Grand-Dad Bonded (~$25) are ideal. Elijah Craig Small Batch (47% ABV, ~$30/£35) works if you like it softer.
• 1 tsp (5 ml) rich demerara syrup — 2 parts demerara sugar to 1 part water, gently heated until dissolved.
• 2 dashes Angostura aromatic bitters — the non-negotiable backbone (~$10/£8 a bottle that lasts years).
• 1 dash orange bitters — Regans' Orange Bitters No. 6 or Angostura Orange.
• 1 dash chocolate mole bitters — Bittermens Xocolatl Mole (~$14/£15).
• 1 large orange twist — a strip roughly 2 in (5 cm) long, cut with a Y-peeler.
• 1 large ice cube — ideally a 2-inch (5 cm) clear cube.

A quick word on the bourbon. In the US, 'bottled-in-bond' is a legal designation regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) — it guarantees 100 proof, a single distilling season and at least four years in oak. That label is basically a cheat code for Old-Fashioned bourbon.

UK readers: bonded bourbons are increasingly easy to find at Master of Malt and The Whisky Exchange, and Wild Turkey 101 sits on most supermarket shelves. No excuses.

Total cost per drink once you own the bottles? Under $3 (£2.40). Compare that to £14 in a London hotel bar.

Five minutes, start to finish. The whole method is about control — of temperature, of dilution, of oils. Follow the order exactly the first time, then make it yours.

1. Chill your glass. Park a rocks glass in the freezer, or fill it with ice water while you build. A warm glass undoes your careful stirring in about ninety seconds.
2. Build in a mixing glass. Add 1 tsp (5 ml) rich demerara syrup, 2 dashes Angostura, 1 dash orange bitters and 1 dash chocolate mole bitters. Swirl to combine — syrup and bitters should marry before the whiskey arrives.
3. Add the bourbon. Pour in 2 oz (60 ml) of your 100-proof bourbon.
4. Add ice and stir. Fill the mixing glass two-thirds with cold, solid cubes. Stir smoothly for about 30 seconds — around 40 to 50 rotations. You're chasing a temperature of 28–32°F (-2 to 0°C) and roughly 20% dilution.
5. Strain over fresh ice. Empty your chilled rocks glass, drop in one large 2-inch (5 cm) cube, and strain the drink over it. Fresh ice melts slower than the ice you stirred with.
6. Express the orange twist. Hold the peel skin-side down over the surface and give it a sharp pinch — you'll see a fine mist of oils hit the drink. Wipe the peel around the rim, then drop it in.

That's it. No muddler, no shaker, no soda water. If you enjoy this build-and-stir rhythm, the same skills carry straight over to a Manhattan or the stirred drinks in our classic cocktail roundup.

In my experience, the gap between a good Old-Fashioned and a great one comes down to four details nobody prints on recipe cards.

Make your syrup properly. After testing both methods, cold-dissolved demerara syrup beats boiled every time — boiling can push it toward bitterness and changes the texture. Combine 200 g (7 oz) demerara sugar with 100 ml (3.5 oz) warm water in a jar and shake periodically until clear. It keeps a month in the fridge.

Your ice is an ingredient. Cloudy freezer cubes are full of trapped air and melt fast. I use a £10 ($12) directional-freezing tray, and the difference is genuinely dramatic — a clear 2-inch cube keeps the last sip nearly as cold and strong as the first, even 20 minutes in.

Count your dashes honestly. A 'dash' from a full bottle of Angostura is about 0.9 ml; from a nearly empty one, half that. When a drink tastes flat, the fix is almost always one more dash of bitters, not more syrup.

Taste before you strain. Dip a straw, cap it with your finger, and sample. Too hot? Five more stirs. Too sweet? A single extra dash of Angostura dries it out. This ten-second habit is easily the best thing I ever stole from watching professional bartenders work.

One more opinion, freely given: this is easily one of the best drinks to practise your stirring technique on, because there's nowhere to hide. Every flaw shows. Every improvement shows too — and that's the fun of it.

Once the base recipe is second nature, the template becomes a playground. These five variations all keep the stir-strain-twist method — only the ingredients shift.

1. The Rye Version

• 2 oz (60 ml) Rittenhouse Bottled-in-Bond rye (50% ABV)
• 1 tsp (5 ml) rich demerara syrup
• 2 dashes Angostura, 1 dash orange bitters

Spicier and drier. My pick for spring evenings.

2. The Maple Autumn

• 2 oz (60 ml) bourbon
• 1 tsp (5 ml) grade A dark maple syrup
• 2 dashes Angostura, 1 dash chocolate mole bitters

Perfect for Thanksgiving in the US or Bonfire Night in the UK.

3. The Smoky Rinse

• Rinse the glass with 1 tsp (5 ml) mezcal or Islay Scotch, discard
• Build the standard recipe on top

A whisper of smoke without changing the spec.

4. The Vodka Old-Fashioned

• 2 oz (60 ml) quality vodka (40% ABV)
• 1 tsp (5 ml) rich demerara syrup
• 3 dashes Angostura, 1 dash orange bitters

Controversial? Sure. But the bitters and demerara do real work, and it's a friendly gateway for the vodka drinkers who loved our 5-minute vodka cocktails.

5. The Low-Proof Sipper

• 2 oz (60 ml) amontillado sherry
• 1 tsp (5 ml) rich demerara syrup
• 2 dashes Angostura

Roughly a third of the alcohol. More ideas like this live in our low-alcohol cocktail collection.

Let's be honest — most bad Old-Fashioneds fail the same five ways. Check yourself against this list before blaming the recipe.

Muddling fruit into the glass. The orange-wheel-and-cherry mash is a Prohibition-era hangover, when fruit pulp hid rough whiskey. Your bourbon isn't rough. Muddled pith makes the drink bitter and murky; the expressed twist gives you all the orange character with none of the sludge.

Over-sweetening. One teaspoon (5 ml) of 2:1 syrup is the spec. I'd skip any recipe calling for a full half-ounce of simple syrup — you're making whiskey candy at that point. If your first sip reads sweet, remember the drink sweetens further as ice melts.

Using warm or wet ice. Ice straight from a frosty freezer at 0°F (-18°C) chills efficiently. Ice that's been sitting out, glossy and wet, is already melting and will overdilute before it cools. Solid, dry, cold cubes only.

Under-stirring. Ten lazy swirls leaves you with a room-temperature shot of sweetened bourbon. Commit to the full 30 seconds. Dilution isn't the enemy — it's an ingredient. About 20% water is what unlocks the whiskey's aroma.

Treating bitters as optional. Skipping the mole bitters because 'it's just a dash' is like skipping salt in a recipe because it's just a pinch. Those three dashes are the difference between whiskey-and-sugar and an actual cocktail.

After testing this recipe side-by-side with the muddled-fruit version for a group of friends, the vote was unanimous — and two of them went out and bought mole bitters the next day.

An Old-Fashioned this rich deserves company that can keep up. Think fat, salt and dark flavours.

Food pairings that actually work: a ribeye off the grill, aged cheddar or Stilton, candied pecans, salted dark chocolate above 70% cacao. The mole bitters make the chocolate pairing almost unfair — the cacao notes link arms across glass and plate. For a UK Sunday roast? Genuinely brilliant with beef and Yorkshire puddings.

Seasonally, this is a cold-weather champion. It's the drink for the first fire of autumn, for Thanksgiving aperitifs, for Christmas Eve wrapping sessions and for that grey British January when you need something that tastes like warmth. Come summer, I'll admit I reach for lighter options — our make-ahead picnic drinks own that season.

For parties, the Old-Fashioned is a wonderful 'first pour' while guests settle in, before you move to something communal like our Hibiscus Punch Royale. Hosting adventurous drinkers? Follow it with the Dr. Strangelove or a bright Madras for contrast.

One serious note. At roughly 32% ABV in the glass, this is a strong drink — about 1.8 US standard drinks or 2.4 UK units per serving. Pace yourself, eat alongside it, and know your limits. The Drinkaware guidelines (UK) and NIAAA resources (US) are worth a bookmark. The best Old-Fashioned is the one you actually remember enjoying.

Screenshot this table, stick it inside your bar cabinet, and you'll never need to look the recipe up again.

Total prep time: about 5 minutes including the glass chill. Cost per serve: under $3 (£2.40) once your bottles are stocked. Difficulty: honestly, easier than most people's morning coffee routine.

So there it is — Joaquín Simó's Old-Fashioned, decoded for your home bar. Three bitters, one great syrup, one honest bourbon, and thirty seconds of stirring stand between you and the best version of this classic you've ever tasted. Master this one drink and every stirred cocktail afterwards gets easier.

Want to make sure your setup is ready before you start? Grab our free home bar starter checklist — it covers every tool, bottle and bitters this recipe calls for, and plenty more besides. Cheers, and stir slowly.