Saturday Happy Hour — What to Do With a Bottle of Apple Brandy
Mix it with Rittenhouse Rye, of course.
I know what you’re thinking: OK, now that I have this bottle of apple brandy, what else do I do with it? You can only drink so many Jack Roses.
We might agree to disagree on that. But I take your point.
Fortunately, I have an answer. If you have been reading — or even just skimming — this newsletter, you are aware of my affinity for Rittenhouse Rye. As it turns out, Rittenhouse and Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy work amazingly well together in an Old Fashioned style drink: specifically, a minor modern classic known as the American Trilogy.
Traditionally, this drink, originally developed at the great Sasha Petraske-adjacent New York bar Little Branch — possibly the single darkest space I have ever been in that did not have a power outage or lights-related accident of some sort — calls for equal parts rye, bonded (100 proof) apple brandy, brown sugar, and orange bitters. I confess to approving of the underlying idea of this drink without quite loving the original execution.
To me, this works better as a rye-forward Old Fashioned with a touch of apple brandy, Angostura bitters, and a solid hit of syrup. The Angostura is particularly important, as the orange bitters alone just don’t have quite enough grip to pull this drink together. (You can add a dash of orange bitters to the mix if you’d like.)
The way I make it is far enough from the original that it deserves a different name. But it’s not so far that the name shouldn’t pay tribute to the original drink, which wasn’t precisely to my taste, but was in fact a quite good idea. So here’s my Sequel Trilogy.
Sequel Trilogy
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
¼ ounce demerara gum syrup
½ ounce Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy
1 ½ ounces Rittenhouse Rye
INSTRUCTIONS
Combine all ingredients in mixing glass.
Add ice, then stir until thoroughly diluted.
Strain into a rocks glass over a single large piece of ice.
Garnish with an orange peel.
Want to experiment with your leftover grenadine? Try making a Trilogy with grenadine instead of demerara gum syrup.
Peter, you live in DC, right? Any advice for a diversely-stocked liquor store for those of us stuck with Virginia ABC options?
I had a bottle of the Laird Old Apple Brandy (80 proof), not the bonded. So I decided to go 1 to 1, but I used your suggestion for syrup (just rich demera) and bitters. Very nice.
I followed your link to Petraske's obit. What was his argument in favor of jiggers. It's a nice bit of theater for a bar, but it makes a mess in kitchen.