This might be our most divisive cocktail yet. Love it or hate it, we had to do it – The Pumpkin Spiced Old Fashioned.
Fall cocktails are meant to highlight those amazing autumn flavors like apples in the Stone Fence and Fall from the Tree or pumpkin in the Great Pumpkin. But no flavor says modern fall quite like pumpkin spice (almost to a fault). So yeah okay, we hopped on the pumpkin spice bandwagon, but it was for a good cause. This cocktail takes only the good parts of pumpkin spice and mixes them all up together with bourbon. It’s essentially a bourbon pumpkin pie and how could that be wrong?
The mischievous genius behind this concoction is Scott Allen, the bar manager of the Copper Lounge in Los Angeles. Scott stayed true to the Old Fashioned with both orange bitters and a muddled orange to bring out that signature tart, citrus flavor. But instead of regular ol’ simple syrup, he kicked it up a notch with a homemade pumpkin syrup.
Together, the Pumpkin Spiced Old Fashioned tastes like liquid fall.
Pumpkin Spiced Old Fashioned
Equipment
- 1 Rocks Glass
- 1 Muddler
Ingredients
- 2 ounces Bourbon
- ½ ounce Pumpkin Syrup
- 2 dashes Orange Bitters
- 1 wedge Orange
- 1 Cinnamon Stick (garnish)
Pumpkin Simple Syrup
- 1 cup Water
- ¾ cup Brown Sugar
- ¼ cup Pumpkin Puree
- 3 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Instructions
- To the bottom of a Rocks glass, add ½ ounce pumpkin syrup, 2 dashes of orange bitters, and one orange wedge.
- Muddle until combined.
- Add 2 ounces of Bourbon and lightly stir.
- Add a large ice cube to the glass.
- Stir gently with a cinnamon stick to combine.
Pumpkin Simple Syrup
- Add 1 cup of water and ¾ cup of light brown sugar into a saucepan and simmer until all of the sugar has dissolved.
- Whisk in ¼ cup of pumpkin puree and about 3 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and allspice) and simmer on low.
- Strain, add 1 tsp of vanilla extract, and allow to cool.
