Cocktails can be unnecessarily complicated. They feature hard to find, hard to pronounce, or hard to make ingredients. Sometimes cocktails that have a lot of steps are just the thing to spark your imagination, but heading into the holidays we all need something a little simpler to make. Enter the Maple Cinnamon Old Fashioned, a drink founded on the spices of rye forward bourbon, maple syrup, cinnamon (brooms), and walnuts. Make the cinnamon simple, buy the bitters, batch it up, make some big ice cubes, and impress your guests with a great fall cocktail.
Maple Cinnamon Old Fashioned
The Maple Cinnamon Old Fashioned combines the beauty of Wild Turkey 101’s spice profile and the sweetness of fall flavors into an Old Fashioned template. The maple and cinnamon play off each other, with the maple doing the lead in, and the cinnamon delivering the mid-palate and finish. The ending is sweet with just the right note of spice and nuttiness. The ice cube keeps the drink perfect at the house warms up with turkey, ham, guests, and the cheerfully crackling fire place.
Drink Notes & Recommendations
There’s not a lot here that can go wrong here, and the template is riffable from a base spirit and syrup standpoint. The result is that this drink is super simple to make for parties or even to batch. Please note, the picture shown is for a double preparation.
- Wild Turkey 101 – We used Wild Turkey 101 here for both body from the proof and spice from the rye profile. We recommend you stick to a similar template when swapping the base spirit, looking at bonded or 100 to 110 proof bourbon or rye for this recipe. Other great potential choices include Rittenhouse Rye and Maker’s Mark Cask Strength.
- Fee Bros Black Walnut Bitters – These bitters have a nutty, distinctly sweet character that fringes into maple. The result is a double down on the maple notes that help to make the drink sing. You can find them at your local liquor store or through this Amazon affiliate link that would give us like $0.15 and doesn’t even start to cover our webhosting costs (but helps us keep making you awesome new cocktails).
- Maple Syrup – We recommend using a grade A maple syrup for this cocktail to enrich the maple flavor. We used Trader Joe’s in ours, so don’t feel the need to break the bank.
- Cinnamon Simple Syrup -Method 1: Combine 250g of sugar with 250g of water in a sous vide bag or small mason jar. Add 10g of cinnamon broken into 1″ pieces. Shake to combine. Sous vide for 2 hours at 145°F. Remove from water bath and allow to cool. Once cool, strain cinnamon pieces from syrup using a chinois and coffee filter. Add .5 oz of Everclear / overproof vodka and shake gentle for 1 -2 seconds to combine. Store in fridge. Discard if no longer transparent / any hazy develops.
- Method 2: Combine 250g of sugar, 250g of water, and 10 grams of cinnamon broken into 1″ pieces in a pan. Add heat until sugar is dissolved and syrup reaches a boil. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Once cool, strain cinnamon pieces from syrup using a chinios and coffee filter. Add .5 oz of Everclear / overproof vodka and shake gentle for 1 -2 seconds to combine. Store in fridge. Discard if no longer transparent / any hazy develops.
- Note: Everclear / Overproof Vodka are optional – these act as preservatives to extend shelf life. If you add them, please do not serve to children, pregnant women, or those avoiding alcohol.
- Note: Method 1 is preferred if you’re able / have the equipment to do so
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