International travel may now be out, but road trips and isolated beaches, lakes and cabins are in so you’ll need this recipe for a Mocha Old Fashioned you can easily make on the road. Bring along some flavored sugar cubes, your chocolate bitters and all you’ll need is a little whiskey and coffee to make an easy in-glass cocktail.
I love traveling, but right now, none of us are doing much of that. When I travel, I want good cocktails and I want to be able to make a cocktail in the hotel room or cabin before heading out to dinner, or after a long day riding or hiking. I usually make my own bittered sugar cubes so I don’t need to travel with a hundred tiny bottles of simple syrups and bitters, but Storied Goods sent me a sample of their flavored sugar cubes to play with for cocktails. Making cocktails with these sugar cubes is a snap.
I sampled three flavors, the Rose Petal Sugar, Whiskey Sugar and Coffee Sugar cubes. All three would be lovely in tea or coffee, but let’s talk cocktails.
I love the combined flavors of whiskey and coffee. A cup of coffee with couple ounces of whiskey in it loses a lot of the whiskey flavor due to the ratio of coffee and whiskey, but an old fashioned keeps the ratios lower, and lets the coffee shine through. Adding chocolate bitters to the Mocha Old Fashioned just makes the cocktail that much better.
Chocolate bitters are my favorite to travel with. I usually put them in a small bottle with an eyedropper and use them as needed for my travel cocktails. And to make garnishes easier, I take dehydrated citrus with me.
Dehydrated citrus wheels add more in terms of visual appeal than they do in flavor. The slices have to re-hydrate to exude any great citrus flavor and it doesn’t take that long to sip your way through a cocktail.
But we drink first with our eyes, so it’s a fun way to treat yourself while on a road trip. If you’d like a few more suggestions for coffee cocktails, take a look at the Who’s Your Daddy – Tiki Coffee Old Fashioned or the Smash and Grab – Coffee Cherry Smash.
Mocha Old Fashioned
Ingredients
- 1-2 Storied Goods Coffee Sugar cubes
- 1 oz espresso or strong coffee – cooled
- 2 oz bourbon
- 3 dashes chocolate bitters
- 15 drops orange bitters
- Garnish: coffee beans, fresh or dehydrated orange slice
Instructions
- Put sugar cubes and espresso in the bottom of a rocks glass and stir/muddle until the sugar is dissolved. Add bourbon, bitters and ice and stir until very well chilled. Garnish with orange and coffee beans, if you have some on hand.
