⭐ The drink that taught the cocktail world to fat-wash. Bacon-infused bourbon, maple syrup, Angostura, orange peel — an American breakfast in an Old Fashioned glass, and one of the genuinely important cocktails of the modern era.
Don Lee created it at PDT in New York’s East Village in 2007. He had eaten a slow-cured, hickory-smoked bacon from Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Hams in Madisonville, Tennessee at Momofuku Ssäm Bar and could not stop thinking about it; he had separately heard the chefs at wd~50 describing fat-washing, a technique borrowed from the kitchen. He put the two together, gave the result the Old Fashioned treatment, and PDT has served it ever since — reportedly 150 a week at its peak, which is a dozen bottles of bacon bourbon.
🔴 Do not skip the freeze. Fat-washing is not an infusion you strain; it is an infusion you freeze solid and lift off. The fat carries flavour compounds into the spirit, then chilling turns it into a disc you remove whole. Strain it warm and you get a greasy, cloudy drink and a slick on the surface.
Ingredients
- 2 oz Bourbon, Fat-Washed — the bacon version
- 1/4 oz real maple syrup, Grade A Dark
- 2 dashes Angostura bitters
- 1 wide strip orange peel
- 1 large ice cube
Directions
- Make the bacon-washed bourbon first — see Bourbon, Fat-Washed. It needs an overnight in the freezer, so this is not a spur-of-the-moment drink.
- Combine the washed bourbon, maple syrup and bitters in a mixing glass.
- Add ice and stir 20–25 seconds.
- Strain over one large cube in a rocks glass.
- Express a wide strip of orange peel over the surface and drop it in.
Notes
Maple, not sugar, and it matters. Maple is the bridge between the smoke and the corn sweetness of the bourbon; plain simple syrup leaves the bacon sitting on its own, which reads as odd rather than as breakfast. Use Grade A Dark or Very Dark — the pale grades vanish.
Four Roses is the traditional base for this drink, and it is a good choice for a reason beyond tradition: the high-rye B mash bill keeps a peppery spine under all that fat and sweetness.
A good smoky bacon is the whole point. Benton’s is hickory-smoked and aggressively cured, which is why the drink is named for it. A mild supermarket bacon makes a mild, slightly confusing drink. Any of the home-cured bacons in this collection would do the job properly.
⚠ The garnish is a peel, not a strip of bacon. A bacon garnish goes soft and greasy in the glass within a minute and puts a fat slick back on a drink you went to some trouble to de-fat. If you want bacon alongside, put it on a plate.
Storage: keep fat-washed bourbon refrigerated and drink it within a month or so. Trace fat remains however carefully you strain, and trace fat eventually goes rancid — the alcohol slows that down, it does not stop it.
See also Bacon Grease for the ingredient itself.