Name: American Trilogy
Total time: 3 min
Cuisine: Cocktail
Ingredients: 25 ml Applejack brandy; 25 ml Rye whiskey 50% abv; 7.5 ml Brown sugar syrup; 2 dash Orange bitters

American Trilogy
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Photographed in an UB Koto Old Fashioned 30cl

Ingredients:
⁵⁄₆ oz	Applejack brandy bottled-in-bond (50% alc./vol)
⁵⁄₆ oz	Straight rye whiskey (100 proof /50% alc./vol.)
¹⁄₄ oz	Demerara/Muscovado/brown sugar syrup (2 sugar to 1 water)
2 dash	Orange Bitters by Angostura

Read about cocktail measures and measuring

How to make:

Select and pre-chill an Old-fashioned glass.
Prepare garnish of fat & long orange zest twist.
STIR all ingredients with ice.
STRAIN into ice-filled glass (preferably over a large cube or chunk of block ice).

Strength & taste guide:

No alcohol

Medium

Boozy

Sweet

Medium

Dry/sour

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Review:

To adhere to the original recipe, you should smash a sugar cube and then painstakingly stir this with bitters into a paste. Life is just too short to faff around, so instead, I've used pre-dissolved sugar (syrup). Depending on your personal tastes you may want to reduce this syrup to a mere 5ml or it up to 10ml. Syrup allows you to find your personal sweet spot and then consistently hit it. Once achieved, you've a delicious subtly cider-influenced Rye Old-Fashioned.

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AKA: Rye Old-Fashioned

Variant:

Diamondback

History:

Adapted from a recipe created in 2006 by Richard Boccato and Michael McIlroy at Milk & Honey in New York City. By the following year it was a staple at sibling bar Little Branch bar and American Trilogy continues to be a popular cocktail at Attaboy, the bar that occupies the former Milk & Honey site.

Originally built in the glass with a sugar cube and made with three American ingredients, hence the name: rye whisky, applejack and Regan's Orange Bitters.

More cocktails by Michael McIlroy

Nutrition:

One serving of American Trilogy contains 136 calories

Alcohol content:

1.4 standard drinks
34.14% alc./vol. (34.14° proof)
19.8 grams of pure alcohol

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Difford’s Guide remains free-to-use thanks to the support of the brands in green above. Values stated for alcohol and calorie content, and number of drinks an ingredient makes should be considered approximate.

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Peter McCarthy

25th September 2024 at 05:52

Made with Laird's Bottled-in-Bond & Wild Turkey 101 Rye. Pretty tasty as-is. Apple is balanced. Whiskey is smoothed out. Subtle orange. and brown sugar. Not too sweet for me.

G. M. Genovese

12th July 2024 at 18:34

I've tried this about a half dozen times now. Like y'all have suggested, reducing the sugar - in my case, to 5 ml - has resulted in a more harmonious drink. This in addition to skewing the spirit specs to 6:5, in favor of Old Forester 100-proof rye, which somehow has been a stalwart ingredient.

Darren Companion

1st July 2024 at 03:55

Made with half the Demerara and it works! Orange forward and refreshing. We had to use apple brandy as applejack is not available in Canada. Nice drink!