Well, if I’m having a cocktail, it’d have to be a mocktail. 
I don’t drink alcohol. Anyway, the way I see it, it’s [whatever the cocktail name is] with [whatever other options are to be added/deducted]. Don’t get all muddled! 
I actually prefer vodka martinis. Which I typically get at my local old-school steakhouse bar. Not Red Lobster or Houlihan’s.
A barista.
See, that’s a Wisconsin Old Fashioned. For somebody who has traveled so much, you should have realized that’s the way it’s locally done. It’s not how Old Fashioned are done anywhere else in the world, so far as I know.
As for the term “press,” I do not think it’s a well-known bartending term. I think that’s also a Wisconsonian term used in ordering Old Fashioneds.
It’s a bit like when I discovered Italian beefs weren’t universal, or that giardiniera is either unknown or something a bit different outside the Chicago area. (Like the Old Fashioned, both Chicago giardiniera and Italian giardiniera have some elements in common, but are different enough be noticed.)
Look in any bartenders guide and you’ll see the Wisconsin version is pretty much what they are supposed to be.
They’re aren’t done anywhere, really. Like I told you, more than half the time you get deer in headlights looks when just uttering the words “Old Fashioned”. The other half the time they make them completely a mess. The Wisconsin version is pretty much what is reciped in every bartenders guide.
I’ve never seen them outside the U.S… And I’ve been to over 2 dozen countries!
Nonsense. An old school bartender anywhere in the U.S. knows the term for plain soda water is press due to the location of it on the spray gun.
Look, i don’t find that to be the case. Everywhere outside of Wisconsin I’ve had an Old Fashioned, you don’t specify stuff like “sweet” or “sour” or “press.” Maybe the whiskey, but if you asked for brandy, you’d get a very odd look indeed. All those are Wisconsin things. Read the article I linked to, written by a Wisconsonian, and interviewing Wisconsonian bartenders.
But “press” in Wisconsin when ordering an old fashioned doesn’t mean “seltzer.” It means a mix of 7-up and Seltzer. I’m familiar with it and what it is because that’s exactly my standard Old Fashioned order in Wisconsin: Brandy old fashioned press.
Haven’t been to those places in a while, but I can report back that you can get decent Old Fashioneds in San Francisco, Boise, Chicago, and Schaumburg IL. OK, those last two aren’t THAT surprising, being relatively close to Wisconsin, but Boise/SF are pretty far away.
That said, I don’t even bother to try if it’s not an actual cocktail bar or upscale-ish restaurant, so maybe I’m playing the odds. You are right in that any dive bar in Wisconsin (or even up here in the Upper Peninsula of Wisconsin) can make an Old Fashioned. Not so much in the lesser states. 
The customer shouldn’t have to order press. The bartender should already know that. Press is just sparkling water. If bartenders are using the term press for white soda they are wrong.
Make up your mind, can i get a manhattan or not?
lol
I’d tip extra for that “shot”.
I think you had a few martians before you posted.
As far as cocktails go, unless it is a place I know can mix good drinks, I’m sticking to beer or a straight up bourbon. Can’t really fuck those up (well, dirty beer lines can). My cocktail of choice is a Manhattan and most places that don’t make good drinks tend to serve you an Old Fashioned in a martini glass. Red Lobster can’t make good food so I doubt their cocktails are up there either.
“Give me a tall glass of warm gin with a human hair in it.”
Oh, well look at you. A human hair. La di dah.
I suppose “press” may mean different things in different parts of Wisconsin, or depending on the bartender, but when I order “press” it’s a mix of 7-up and seltzer.
From madison.com:
Or here is an article from The Journal-Sentinel:
Emphasis mine.
This is also how the terminology was explained to me by a close friend who used to tend bar in Milwaukee in the 90s, and when I order a brandy old fashioned press in Wisconsin, I get a mix of 7-up and seltzer.
Maybe you bars do it differently. Maybe old school bartenders do it differently. I don’t know, but “press” in regards to old fashioneds I’ve always known to be a mix of sweet and seltzer.
Regardless, I don’t think anywhere else in the States you’d see a bartender topping off an old fashioned with 7-up or Squirt the way you do in Wisconsin. I’m not a fan of regular old fashioneds, but I do like the Wisconsin version as a more easy drinking drink.
Any recommendations for places to get a well-crafted authentic Old Fashioned?
And, by the way, what IS a “Supper club”? I remember being taken to them as a child, but didn’t know why they were different from any other restaurant (I would’ve said “umm, they’re darker, with a lot more drinks, tons of food, and people are really friendly”).
WTF is pre-mix? And why would it be in an Old Fashioned?
Generally speaking, it’s some kind of spirit, some water, bitters and sugar. With or without muddled fruit, etc…
If jackasses are putting sour mix/lemon juice/soda/liqueurs/etc… in there, they’re making daisies, fizzes, sours or improved <spirit> cocktails, or whatever, but NOT Old Fashioneds.
It’s like putting something in a *cocktail *glass and calling it a <something)-tini just because Martinis are typically served in that glass (along with dozens of other drinks FYI).
It’s ignorant and it’s incorrect. There’s nothing wrong with say… a whiskey fizz (whiskey, lemon juice, sugar, ice and soda water), but don’t call it an Old Fashioned.
The cocktail world can get kind of absurdly picky sometimes- for example, the difference between a gin fizz and a Tom Collins is just the size of the glass and that the Tom Collins is served over ice rather than without ice.
I’m willing to admit that the fruit is not really defined, so it could fall within the definition of an Old Fashioned, but what some of you are describing are entirely other drinks- fizzy whiskey sours and things closer to a whiskey buck than an Old Fashioned.
Yep. A Manhattan is my cocktail of choice but I’ll never order one any place I haven’t been before. Very few places know how to make a proper one*, or have the ingredients for that matter.
In fact, I have to be careful even in the places I usually order one, because hipster doofuses, LA trust-fund douchebags and hip-hop asshats order the worst possible combinations and the bartenders never know whether or not you know what you are doing. It’s going to be ugly for all concerned if my 20-year-old single malt is delivered on the rocks.
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- Rye, dammit! RYE!!! And none of that homeopathy with the vermouth, either. Served up, in a martini or coupe glass with Luxardo cherries.
I give this all a +1.
Here’s the Milwaukee tourism’s Youtube page showing what a Wisconsin old fashioned looks like. You will note the use of brandy (though you get a choice, but Korbel brandy seems to be the default there) and the top off of soda of your choice at the end to be different than what is known as an old fashioned in much of the rest of the US. Something like this is what I expect everywhere else but Wisconsin.
After years of being served crap gin martinis I finally gave up and just ordered “Bombay Blue Sapphire, shaken, with an olive”
Even then sometimes I’ll get a vermouth infused drink.
The worst was when I ordered a Martini in a hotel bar and asked for it to be extremely dry. The bartender in his infinite wisdom thought that the way to make an extremely dry martini was to add more dry vermouth. Not realizing that, I politely said it wasn’t even close to dry and sent it back.
What came back was a glass of dry vermouth. I got up and went to the bar.
The bartender, a young guy, said he was sorry and it was his first martini. After an explanation of “dryness” I walked him through the process, handed him a large tip, and took my martini back to my table.
Darn right Korbel is the default brandy. “Wisconsin is our number one state,” says Margie Healy, director of public relations for the California-based Korbel. “We export 385,000 cases a year, and 139,000 go directly to Wisconsin. That’s one-third of our total production.”
Hilariously, that’s from an article where they have no clue as to why…
“It’s easy to speculate that the long winters are partially responsible. Hot drinks like the brandy alexander and the hot toddy are not only popular winter cocktails, but also believed by some to reduce the effects of colds and flus… There is absolutely nothing historically that explains brandy’s popularity in Wisconsin”.
But we know why…