Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, Black Pepper Bacon Old Fashioned!

Best. Breakfast. Ever.

Don’t forget the orange garnish!

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. Today, I decided to take a break from the tiki scene and circle back to a cocktail I wrote about years ago. Time for a classic bourbon drink that’s perfect for sunset on the back porch while grilling … or day drinking. Bacon is breakfast, after all. Let’s make a Black Pepper Bacon Old Fashioned. Here’s the recipe.

Black Pepper Bacon Old Fashioned

3 oz Black Pepper Bacon Washed Maker’s Mark

½ oz maple syrup

1 dropperful Old Forester Smoked Cinnamon Bitters

Stir all ingredients together in a mixing beaker with ice until the outside of the beaker is cold. Strain over a large ice cube into a rocks glass. Garnish with a slice of bacon and an orange twist.

Black Pepper Bacon Washed Maker’s Mark

1 pint Maker’s Mark

6-8 strips peppered bacon

Fry the bacon to render the fat needed for the recipe (use your favorite method). Pour off ¼ cup of bourbon from the pint of Maker’s Mark. Add ¼ cup of bacon fat to the Maker’s Mark bottle. Cap and shake vigorously. Place in the freezer for 24 hours, preferably at a 45-degree angle. Poke a hole through the fat and pour the bourbon through a fine strainer. Keeps indefinitely in the fridge.

Fat washing is a trick I’ve used repeatedly in previous columns — washing vodka with olive oil makes for some killer dirty martinis, and I’m still ridiculously proud of the sesame oil-washed vodka I used in the Haiku. It’s a simple technique — a little scary and gross-looking, admittedly, but well-worth the effort.

Fat washing and infusing are crucial to amazing drinks. The liquor industry will cheerfully sell you citrus vodka or vanilla vodka or dragonfruit lemonade vodka or whatever, but you know in your heart that those flavors are artificial and cheap. Make it real. Add fruit, or coconut oil, or spices to a bottle. Wait a little while. Strain it out. See what happens. It’s the difference between takeout food and a home-cooked meal, and it is so easy. Be brave. Try making bespoke booze sometime. You won’t regret it.

It all boils down to the fact that alcohol is a rather amazing little molecule. Some flavor compounds dissolve readily in water; others dissolve in oil. Alcohol can lock onto both sorts of flavors. Immersing a flavorful fat into liquor works just as readily as tossing a handful of fruit slices into a bottle. Alcohol will happily soak up the flavors from both compounds.

This fact threw a curveball into the cocktail I ended up crafting this week. I chose a very nice nitrate-free peppered bacon for my infusion. I had assumed that the bourbon would latch onto the bacon flavors, but the black pepper flavors wouldn’t carry over through the bacon fat into the liquor. I was wrong. There’s a very distinct black pepper finish in this cocktail that makes it a spicy cocktail, on par with a jalapeno margarita. I love black pepper, and a spicy bourbon drink in the middle of summer has a lot of appeal. But if you aren’t a black pepper fan, please use an “unflavored” bacon to complete this recipe. You’ll end up with a warm hug in a glass, I promise.

Let’s talk ingredients:

The Maker’s Mark is in the tiny bottle now.

Black Pepper Bacon Fat Washed Maker’s Mark: I know, I know, it looks gross when you pull it out of the freezer. Persevere. Poke a hole in the frozen fat, upend the bottle over a strainer, and trust that all the fat’s turned into a hard solid after a day in the freezer. Bacon-flavored bourbon is an utter joy. There’s no reason to be afraid. Salt is not fat-soluble, so your bourbon won’t end up salty through this process.

Additional picture of the Maker’s Mark before decanting, demonstrating that it does, in fact, look gross. Be not afraid.

Maple Syrup: Maple syrup isn’t as sweet as pure sugar, but the maple flavors carry through strongly in this cocktail. Use a sparing hand. And, needless to say, don’t use fake “pancake syrup.” You’ve waited a day to drink this bourbon. Spring for the good stuff.

Old Forester Smoked Cinnamon Bitters: Old Forester belongs to Brown-Forman, which is still on my shit list for firing workers, closing down a centuries-old cooperage, and generally culling long-term investments for short-term profitability. But these bitters are really, really good. The cinnamon cooperates wonderfully with the bacon and pepper notes. Use Angostura if you don’t want to deal with corporate goons.

Garnishes: The bacon strip is a tasty snack when you finish the drink, but it’s the orange twist that really matters. The scent of orange oil cuts through the rich flavors and unites the spice, smoke, and fat beautifully. Slice off a little orange peel and stick it in this glass. It doesn’t have to be pretty. You’ll thank me later.

We aren’t linking to Amazon anymore, because fuck that coward Bezos with a rusty bar spoon. Go read Infused: 100+ Recipes for Infused Liqueurs and Cocktails instead. If you don’t like bacon … well, I won’t judge, but you’ll find a ton of other ways to make the bottles in your liquor cabinet your own in this volume.

You can find me on Bluesky at @samuraigrog!

OPEN THREAD! DRINK!