Can You Drink An Old-Fashioned Warm?

Barring a couple of classics like mulled wine, hot apple cider, and hot toddies, the world of warm cocktails is a small one. To make things worse, warm cocktails can be fairly tedious to make. As opposed to throwing all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker over some ice, warm cocktails often require syrups and hour-long simmer times to come together. Thankfully, there's one cold cocktail that can easily be turned into a warm one with the help of hot water.

A classic old-fashioned is as simple as a cocktail can be, requiring nothing more than four ingredients and a couple of minutes. Although its components remain more or less the same — spirit, sugar, bitters, an orange peel, and ice — the drink is otherwise open to experimentation. While the proportion of sugar and alcohol, the type of bitters used, and even the choice of spirit can all be shaken up, what most don't think about, is switching up its temperature as well. According to Real Simple, even an old-fashioned can be turned into a warm cocktail and all that you really need to do so is use some hot water.

Whiskey has long been mixed with hot water in classic hot toddy recipes and used as a homemade remedy to fight off cold and flu (via Binge Daily). Call it an old wives tale if you would, but there's no harm in trying it if you feel under the weather. It only makes sense then for an old-fashioned to be turned into a warm drink too. Real Simple says that topping your old-fashioned with hot water makes the drink quite similar to a hot toddy, except that it has bitters and orange peels instead of honey and lemon juice.

According to The Spruce Eats, to make a warm old-fashioned you pretty much follow all the steps that you would to make its classic icy version. In goes a cube of sugar followed by a dash of bitters, orange slices, maraschino cherries, and some whiskey. The only difference here is that you top it with warm water, which instantly opens up the flavors of all the ingredients, blending them into each other, and creating a smooth drink that is dangerously easy to drink.

 Now, if you're making this old-fashioned spin at home, you want your water to be hot but not boiling hot and you need to use a glass that can hold a warm drink, so you might want to consider swapping your delicate glassware for a cozy mug.