If you were to watch the news at 6am, you would realize that Fall officially starts in August, when Starbucks releases its Pumpkin Spice Latte. Apparently, this goes along with Christmas shopping season, which apparently starts in June.  There’s nothing like wearing Christmas sweaters on a 90 degree August afternoon, sipping a “PSL”. 

For me its “PLS”, as in “Please make this Stop”.  I congratulate Starbucks on making an industry out of artificially flavored pumpkin syrup, but it seems like “pumpkin spice” is in everything these days.

Of course, that will NOT stop me from cashing in. It’s the American Way. Feel free to send me bags of money when you want.

But I do have at least one scruple.  You see, I actually came up with these drink recipes last winter, and waited until actual fall (yes, it is officially fall now), to post them up.

And these have one big advantage over Starbucks – these have booze.

Fall Old Fashioned

Ingredients:

• 3 oz Bourbon
• 1 oz Cinnamon Simple Syrup
• 4 dash orange bitters
• ½ oz Lime (1/2 lime, squeezed)
• Dash fresh Cinnamon and Nutmeg

To make Cinnamon Simple Syrup: 

• Take 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water (standard syrup recipe), and put into a saucepan with 2-3 sticks cinnamon (I imagine you could use cinnamon powder, but might be a bit grainy).
• Heat until the sugar melts, and let steep for about 3-6 hours.

Hot Apple Pie

Ingredients:

• 5 oz Apple Cider
• 1 ½ Tbsp Maple Syrup (or alternatives below)
• 1/8 Tsp cinnamon (or to taste – see notes)
• Dash Nutmeg
• 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
• 2 oz. Jack Daniels (or bourbon)
• A La Mode:  Scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream (optional, but worth it).

To make the drink:

Get out a saucepan. Pour in the Apple Cider, Maple Syrup, Cinnamon and Nutmeg.  A few notes:

• Instead of Maple Syrup you can use 1 oz of Cinnamon Simple Syrup, or 1 ½ tbsp Honey.
• Cinnamon tends to be gritty, but it does sink to the bottom of the glass.  You could try a cinnamon stick, but that needs to steep a bit and I’m too impatient to do so.

Warm the ingredients on a low heat. Do not boil. We are not trying to flambe our guests with boiling whiskey.

Turn off the heat. Pour in the vanilla and Jack, just to bring it to temp. We do NOT want to boil off the alcohol – that would simply be uncivilized.