Recipe

• 1.5oz candy cap mushroom-infused rye whiskey (base is Redemption Rye)
• .25oz maple syrup (I used the amaaazing Tippleman’s smoked maple syrup)
• Few dashes of bitters (your choice, but I used a combo of Honest John Bitters Co Black Walnut and Alley 6 Distillery Candy Cap Mushroom bitters)
• (optional) Drop or two of saline solution (aka salted water), to taste

Stir all ingredients with ice and strain over fresh ice. Garnish with a peel from a fresh lemon and drop in.

About

As the first cocktail I’m trying at home using (dried) candy cap mushrooms, I wanted to keep it simple to really highlight the flavor of the mushrooms. With nothing but the base spirit, a little bit of sweetener and bitters, this Old Fashioned variant is much more complex than it seems. Wow. What an incredible experience. Candy cap mushrooms are so rich and complex, umami to the max.

Candy cap is a species of mushrooms that is suuuper aromatic (equivalent in aromatic power as truffles, shitake, morel, etc). Instead of hovering on the extreme side of savoriness like some of those species, candy cap mushrooms actually have a very strong maple syrup flavor, rendering its usage popular in high-end fancy desserts to add some earthy richness.

To infuse the rye, I put a single dried candy cap mushroom in about 2oz of rye whiskey for about 24 hours, then simply removed the mushroom. As simple as that, and the flavor was extremely potent and full. A tiny bit goes a looong way.