Tip Top Old Fashioned Review | Blind-Tasted Against a Fresh One
Canned Cocktails / Blind Test
Tip Top Old Fashioned vs a Fresh Old Fashioned: I Tasted Them Blind
Tip Top has somehow squeezed an Old Fashioned into a 100ml can at 37% ABV. So I put it beside a freshly made Old Fashioned, tasted both blind, and asked the only question that really matters: can the can actually compete with the bar?
By Vim, Editor of 12×75
In brief
- Tip Top Old Fashioned is a 100ml can at 37% ABV (74 proof) containing whiskey, sugar and bitters, nothing else, sold for around $5 to $6 a can in the US.
- Tasted blind against a bartender-made Old Fashioned as part of my 17-can test of the best canned cocktails, the fresh drink won, but narrowly.
- It was the best canned Old Fashioned in that test: real whiskey weight, present bitters, orange and caramel. Its weakness is finesse; it tastes heavier and more one-dimensional beside a fresh one.
- Serve it over a large ice cube with orange peel rather than from the can, and be aware that this tiny can holds roughly two US standard drinks.
There is something inherently suspicious about an Old Fashioned in a can. A Margarita? Fine, put it in a can. A Paloma? Absolutely. Something fizzy and pink designed to be consumed beside a swimming pool? Aluminium was practically invented for it. But an Old Fashioned is different. It is whiskey, sugar and bitters, and that is basically it. There is nowhere for a bad spirit to hide, nowhere for artificial sweetness to disappear, and no pineapple juice to distract you while the entire thing goes wrong. It is the drink I would teach anyone to make first precisely because it cannot be faked.
Which makes Tip Top’s Old Fashioned particularly interesting. The can is absurdly small, 100ml, but contains a very un-canned-cocktail-like 37% ABV, or 74 proof, and the ingredient list is admirably short: whiskey, sugar, bitters. This is not an alcoholic soda pretending to be an Old Fashioned. It is attempting to be the actual drink. So I gave it the slightly unfair treatment I gave every can in my best canned cocktails test. I put it against one.
Size 100ml can
Strength 37% ABV, 74 proof
Ingredients Whiskey, sugar, bitters
Alcohol per can About 29g, roughly two US standard drinks or 3.7 UK units
Typical US price $5 to $6 a can; four-packs around $22 to $24
Producer’s tasting note Vanilla, citrus and caramel, into a stone fruit and spice finish
Serve Over a large ice cube, with orange peel
Source: Tip Top Proper Cocktails; retailer listings, September 2026.
How the blind test worked
For the wider test I took 17 cans and matched each one against the freshly made cocktail it claimed to replace. The fresh versions were made by a bartender. I tasted them blind: I was not told which glass held the can and which held the fresh drink until after I had decided which I preferred. That matters, because there is absolutely no achievement in looking at a little Tip Top can and announcing that a handcrafted Old Fashioned is superior. Take the labels away and things become considerably more interesting.
And Tip Top did very well. Just not quite well enough.
Blind result: the fresh Old Fashioned wins. But it was closer than a 100ml can has any right to make it.
What the Tip Top Old Fashioned actually tastes like
This is a serious drink. The first impression is big whiskey. Then orange, caramel and bitters, followed by a substantial amount of alcoholic warmth. There is none of that strange disconnect you sometimes get with canned cocktails, where your eyes say Old Fashioned and your mouth says alcoholic orange squash. This tastes recognisably and unmistakably like the thing on the label. The whiskey has weight. The bitters are actually present. The sweetness does not swamp the drink. And at 37% nobody has watered it down into a whiskey-flavoured soft drink.
Tip Top’s own note describes vanilla, citrus and caramel moving into stone fruit and spice, which is not a million miles from what I found. Then I tasted the fresh one, and the gap appeared.
Where the fresh Old Fashioned wins
The Tip Top tasted heavier beside the bartender-made drink. More compressed. More one-dimensional. The individual components of the fresh Old Fashioned had more space around them: whiskey, sweetness, citrus oils and bitters were not merely present, they moved around one another. The canned drink gave you most of those flavours. It just delivered them more or less at the same time.
That distinction is difficult to notice when drinking the Tip Top on its own, and obvious the moment the two sit side by side, which is exactly why I wanted these tests blind. A canned cocktail does not need to be terrible to lose to the original. It can be very good and still remind you why people have spent two centuries standing behind bars making drinks one at a time.
The strange thing is, the internet basically agrees
Tip Top’s Old Fashioned has something of a cult following among canned-cocktail drinkers, particularly, for reasons involving aviation and apparently poor decision-making at altitude, among people who first met the tiny cans on flights. Reddit threads repeatedly describe it as unusually good for a canned drink, strong, portable and surprisingly close to the real thing, with a recurring qualification: make a genuinely good Old Fashioned yourself and the fresh drink still wins. One recent review made almost exactly the criticism I arrived at independently, good bourbon character, strong orange and spice, but ultimately a little one-note beside something freshly made. Which is reassuring. Either we are all right, or the can has developed some sort of mass hypnosis technology.
Should you drink it straight from the can?
You can. I would not. This is one of those canned cocktails where the word “canned” is slightly misleading: you are not buying something designed to be cracked open warm at a festival, you are buying a pre-mixed proper cocktail that happens to be packaged in aluminium. Even the shops that sell it say plainly that all of Tip Top’s cocktails require dilution. Pour it over a large cube of ice. Give it a moment. Add orange peel if you have one. Suddenly the proposition makes much more sense: dilution softens the weight, the cold reins in the sweetness and the orange oil gives the drink some of the lift that separated the fresh version in the blind test. The convenience remains. The experience gets considerably better. And use a proper rocks glass; this is not a drink for a plastic cup.
Be slightly careful with the tiny can
The packaging plays a psychological trick on you. It is 100ml. It looks adorable. It is also 37% alcohol. Do the maths and that adorable can holds about 29 grams of pure alcohol, which is roughly two US standard drinks, or nearly four UK units, in something the size of a child’s juice carton. This is not a White Claw wearing a waistcoat. It is a proper spirit-forward cocktail compressed into the drinks equivalent of a hotel shampoo bottle, and it is precisely the sort of can I had in mind when I wrote about how many drinks are actually in a canned cocktail. Treat it accordingly.
Is Tip Top better than a fresh Old Fashioned?
No. And I do not think that is particularly damaging to Tip Top. The fresh drink won the blind tasting because it had more nuance, better integration and more life. But that is an exceptionally high bar. The more useful question is this: would I rather drink a Tip Top Old Fashioned than a badly made fresh one? Absolutely, and I have had plenty of those. Too much sugar. Half a fruit bowl crushed into the glass. Three melting ice cubes. A heroic splash of bourbon apparently added from another postcode. Against that sort of Old Fashioned, give me the little blue can. If you want to make the good version at home, my Old Fashioned recipe takes two minutes and a bourbon that costs less than a four-pack of these.
The Can Tax
For the canned cocktail tests I have started thinking about something I call the Can Tax: the amount of drinking pleasure you surrender in return for convenience. A dreadful canned cocktail has a huge Can Tax; you save two minutes making a drink and sacrifice almost everything good about drinking it. A brilliant one has a tiny Can Tax. The Tip Top Old Fashioned’s is surprisingly small. The fresh version is better, but not enough better that I would hesitate to pack Tip Top for a hotel room, a flight, a picnic, a holiday rental, or any other situation where a bottle of bourbon, bitters, sugar, a mixing glass, a bar spoon, ice and orange peel become slightly antisocial luggage. It is, in other words, exactly what the ready-to-drink format is for, and a rare example of one that contains only the things the label says.
Verdict
Fresh wins. But Tip Top comes out of this with its dignity very much intact. It gives you proper whiskey character, orange, caramel, bitters and enough strength to make the drink feel like an Old Fashioned rather than an Old Fashioned-inspired beverage. Where it loses is finesse: the fresh cocktail is brighter, more integrated and more nuanced, and the Tip Top is heavier and slightly one-dimensional by comparison. But comparison is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Drink the Tip Top without a fresh one beside it and you may wonder why you ever doubted canned cocktails. In the blind test of 17 cans it was the best canned Old Fashioned I tried, though not the best can outright; that honour went to Post Meridiem’s Espresso Martini, the only one to beat the bartender.
Blind winnerFresh Old Fashioned, narrowly
Best canned Old Fashioned testedYes
Can TaxSmall
Would I buy it againYes
Best servedOver a large cube, with orange peel
Not forDrinking warm from the can, or underestimating
Not better than an excellent Old Fashioned. Much, much better than having no Old Fashioned at all.
Quick answers
Is the Tip Top Old Fashioned any good?
Yes. In a blind test against a bartender-made Old Fashioned it lost narrowly, with real whiskey weight, orange, caramel and present bitters. It was the best canned Old Fashioned of 17 cans tested; its only weakness is that it tastes heavier and less nuanced than a fresh one.
How strong is the Tip Top Old Fashioned?
37% ABV, or 74 proof, in a 100ml can. That is about 29 grams of alcohol, roughly two US standard drinks or nearly four UK units, so treat the small can with respect.
What is in a Tip Top Old Fashioned?
Whiskey, sugar and bitters, and nothing else. Tip Top publishes the full ingredient list on the can.
How should you serve a Tip Top Old Fashioned?
Poured over a large ice cube with a twist of orange peel, not straight from the can. Dilution and cold soften the weight and bring it closer to a fresh Old Fashioned.
How much does the Tip Top Old Fashioned cost?
Around $5 to $6 per 100ml can in the US, with four-packs typically $22 to $24, so roughly the price of a cheap bar Old Fashioned for a drink that is markedly better than most of them.
