What Are Bitters and How Should I Use Them?

Sure, bitters are part of every self-respecting bartender's toolkit, but...what exactly are they? And which ones go in which drinks? Here is a guide to this essential cocktail ingredient.

 

Credit the craft cocktail resurgence of the last decade or so for the renewed interest in these potent and, yes, bitter liquids, a few drops of which bar aficionados say are essential to many proper drinks and, as a bonus, can soothe an upset stomach.

 

Bitters makers these days have been on a tear, producing flavors such as barbecue, fig, and Sriracha bitters or reverse-engineering recipes that had been lost to history.

But before you mix that new-wave Manhattan, it’s best to brush up on your bitters knowledge.

 

WHERE HAVE BITTERS BEEN, ANYWAY?

Bitters had their heyday in the 1800s before petering out at the turn of the 20th century due to government regulation. Prohibition was the final straw for all but Angostura, one of the oldest bitters companies (not surprisingly, it remains the most well-known bitters producer around today).

 

America is late to the bitters game, actually. In Europe, bitters have long been used as medicine. Evidence of the world's first alcoholic beverage dating to, oh, 7,000 B.C. in China indicated it was a brew of grapes, rice, honey, and hawthorn berry, a bitter component which “tastes like hell,”.  Technically, it was an amaro—a drinkable bitters.

 

 

SO WHAT ARE BITTERS?

They’re boozy flavor extracts made by infusing barks, flowers, roots, berries, and various other bits and pieces of plants in alcohol. You dole them out in drops and dashes.

“Bitters are to cocktails as salt is to food,”. “They improve and align flavors just like salt does; they help to accentuate flavor and they bring their own flavors."

 

AND WHAT ARE AMARI?

Amaro means “bitter” in Italian. Amari, plural for amaro, are a type of bitters meant to be drunk out of the bottle or used as a mixer. Campari, Fernet Branca, Pimm’s No. 1, and Cynar are all amari.

You could say bitters are a non-drinkable type of amaro, since historically amaro came first.

At any rate, here’s the easy way to tell them apart: “If it’s in a large bottle to drink, it’s amaro. If it’s in a little bottle, it’s bitters,”.

 

 

 

BRANDS TO KNOW

Angostura. The super-secret recipe, which dates to 1824, doesn’t actually contain Angostura bark, but there are a lot of other ingredients in it and only five people reportedly know them all. It’s the go-to for a Manhattan.

Peychaud’s. Another household name that’s almost as old as Angostura, this gentian-based bitters tastes of anise and is indispensable in a Sazerac.

Regan’s Orange No. 6. The orange bitters always mentioned first. Famed bartender Gary Regan developed this zesty bitters in the 1990s, based on a recipe from the 1939 book The Gentleman’s Companion. Use it in an Old-Fashioned or any bourbon drink.

Fee Brothers. The company has been around since the 1860s and makes a range of bitters, from cardamom to rhubarb. Fee Brothers’ base ingredient is not ethanol but glycerin, a sugar alcohol, which some argue doesn’t make them true bitters.

Other companies that have come up in the last decade producing bitters in the pre-Prohibition tradition include the Bitter Truth from Germany, London-based Bob’s Bitters, Bittermens of New Orleans, and Bittercube of Milwaukee.

 

DO BITTERS EVER GO BAD?

Not likely. Keep them in your liquor cabinet out of light and they’ll be fine for up to five years, although some last much longer than that.