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Think You Know Bitters? Mark Bitterman, Bitters Expert, Knows Better
By
Nell Casey
Published Apr 2, 2014
Modified Apr 2, 2014
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Jen Carlson/Gothamist
By
Nell Casey
Published Apr 2, 2014
Modified Apr 2, 2014
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The paper-covered bottle of Angostura may be collecting dust at your local dive but across the city—and the country—cocktail bars are employing all kinds of bitters from a traditional dash in an Old Fashioned to a heavy hand of funky flavors like chocolate, curry and even chili pepper.
Bitters expert and selmelier—aka salt expert—Mark Bitterman runs The Meadow, a bi-coastal food shop that specializes in bitters, salt and dark chocolate; quite the trifecta. As an expert in the field, we asked Bitterman—yes, that's his real name!—to break down the appeal and usage of this oft-herbacious tincture and recommend different ways to enjoy a dash of bitters outside of the traditional cocktail.
Has the cocktail boom engrossing the country right now led to an uptick in bitters sales and people being more interested in bitters? Yeah, I think bitters are, in a sense, kind of the harbinger of the cocktail movement. I think that they're the one ingredient that kind of speaks of craft cocktails. It's almost by definition: you have a cocktail and you put bitters in it and then it's a craft cocktail. I know that's an exaggeration, but I think that they are definitely a signal that someone is paying attention to both the more historically rooted way of thinking about cocktails and also at the same time paying attention to some of the technical aspects of cocktail-making.
(Nell Casey/Gothamist)
Most people when they hear the word 'bitters' think of Angostura. What's the reaction when they find out there's this whole other world of flavors? It's nice, and it's a funny thing; with so many ingredients that we have in our lives, with bitters there were hundreds of different types of bitters out there and then they all got wiped out with Prohibition. When alcohol came back in, a few of these made their way back into circulation. So we've forgotten that really by definition, bitters are an extremely varied ingredient. Angostura is phenomenal bitters, but its only one of dozens of types of aromatic bitters, and aromatic bitters are only one of many dozens of types of other bitters in general.
So people come in and they're kind of like, "Wow, there's this whole other potential!" What's neat about it is with Angostura, you can give people a really quick reference as to why it matters and how different these other bitters are and what a difference they can make in your drink. There are plenty of examples we talk about including one everyone knows: the Manhattan cocktail. You make a Manhattan cocktail with Angostura syrup and you get all those intense baking spices and Latin American spices and it's very rich and very redolent. So it's crazy; that's a very overpowering flavor in a kind of nice, lean, beautiful booze-forward Manhattan cocktail. So imagine having a bitters that actually accentuates the lean, more austere delicate flavors of a good rye, instead of converting them into kind of a cupcake.
And so you show people a Boker's bitters or Dandelion Burdock bitters or even something a little bit different like a Chinese spiced bitters with a little bit of anise inflection. There's all these different things you can do and take in different directions just by changing the bitters. So I think what's appealing to people is that you come in a little bit shocked. But you realize afterwards that you have this one ingredient that lets you modify a very traditional drink. You get very different results without changing anything technical in the drink itself.
(Nell Casey/Gothamist)
Could you explain the difference between the bitters, and how much variety you're gonna see using one versus another? The biggest and primary family is the aromatic bitters like Angostura and Peychaud's; those are the ones that everybody knows. And then there are these pre-Prohibition era ones like Abbott's—which, by the way, Abbott's is the original Manhattan cocktail bitters—and Boker's and all these different Swedish bitters. These are all aromatic bitters that have this kind of bitter foundation and then a bunch of spices built around it and maybe some herbs. They're not necessarily all similar but you can kind of tell that they all relate to each other in the same way and function in a drink the same way. They work well in brown liquors, they add warmth and complexity.
Another family of bitters that's very distinct would be a citrus bitters, primarily orange but there's also grapefruit and lemon. Citrus bitters are fantastic because obviously they bring a citrus edge to whatever you put in it. So obviously fantastic in white alcohol, gin, vodka and even rum. These citrus bitters do add a bitter edge to things, which I think helps to kind of align the flavors, but they also have a brightness, so they brighten up and illuminate flavor.
And then from there it's a little bit more difficult to break them down, but you think about sort of herbaceous bitters. So there's lavender and some of them have kind of a complex amalgam of weird, clean herbs like sage and thyme and things like that. And that again is a savory dimension; the celery, I'd call it of herbaceous bitters. You put celery or any one of these in a savory drink like a Bloody Mary or a Michelada or something like that and its transformative. You love the acidity of the tomato juice, but what you're missing in a Bloody Mary or a Michelada is a little bit of bitter edge. You know how tomato juice can feel like a bit much, a little overpowering? That's why you drink tomato juice on ice, you'd never drink it straight out of a bottle or very few people do. The bitters, it freshens that.
(Nell Casey/Gothamist)
Are these more uniquely flavored bitters typically made on an artisanal, small-batch level or do you see bigger commercial industries now exploring these different types? You know, amazingly, the biggest commercial enterprise making bitters in this kind of creative way is Fee Brothers, and most of what they do aren't really technically bitters. They don't really have a bitter edge to them, they're more of a flavor dimension. The inexpensive Fee Brothers that cost like nine or ten dollars a bottle...they have a whole new slew of flavors and a lot of them are really fun and great; I'm not taking away from how fun they are. But they're not alcohol-based flavor extract with a bitter foundation, which is really, in a sense, the definition of what a bitters is. Fee Brothers are more of a glycerin-based product with flavoring in it.
So they've been very creative with these, but those really aren't fundamentally all that much a bitter. On the flip side, they do have a couple new products: barrel-aged gin bitters and a whiskey barrel-aged bitters that are truer bitters than the ones that first came out. And those are quite interesting, so that's the biggest company that's kind of playing with 'em. I think that the older companies like Angostura...actually Angostura recently came out with an orange bitters a couple of years ago. It's almost annoying—it's a name brand, everyone knows Angostura—but the orange bitters is phenomenal. It'd be cool to be able to say, "Oh, I don't like to go with those big brands," but the Angostura orange bitters is absolutely one of the best orange bitters out there.
(Nell Casey/Gothamist)
Are bitters in beer and wine something that's common, or is this something that's yet to take off? Absolutely, the starting point would be a champagne cocktail. I'm not sure you'd be making an exquisite champagne cocktail with really good champagne, in that case you probably shouldn't be making it into a cocktail! The way I started was with homemade peach bitters and I made essentially a Bellini in my champagne, but with a little bit of a bitter edge. I don't like sweet cocktails so I made kind of this lean, acidic, bittersweet Bellini. It was frickin' great, and since then I've told customers to buy peach bitters. It doesn't really do quite the same job, but it's a quick and easy way to make a really nice, extra peachy flavorful Bellini. But you know, there's champagne cocktails with lavender in them and champagne cocktails with cherry in them; cherry bark vanilla bitters and champagne is beautiful.
Another great example would be in sangria. What the bitters are doing is adding a little complexity; bringing out the acidity of the wine and the citrus. You're bringing in a little bit of extra spice. Now, spice in sangria is fantastic, so using a bit of aromatic bitters there is great. For example there's a Spanish bitters by one of my very favorite bitters makers in the world, Dr. Adam Elmegirab in England. Spanish bitters in sangria is just out of this world.
(Nell Casey/Gothamist)
What about non-alcoholic uses? I know some bars, if you have a stomachache they'll give you soda water and bitters. Is there use in your life for bitters if you're not having a stiff drink? When there's not a lot going on in the evening and I just prefer not to have a drink at night—I mean I don't like to pride myself on that, but it does occur to me, to not have an alcoholic drink at night—it's great to make club soda and bitters for example, straight up. It's the classic thing and you can put quite a bit, especially of the Swedish bitters. It's a classic remedy for a stomachache with the Swedish bitters. You can put five or six dashes of it, you can put Angostura in there or any bitters at all. I love to do a spicy bitters in a club soda. I put bitters sometimes in my kid's cocktails, it just kind of cracks me up when we're playing bartender. And again it just gives a little bit of complexity, and a little bit of a grown-up edge that's not just sweet on sweet on sweet. So I'd say you can use it willy-nilly in non-alcoholic beverages, and of course I also use it in cooking regularly.
What kind of things do you usually make? So if I was thinking of a vinaigrette, especially a citrus salad dressing, I'd always put bitters in there. I'd squeeze a lemon into some shallots and olive oil or something and always put a dash or two of grapefruit bitters. Or if I've kind of got more fruits in my salad I'd put in a dash of orange bitters, like with pomegranate seeds or something like that. If I'm making a dressing or sauce that has more of a sweet edge to it I'd put aromatic bitters in there. Abbott's bitters with some balsamic dressing or better yet Abbott's bitters in a balsamic reduction that you glaze over some pork ribs or just on top of some slow-grilled fish is really, really fantastic. It's fun, it's a little bit of a Rachel Ray shortcut. You grab your bottle, you shake out a dash or two and you don't even have to tell anybody and you just Rachel Ray-up your food a little bit.
(Nell Casey/Gothamist)
So if someone was looking to take their first step into the world of bitters, do you have certain bottles that you'd sort of recommend as a bitters starter kit? That's so funny. So we're just now formalizing an actual bitters starter kit and it's an extremely good question because it's what we get all the time. So I think the first starter kit for bitters, you should probably start with Angostura and probably Regan's orange. Because, Angostura is familiar and it's fantastic. So if you're not an experienced mixologist, you're using recipes where the Angostura has already been factored into the recipe. So it's really high-quality bitters and a great starting-off point.
I have no problem talking up a big name brand, because it's definitely where you want to start. You probably also want to start with the Regan's orange, which is very bitter and rather simple, not a very complex bitter. And that's very handy to try that, you could put it in all your white alcohol or even also putting that in a Negroni, or you could try it in a Manhattan or an Old-fashioned; I love Sidecars. So, those would be the two starters if you really don't have any bitters at all I'd buy those two straight off the bat.
And if you've already tried Angostura or have it, then I would go straight to a pre-Prohibition era aromatic bitters. So a really good starting point might be a Boker's bitters. Superb bitters; there's a couple different makers of it now, but my favorite is the Dr. Adam Elmegirab I mentioned earlier. Or the Dandelion Burdock bitters for a more delicate-tasting, floral smelling bitters. One of the best orange bitters to recommend because it's from our neck of the woods is Hella's citrus bitters, which is Brooklyn based. It's wicked delicious bitters; super complex and it'll add more of a rounded, caramelized flavor to things than the Regan's. A lot more complex.
(Nell Casey/Gothamist)
So those would be a good starting point, and then you can have a little fun. You can get any kind of different number of herbs, you can buy a little bit of licorice. One of my favorite tricks, by the way, comes up all the time. You know, people love Sazeracs, it's all going back to tradition and people making Sazeracs with absinthe. But, I've never really been convinced of hour good a job absinthe does in the cocktail. To me, it kind of makes the drink taste a bit flabby a lot of the time, like someone laid this blanket of absinthiness over a Sazerac. So instead I love to use an anise or a fennel bitters or Chinese bitters instead. It's amazing how well it works. Every single element is shining in its own light.
The Meadow is located at 523 Hudson Street, (212) 645-4633
Tagged
bitters
cocktails
mark bitterman
the meadow
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Nell Casey
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