Cocktails can be as inspired as any other creation in the world of cuisine. Mixologists create cocktails often using exotic ingredients and bitters are back!
In fact, the resurgence of craft cocktails is due in large part to the rediscover of bitters. Bitters makers are producing flavors such as barbecue, fig, and Sriracha bitters or reverse-engineering recipes that had been lost to history.
Bitters is traditionally an alcoholic preparation flavored with botanical matter such that the result is characterized by a bitter, sour, or bittersweet flavor. Numerous longstanding brands of bitters were developed initially as patent medicines, but are now sold as digestifs and cocktail flavorings.
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. They are to mixology what salt is to cooking.
The History of Bitters
The earliest origins of bitters can be traced back as far as the ancient Egyptians, who may have infused medicinal herbs in jars of wine. By the 19th century, the British practice of adding herbal bitters (used as preventive medicines) to Canary wine had become immensely popular in the former American colonies.
