BittermensAG

It sounds like a proprietary cocktail from a single bar. If I was going to guess - try making a Tom Collins, but switch in Raki (or if you can’t find that, Ouzo) for the gin.

The Gentiane des Pères Chartreux is a great gentian liqueur - I think they probably use 40-50% more gentian in their maceration in comparison to products like Aveze and Salers, which feel very light and refreshing. It's got a great backbone and really stands up in a cocktail. The HB Gentiane de Lure is fantastic and one of the products I wish we could regularly get in the states. However, it's not a liqueur - it's a aromatized/fortified wine. So, it's more of an analogue to products like Cocchi Americano than a true liqueur like the Gentiane des Pères Chartreux.

Psst... not to self promote or anything, but don't forget about the Amère Sauvage. We may make it here in New York, but the wild, organic gentian we use comes right from Eastern France as well!

Regarding our "pricing strategy" - what we charge is just representative of what it costs us to both make the product and launch the brand. One of the things that people don't always know about when it comes to spirits is that every state where we ship requires us to register the brand and the labels at our cost. Many of these states also require bonds and monthly excise tax payments. Just to give you a round idea, we've put in over $15,000 just into registration fees (which we'll never see again). We're a self-funded company. There are no partners with deep pockets - which means we produce a batch and count on getting payment in from our distributors so we can pay off the bottles (which is an extremely high cost component) so we can put in another batch. When we've grown to the point that we're producing 10x the amount of what we produce now and we've paid off all of our starting expenses, it's possible that the price will start to go down. We certainly don't want price to be a barrier for folks to purchase our spirits, but at the same time, we have to make sure that we're pricing it in a manner that we can stay in business.

The Peppercake is one of our experimentals and only made in very small quantities (mostly because it's damned expensive to make and a real pain to filter). We'll have some more available on December 1.

Oh, and if anybody in Washington or Oregon is looking for our spirits - we can be ordered by special order from any liquor store. We won't be in the state systems until the first order goes through, but then orders will process pretty quickly!

You can taste them at AyA and have drinks made with them, but AyA doesn't have liquor store license. I don't think you can actually legally hold a liquor store and a bar/restaurant license at the same physical premises (though you can hold a grocery/beer sale license and a beer store license... very strange). Luckily, Astor is stumbling distance away!

By the way - thanks to the great folks at Astor Wines and DrinkUpNY.com, all of the Bittermens Spirits are now available and shippable around the country! Our CA/NV distributor has an allocation en route to their warehouses, MA will ship shortly (once our state certificate comes in). Next week, we should be ready to ship to our European and Asian distributors as well.

OK, thanks! Definitely interested if I can find a source. So, the good news is that later this week, we'll be able to name a great online liquor store who ships to 46 states (sorry, TX, WV, NV and MA). For Nevada, our shipment to our distributor is heading out this week as we have received back our brand registration certificate from the state - and we should get clearance from Massachusetts to ship to our distributor there by next week at the latest. Any Texan bartenders out there have a recommendation for a good boutique distributor?

How in the hell did I miss that drink? Time to do a little tinkering behind the bar with the new Bittermens Amère Sauvage Gentiane to see how it works in this cocktail. It's time for a night of inebriation in the name of research!

I've always used a little bit of citric acid and the smallest pinch of salt when using the fast extraction with mint... I found it accentuated the mint flavor and stabilized it by preventing rapid oxidation.

Sorry to sound a bit defensive, but I have no idea what point you're trying to make here. The product name is "Amère Nouvelle" - looking at the bottle sitting right next to me. It wasn't just pulled out of our asses - we worked with industry folks and journalists that are native Francophones, as well as our Parisian importers before deciding on a name and they all agreed that it was grammatically correct and preferred the name in the feminine instead of the masculine "Amer Nouveau". And for those asking why we killed the burnt caramel from the recipe, we aren't making a Picon clone. We are exploring the Alsatian orange/gentian flavor profile and worked to create a complex bitter liqueur that is designed to work in cocktails as well as on its own (or simply added to beer). Our take after many prototypes (some with burnt caramel, some without) was that, though it may result in a more familiar color, caramelized sugar made for a less interesting and useful product. I know I may sound a bit harsh here - maybe it's just fatigue from the regulatory issues of launching a liqueur line. I really do want to get feedback from folks that have tried the products, and I promise not to be defensive then!

Dan, I couldn't have said it better myself. Avery

Wait until you try the real Bittermens Hopped Grapefruit Bitters - it's our original grapefruit formula, now produced in Brooklyn, not produced under license by TBT.

Wow - swing and a miss there. There's no tax or licensing loop-hole that is attached to the term "Bitters". In fact, "bitters" doesn't even exist as a category with the TTB on the nonbeverage alcohol side. Bitters fall under the designation of "Flavorings and Flavoring Extracts" from a tax perspective. If the formulation is either evaluated by the Nonbeverage Lab of the TTB to be not suitable for drinking, or if your formulation passes the self-assessment criteria, then it's considered a food product and taxed as such. Bitters, as the name states, are there to provide additional bitterness. The cocktail world has just confused the word "bitters" with "tinctures", which can just as easily qualify as nonbeverage alcohol as they can pass the unsuitability tests, even if they do not deliver bitterness. This just shows what happens when we are sloppy with language - we end up with engineers that don't work with engines and bitters that just aren't bitter. What's next? Apothecaries that can't dispense prescriptions? (and yes, that was meant as a joke, not a dig... I may be a bitters maker, but I'm not that bitter!)