NYTimes article on bitters

[Nathan]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/dining/2...html?ref=dining

[slkinsey]

Interesting article on bitters in today's NY Times: A Bit of History, Reborn in a Glass, by Roh Willey

The article more or less follows two threads about bitters today. One thread is about the re-emergence of bitters as a central cocktail ingredient that is happening as part of the nascent cocktail renaissance. More and more cocktail bars are stocking multiple brands of bitters (many of them house-made or privately-sources), and cocktailians view bitters as an integral part of mixology. The first bar in NYC to feature an extensive collection of bitters was likely Pegu Club, where Audrey Saunders also has an interesting and unique take in the other direction by featuring multiple single-flavor tinctures, which we might view as breaking down bitters into their component flavors. Another bar with a large bitters collection is Death & Company, where head bartender Phil Ward is an expert in matching bitters to different spirits and cocktails:

"It’s almost like glue that holds a cocktail together," said Philip Ward, the head bartender at Death & Co., in the East Village, where 17 of the 37 house drinks include bitters. "Add a dash, and the other three or four ingredients in the cocktail are in some way going to be able to relate with at least one or two things in the bitters."

The challenge is figuring out which bitters form the strongest bond in a given drink. "I think that’s why bitters are so cool," Mr. Ward said. "You don’t really know what they do. You just find out what they do by using them."

There's also another thread throughout the article, concerning the efforts of our own John "johnder" Deragon at formulating a recreation of Abbott's bitters.

LAST October, John Deragon began tinkering with a recipe for Abbott’s bitters, a cocktail ingredient that has beguiled drinks fanatics for years. Over the next two months, Mr. Deragon, the chief technology officer of Waterfront Media, an online health and wellness company in Brooklyn, tweaked the formula drop by drop, using single-spice infusions known as tinctures. After about 18 test runs, he had a version he thought he could work with, and by March he was aging his second batch in a five-gallon rye whiskey barrel purchased from a distillery in upstate New York.

John can (and hopefully will) fill us in more on his bitters experimentations. All I can say is that I've got several of John's bitters in my home bar, and they're all outstanding. The Abbott's in particular is delicious, and several NYC cocktail spots have his bitters behind the bar.

[bostonapothecary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/dining/2...html?ref=dining

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pretty interesting.... while working i gave up drinking different bitters and soda for vermouth and soda. it really grows on you. my favorites being rosso antico and punt Y mes.

if anyone wants to straddle the line.... jamaican rootsman tonic is loaded with bitter roots and barks yet sorta vermouthy even though its not based on wine....

http://www.blackherbals.com/Rootsman_Roots.htm

i mainly drink it for the raw moon bush

[johnder]

John can (and hopefully will) fill us in more on his bitters experimentations.  All I can say is that I've got several of John's bitters in my home bar, and they're all outstanding.  The Abbott's in particular is delicious, and several NYC cocktail spots have his bitters behind the bar.

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I have to say I was pretty surprised to see that article today. I didn't realize I was going to be quite such the focus of the article.

There is a pretty lengthly thread here talking about my experiments with Abbotts here.

It was a pretty long and tedious process and especially hard since I never tasted the original product. Kevin Verspoor's work was really amazing and gave me a great springboard to start working on it, so I owe a lot to him as well.

Currently I only have 3 bitters I have been focusing on, a general aromatic bitters, the barrel aged Abbotts and a Grapefruit bitters. All of which are I think at a stable point and I can reliably reproduce. The only open variable right now is the amount of aging to do on the Abbotts. It looks like I will have the opportunity to taste the real thing soon, so that will give me a good baseline for the aging process.

John

[Kent Wang]

There is a pretty lengthly thread here talking about my experiments with Abbotts here.

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This link is broken.

When and how will we be able to purchase one of your bitters?

[eje]

Sorry, merged the Abbott's topic into the main bitters topic for what I thought would be ease of searching.

Johnder's bitters experiment starts here in that topic:

Abbott's Bitters