Can't Find a Bitter Man--Dark Cherry Bitters

What's in the bain?

Can't Find a Bitter Man--Dark Cherry Bitters 

Is this the bitter end, or the bitter beginning?

Writing the title to this post makes me remember back when Better Man was released by Pearl Jam in 1994. I used to think the lyrics went, ‘Can’t find the butter man.’ What the hell is a butter man? Granted, I was only 6 at the time and Eddie Vedder’s singing voice is mumbled at the best of times. What does this have to do with my Tipped Mixology’s bitter recipe? Absolutely nothing.

Eddie Vedder via Last.fm

The original plan for this recipe was to substitute the bought-out bitters I was adding to our cherry-apple old fashioned drink mix. (Still awaiting a name for that one) I then found myself doing way more research on the subject of bitters as I usually find myself doing when I get engrossed in a topic. Before a couple of hours, I was sourcing and ordering spices I’ve never even heard of. I found a classic French bitters recipe and thought, what the hell, let’s improvise. The quantities stayed the same for the most part, but everything else changed.

You’ll find that most bitters recipes will use spices such as black walnut, gentian root, and cinchona. Because so many bitters recipes called for these products, I couldn't find a site that had any of them in stock. I went with flavors that I knew and was relatively comfortable with. Instead of using whole cherries for the flavoring, I went with cherry bark which filled the majority of my recipe. Among the cherry bark were common spices like cinnamon and clove, along with some uncommon spices such as sarsaparilla root which is used in root beer. I won’t list the recipe online for a very good reason—this stuff is great! You’ll all be able to buy these bitters side-by-side with our drink mixes soon enough. What I will do is give a basic procedure to follow.

Unmasking the bain

Pick a flavor. Maybe you want to make orange bitters or something more adventurous like pine… I don’t know, you decide. The ratios I used were a little different from other recipes online, but they all work in relatively the same way. Our ratio is:

-       3 parts alcohol – 40 proof (we used bourbon, but vodka works well too)

-       3 parts water

-       1 part sugar

-       2 parts primary herb or spice – this will be your main flavor

-       1 part secondary herb or spice – this will support your main flavor

-       1 part tertiary herb or spice 

-       ½ part quaternary (yes, that's a word) herb or spice

·         Can add up to two quaternary herbs or spices

-       ¼ part quinary (this is also a word) herb or spice

·         Can add up to four quinary herbs or spices

What this amounted to for us was a 750ml bottle of bourbon, the same amount of water, a cup of sugar, two cups of cherry bark, and so on. I thought it would be best to say that you can add up to a cup of each category of herb or spice addition. For instance, the quinary addition consisted of our main bitter spices. I added four ¼ cups of spices to add up to one cup total for out bitter category. I also decided to split up the tertiary addition into two categories, fragrance and color and adding ½ cup of each to satisfy this addition. This step is pretty much optional, but a great novelty if you think about it. Much the same way hops adds aroma to beer you can add pungent herbs or spices like rosemary or peppercorn to this stage. The color step can be saved for something like tea or specific flowers that will bleed their color into your bitters without much flavor added. What I’m trying to say with this is have fun… there’s not much you can do wrong here.

Our spice mix after one month

The only thing you’ll need after you weigh out your 5-6 cups of spices and other ingredients is time. A lot of bitters recipes will boil or poach the herbs in the mixture before straining and cooling. I think something is lost in this process. I left my bitters sitting at room temperature, all combined together, for One Month. Yes, one month. Nothing can grow in this concoction due to the bitter nature of the spices and the alcohol content, so don’t worry about that. What you’ll get from this slow aging of the spices are mellow undertones that wouldn’t normally happen with boiling or poaching—the bitters get a chance to mature.

Drip, drip... one of three straining stages

What you’re left with is a rich, syrupy liquid. Much like Angel’s Share with aging bourbon, you’ll lose some of your liquid to evaporation and some more to the spices' absorbing. Take a 1-1 ratio of your alcohol to water and replace what you lost, adding up to what you should have had in the beginning—in my case, I added a little bit to get me 1500ml of product. The resulting liquid after being strained once with a chinois, once through a triple layer of cheese cloth, and once through a coffee filter, left a completely sediment-free liquid and an overwhelmingly complex cherry bitters. I tried this in a simple old fashioned recipe and my mind was blown—it added so much depth of an already great drink recipe. Manhattans, champagne with bitters, and even a simple screwdriver is completely transformed with these bitters. I wondered what all the fuss was about until I tried making my own bitters, and now I know. A little bit of time and patience yields an absolute staple in any bar.

Side-by-side with a leading bitter that uses artificial
FD&C Red #40 to color their bitters

-Adam from Tipped Mixology