Centurion Magazine recently named Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters as one of the five best bitters:

“Mexican chocolate bitters have often been imitated by other brands but Bittermens’ is the original and still the best, combining the flavours of dark, bitter chocolate, cinnamon and various unspecified aromatics. This makes a superb addition to an Old Fashioned.”

Bittermens Hopped Grapefruit bitters were one of the bitters featured at the “Emperor’s New Bitters” seminar at this year’s Tales of the Cocktail. Chuck Taggart wrote an excellent recap of the seminar, and has this to say about Bittermens:

“Reeling from this, we moved on to the American bitters-making company that’s doing some of the most exciting work in the business — Bittermens (with no apostrophe, dammit!), founded in 2007 by Avery and Janet Glasser as experiments in their San Francisco kitchen, and now produced commercially in Brooklyn. Theirs is a completely modern approach to bitters-making, without attempting to recreate historical recipes. Their first product was the amazing Xocolatl Mole Bitters, using cacao as the primary flavor with a broad range of spices similar to what’s used in the exquisite Mexican mole negrosauce. They followed this with a bitters called ‘Elemakule Tiki Bitters, formulated for tropical and tiki-style drinks, and Boston Bittahs (heh, they’re in the yaahd not too faah from the caah), a summery citrus and chamomile blend, plus a few more and more still on the way.

The one we tasted was the latest incarnation of their initial experiments in producing a grapefruit bitters,Hopped Grapefruit Bitters. Organic grapefruit peel and oil, fruity Palisade hops, cinchona bark, gentian, cardamom and other ingredients are macerated in neutral grain spirit to make this bitters, which was fantastic. On the nose you get strong grapefruit and cardamom, and there was one offered aroma note of “irie” (“It smells like pot!”). On the palate bitter grapefruit and a bit of grapefruit pith, hops, crisp dryness, and even a note of the French gentian liqueur Suze. Jacob recommended these highly in tequila and mezcal drinks, and in a gin & tonic. Not so good would be the dark spirits of pretty much any variety, and for this one’s big surprise … beer! Not so much of a surprise, really; he said Hopped Grapefruit Bitters are amazing in a shandy gaff — half beer, half ginger beer, with a slice of grapefruit and several dashes of the bitters on top. I’m making that on the next hot Saturday.”

via The Emperor’s New Bitters

Original Bottles of Bittermens (Photo courtesy of cocktailchronicles.com)

Avery and Janet recently joined Damon Boelte on his radio show The Speakeasy, which airs on Heritage Radio Network. To hear us talk bitters, bierschnapps, shrubs and more, click on the link below:

The Speakeasy – Episode 26 - Bittermens Very Small Batch Bitters

Photo by Agaton Strom for The Wall Street Journal

Melanie Grayce West of the Wall Street Journal writes about Amor y Amargo, a new pop-up bar managed by Bittermens co-founder Avery Glasser:

“Amor y Amargo is the place to get geeky about bitters, the distilled herbs, peels and spices that give cocktails their oomph.

The East Village bar is a bit of a pivot for Ravi DeRossi, who runs next-door hotspots Death & Co. and Cienfuegos, among others. The bar is half cocktail den and half storefront. For the drinks, recent standouts include the A L’Ancienne, with cognac and mole bitters ($14), and the cola-tasting Redemption, made with Jägermeister and Laird’s Applejack ($12).

To be sure, this is a tiny niche bar for people who want to focus on bitters and amari liqueurs for a night. ‘I think if we had 50-plus seats we would have gone out of business by now,’ says Mr. DeRossi. “This venue allows us to be extremely interactive with our clientele.’”

The entire line of Bittermens Bitters (including our experimental series) can be purchased at the bar, located at 443 E. 6th Street in New York City.

via: To The Bitters End

Gourmet retailer The Meadow‘s blog “In the Cupboard” reviews the Burlesque Bitters:

Avery and Janet Glasser, prodigal makers of Bittermens Bitters, have relocated their facilities to the ever-more boozy borough of Brooklyn—or re-relocated, as Bittermens started out in Brooklyn before spending a few years transplanted in Boston. Burlesque Bitters is the first new concoction since the Glassers’ return to the fold.

The new concoction was released just ahead of Valentine’s Day with what I take to be an appeal to blushing lovers to undertake mixological experiments on one another. Avery says the “burlesque” preceded the bitters:

Photo Courtesy of The Meadow

“This is one of those flavors that just came about based on a friend mentioning the word burlesque during our first big bottling session after we restarted Bittermens. As soon as we started talking about Burlesque, it evoked a color and texture—red velvet, like a curtain at a stage show. Once the color and texture were decided upon, we started thinking about flavors that would evoke that feeling, and eventually developed this formula.”

Avery describes the flavor as floral and tart, though to me there’s a bit more to it than that. The bitter element is very strong, with a long, pitchy-peppery flavor that comes through clearly in the aroma, and more subtly in the taste.

The simplicity of the production process belies the complexity of the product: “steep herbs, roots, peels and spices in high proof neutral grain spirits, filter and dilute.” Hibiscus flowers and açaí berries comprise the main ingredients of these bitters, though they are bolstered by over a dozen other flavor components. The Burlesque Bitters are a unique concoction and a new endeavor for Bittermens:

“This is the first time where we attempted to play with bitter and tart flavors together, so coming up with a working balance that made tart a supporting flavor, not the dominant component, was necessary. However, once we figured out how to layer the flavors, it was just a matter of tweaking some of the components.”

Cocktail Recipe with Burlesque Bitters

But what to do with this tarty new addition to the cocktail world? The Glassers recommend gin, genever, rum, vermouth, and Italian amaros.

But Lord God above, putting bitters in amaro evokes for me some turducken-like contraption made by stuffing dynamite into a firecracker. Avery insists “these all play extremely well with these bitters. Certain scotches and tequilas also work extremely well.” Tequila has not worked out so well for us, with several attempts at cocktails coming off discordant and odd. Avery insists that he finds that the smokier mescals or richer reposados make for a good tryst with the Burlesque. I’ll grant that Burlesqued tequila evokes a border town saloon with high-kicking ruffles and smoke and player pianos—and that conjures a thirst.

Generally speaking, Bittermens Burlesque Bitters is a distinctive–or maybe seductively weird is the word–and absolutely necessary addition to the bitters world; elements of razzle-dazzle ricocheting off a sophisticated reserve… what I might venture to call the hallmark of the Glassers’ expertly crafted products.

Thomas Waugh of Death & Company in New York offers this recipe inspired by Bittermens Burlesque Bitters:

1½ oz bourbon (Eagle Rare 10)
½ oz Laird’s 100 Proof Applejack
½ tsp grenadine
½ tsp sugar cane syrup
1 barspoon (or teaspoon) Bittermens Burlesque Bitters

Stir and serve on the rocks (or on one large rock if possible) without any garnish.

These bitters would also be an excellent complement for a Negroni, for those of us with more modest home bars. Equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari topped off with a dash or two of Burlesque Bitters and garnished with a slice of orange – voilà!

You can buy the entire line of Bittermens bitters from The Meadow, retail and wholesale.

via In the Cupboard

In a recent article, the folks at VIVMag find that Bittermens Bitters take sparkling water “from ordinary to interesting”:

“One of our favorite benefits of the recent artisan cocktail craze is the increasing popularity and development of craft bitters. And we recently made a delicious discovery: A dash or two of bitters added to a glass of sparkling water makes for an elegant, tasty and nearly calorie-free alternative to a cocktail.

Most cocktail bitters contain alcohol, but so little is used — a few dashes in a glass — that there’s a negligible amount in our drinks. Bittermens — which has such flavors as Xocolatl Mole and Hopped Grapefruit — range from 44–53 percent alcohol, but the bitters are classified as food products and nonbeverage alcohol, like vanilla extract. Though Bittermens, which is made in very small batches in Brooklyn, NY, can be found at Manhattan artisan cocktail spots such as Death + Company and Mayahuel, we like them best for taking sparkling water from ordinary to interesting.”

via: Bitters: A Sweet Alternative to the Classic Cocktail

Lauren Shockey of the The Village Voice’s blog Fork in the Road wrote about Bittermens’ move to Brooklyn:

Good news for bitters lovers: Bittermens, a small-batch bitters company based out of Boston, has just moved to New York, opening a production facility in Red Hook. “We’d gotten to a point where we were exceeding the space we had. We got our start in New York City and it is really a market we have to be in. We could have hired brand managers or we could come down and make it happen for ourselves,” explained Avery Glasser, who co-owns the company with his wife, Janet.

The Glassers started making bitters in 2007. The company’s first bottles went on sale in 2009 through a partnership with the Bitter Truth of Germany. That relationship ended in July 2010, however, with the Glassers taking back production themselves. Since then, they have been producing bitters at a commercial kitchen up in Somerville, Massachusetts, which they leased from Taza Chocolate. It was there that they made the popular Xocolatl Mole Bitters, Hopped Grapefruit Bitters, Elemakule Tiki Bitters, and Boston Bittahs.

So what does this new space mean? Well, for one, new bitters. The company is launching Burlesque Bitters, available just in time for Valentine’s Day. The new batch combines hibiscus, açai berry, and long pepper for a cocktail flavoring extract that is sweet, spicy, and tart.

“The genesis for the Burlesque Bitters came out of left field. We were doing the bottling in Boston and we had a bunch of people over and for some reason someone mentioned the word ‘burlesque.’ And we thought burlesque bitters would be cool. I started thinking in colors — red, velvety curtains and tartan. And from that we went to basic flavors. I hadn’t had bitters with a floral, bitter, berry flavor so then we started looking at ingredients that would work: açai, rose hips, hibiscus. We started playing with those ideas and it came together quite beautifully. Between our first trial batch and our final batch we only made one adjustment,” said Avery.

How to use the new bitters? The better question is how not to use the bitters. “The first thing we had it in was a Negroni. It really plays well with vermouth, Campari, and amaros. It works well with outlier spirits, like Pisco or Cognac. It’s really becoming one of those bitters that’s like our mole bitters — it’s universal,” said Avery.

The bitters are currently available at the Meadow, Spuyten Duyvil, and Court Street Grocers, though the Glassers note that it’s still difficult because their product cannot be carried in liquor stores since it’s classified as a food product. But for now, they’re focusing on ramping up production in their new space — a large temperature-controlled room with a large sink for washing bottles. Maybe next in line we’ll be seeing a Brooklyn Bitters. One can only hope so.

via Bittermens Has Decamped to Red Hook and Is Now Making Burlesque Bitters

Camper English noted that Blackbird in San Francisco is using Bittermens in the La Flama Blanca from their winter menu…

LA FLAMA BLANCA  9

Del MaGuey Vida Mezcal, Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur, Cinnamon Syrup and Boston Chamomile Bittahs Topped with Fresh Ground Nutmeg–served in a coupe–

via Winter Drinks at Blackbird – Alcademics.com.

We recently had an opportunity to sponsor a Christmas Lingerie/Fashion event in Hong Kong…