The Top Things to Know about Cocktail Bitters

1. Bitters Are the Seasoning of the Cocktail World

Cocktail bitters are intensely flavored mixtures made by infusing combinations of herbs, roots, bark, spices, fruits, seeds, and botanicals in alcohol. They're used a few dashes at a time to add depth and balance. Think of bitters like salt and pepper for cocktails. You don't necessarily taste them separately—you notice when they're missing.

2. Bitters Started as Medicine

Long before bartenders were dashing bitters into Old Fashioneds, bitter herbal preparations were sold as medicinal tonics and patent remedies for everything from digestion to general aches and pains. Eventually somebody added booze to the medicine—or medicine to the booze—and things got considerably more interesting.

3. Bitters Helped Define the Word “Cocktail”

One of the earliest famous printed definitions of a cocktail, published in 1806, described it as a mixture of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters. In other words, bitters weren't an optional fancy ingredient. They were there when the cocktail got its job description.

4. Angostura Is the Big Name

Angostura bitters is probably the world's best-known cocktail bitters. It was created in 1824 by Dr. Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert, a German physician working in the Venezuelan town of Angostura. The formula remains a closely guarded secret. And yes, that oversized label is intentional today and has become one of the most recognizable packages behind the bar.

5. Angostura Bitters Don't Contain Angostura Bark

Despite the name, Angostura aromatic bitters aren't named for an ingredient. They're named after the town of Angostura, now Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, where Dr. Siegert developed them. So if you've been searching the ingredient list for Angostura...You can stop now.

6. Peychaud's Is a New Orleans Classic

Peychaud's Bitters was created by New Orleans apothecary Antoine Amédée Peychaud in the 1800s. Its lighter, slightly sweeter, anise-forward character became essential to the Sazerac. Angostura may rule the world, but in New Orleans, Peychaud's has home-field advantage.

7. Orange Bitters Were Once a Bar Staple

Orange bitters were an important cocktail ingredient in the 19th and early 20th centuries before largely disappearing from American bars during the decades following Prohibition.

The cocktail revival brought them roaring back.

Today, orange bitters are once again common in Martinis and many classic and modern cocktails.

Apparently orange bitters just took a very long vacation.

8. A Dash Isn't an Exact Measurement

A “dash” of bitters sounds wonderfully precise until you try measuring one.

Dash size varies by bottle, dasher top, angle, force, and how full the bottle is. Generally, you're adding a very small amount, not pouring bitters like a spirit.

That's why recipes often say “2 dashes” rather than “0.173 ounces.”

Sometimes bartending still gets to be fun.

9. Bitters Come in Hundreds of Flavors

The modern cocktail revival created a bitters boom. Beyond aromatic and orange, you'll find flavors such as grapefruit, chocolate, celery, lavender, peach, walnut, cherry, coffee, cardamom, mole, rhubarb, and tiki bitters.

If you can imagine a flavor, somebody has probably put it in a tiny bottle with a fancy label.

10. Cocktail Bitters Usually Contain Alcohol

Most traditional cocktail bitters are alcohol-based and can have a surprisingly high ABV. But because only a few dashes are normally used, the amount added to a cocktail is tiny.

They're also extremely concentrated, so drinking them straight is generally not the point—although there are cocktails, famously the Trinidad Sour, that turn that idea completely upside down and use Angostura bitters in much larger quantities.

That's the wonderful thing about bartending:

Every time somebody establishes a rule, another bartender invents a cocktail that breaks it.