Wait, You Want *How* Many Ounces of Bitters In That Cocktail?

Bitters by the...ounce?

Over the past month or so, this newsletter has looked at bitter liqueurs like Cynar and Fernet, as well as dasher-bottle bitters — or non-potable bitters — like Angostura Aromatic, Regan’s Orange, Peychaud’s, and Bittermen’s Mole that are typically used just a few drops or dashes at a time. 

In most cases, both types of bitters are used as modifiers, adding strong flavors to an otherwise conventional cocktail. But as we saw with the Bitter Guiseppe — a kind of Cynar Manhattan — even a powerful bitter liqueur like Cynar can be used as the base ingredient for a cocktail. 

As it turns out, the same thing is true with non-potable dasher bottle bitters like Angostura Aromatic. Yes, you heard me right. You can use an ounce or more of dasher-bottle bitters as a base ingredient. 

You might think this sounds bizarre, and frankly this sort of drink won’t be for everyone. But Angostura Aromatic Bitters are, in some sense, a super-bitter, incredibly flavorful liqueur with the proof of a base liquor like whiskey or gin.

Look at the label on that little yellow-top bottle on your bar cart and you will see it clearly marked: “44.7% alc./vol.”

Angostura Aromatic Bitters are almost 90 proof! (In some ways, that makes Angostura a little like Fernet-Branca — a quite powerful bitter booze with a comparatively less sweet profile that comes in at a surprisingly high proof.) 

With a bit of work, you can take this very bitter, fairly high-proof stuff and build a sour out of it, somewhat like the Cynar Inquisition I wrote about recently. 

The result is a very weird, very kicky, very unusual, very, well, aromatic cocktail that has become a sort of cult classic. 

This isn’t just a drink to impress and confuse your friends, who almost certainly won’t have tasted anything like it before. This is a drink to impress and confuse yourself — because unless you are already a hardened bitters fanatic, you really won’t have tasted anything like it before.

Indeed, this is a drink I’ve come back to a few times a year for a while now, just for the pleasurable shock value of it. And every single time I do, it takes me for a wild ride. What in the heck is in this drink???, my brain demands to know, despite the fact that I mixed the ingredients and poured the cocktail myself.

The answer is bitters. An awful lot of Angostura Aromatic Bitters. 

The Secrets of Angostura

No one in the general public knows precisely what’s in Angostura Aromatic Bitters. The formula is famously secret, with some sources saying it’s known to just five people.