Sarsparilla Whiskers

I finally broke down and bought Root by Art of the Age. A fan of root beer as a kid, I thought Root looked delicious, but I didn’t really have an idea for it. Each time, I just smiled at it and remembered a camping trip in my early 20s with some friends and a bottle of schnapps.

Root isn’t much like root beer schnapps. For one thing, it’s much, much drier. And it’s the real deal: thirteen botanicals including the cane sugar, illustrated beautifully on the back label. And it is indeed delicious, calling to mind other herbal blockbusters like absinthe and Fernet Branca. I thought right away of a rye cocktail.



Sarsparilla Whiskers

• 2 oz rye (Dickel)
• 3/4 oz Root
• 1 dash absinthe
• 1 dash Bittercube Jamaica Bitters #2

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

People seem to feel strongly one way or the other about herbal digestifs. Root beer is polarizing as well. (The English people I’ve asked don’t seem to care for it. “Almost spat it out.” Maybe you have to be born in North America.)

Jitters and Bitters

Ever shake up pineapple juice? It’s kinda odd. There’s this foam that looks good on the top of the liquid in the tin, yet when you get to the bottom of the drink, the glass is coated with residual crud. Unappetizing. No wonder all those Tiki things come in ceramic idols full of crushed ice.

But I’ve learned that this can be avoided if you shake gently. Shake well, but shake very gently with plenty of ice. Pretend you’re about to begin the beguine with that someone you always wanted in high school. Smile like Burt Reynolds and shake to last you all night. You can double strain through mesh too for an additional step of refinement, though if there’s pulp in the mix, it’s kind of a pain in the behind.



Bourbon Beguine

• 2 oz bourbon
• 1/2 oz pineapple juice
• 1/2 lemon juice
• 2 dashes Jerry Thomas’ Decanter Bitters
• 1 dash Angostura Bitters
• Ginger beer (Fever Tree)

Shake (gently) all but ginger beer with ice and strain into an old fashioned. Add a couple of ice cubes and top with ginger beer. Lemon twist.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

I sometimes try the bourbon sour special drinks in bars but never care for them. They’re too candy-like and seem to have no complexity. I find that the missing thing that brings it all together is bitters.

Bustle In Your Hedgerow

This one’s all about dashes of stuff. I remember reading somewhere that a dash was a sixth of a teaspoon, though I’d like to know how this was worked out, never having seen a spoon that size. I generally reckon the dash at something around a quarter teaspoon. (I’m freer with my splash.)

Strong flavors can bulldoze a drink, though I think it’s funny when I see a bartender drip the Angostura over a Manhattan, for instance, like it’s going to explode with any sudden movement. If you use Fee Bros Orange Bitters in the drink below, as I’ve done, it’s fine to spike the bottle, though if you do that with Angostura Orange it would be better kept at one dash or you’ll taste nothing else.

Bustle In Your Hedgerow

• 1 1/2 oz dry gin
• 3/4 oz sloe gin
• 1/2 oz lemon juice
• 2 dashes (1/2 tsp) Laphroaig
• 1 – 2 dashes orange bitters
• 1 dash (scant 1/4 tsp) absinthe

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Herbal candy, juniper and blackthorn. Seaside at the end of the wood. Something in the underbrush is late for an engagement.

NYC Pub Crawling: Amor y Amargo

Back in the old town again, I was meeting a friend after work in the East Village and we decided on Amor y Amargo, a nifty little bar that specializes in drinks featuring all that can be called bitters. So we sat down and turned our bitter selves over to Chris and Nick who were happy to explain and suggest. They pointed out that there were no items on the list that contained juice (bitter perhaps but never sour), and that they didn’t use sugar. (We probably didn’t look like Lemon Drop customers—must be part of the patter.)

I ordered the nicely focused tequila White Negroni. My buddy gave me a sip of his Alpine Afternoon, which we agreed was unusual and a pleasant surprise.



Amor y Amargo also sells gear and bitters, and hosts classes as well. Thanks to everyone there for a very fine time.

Bittercube Jamaican #1 Bitters

Feeling in the mood for a dry, spirit-forward rum cocktail to try my new Jamaican #1 bitters from Bittercube, a bright combination of allspice, ginger and black pepper—all flavors I crave. Of course this calls for a big Jamaica rum.



Jamaica & Spain

• 1 1/2 oz Smith & Cross
• 1 1/2 oz fino sherry
• 2 dashes (24 drops) Bittercube Jamaican #1

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Pistachio notes in the sherry get freaky with the woodsy funk of the Smith & Cross. A friend who likes whiskey cocktails was asking about rum analogs....

Need another rum fix? Doug is serving up the magic of Tiki Month in grand style.

Bitter Lemon Drop

I just got a bottle of Gran Classico to play with, a beverage bitters with a fair amount of sweetness as well. It’s complex and lightly floral in a way that suggested an Aviation-style sour.



Bitter Lemon Drop

• 1 1/2 oz gin (Junípero)
• 1/2 oz Gran Classico
• 1/2 oz lemon juice

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Bronxathon: The Income Tax Cocktail

The Bronx Cocktail is one of those drinks that seems unfocused to me without bitters—so much so that it’s odd to me that there’s a bitters version with its own name. The recipe below comes by way of Dr. Cocktail. No clue why they named it something so dreadful unless it was the favorite of tax preparers.



The Income Tax Cocktail

• 1 1/2 oz dry gin (Tanqueray)
• 3/4 oz dry vermouth (Dolin dry)
• 3/4 oz sweet vermouth (Punt e Mes)
• juice of 1/4 orange (about 3/4 oz)
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters (Fee Bros Old Fashioned Aromatic Bitters)

Shake in an iced shaker (I stirred) and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange wheel.
SOURCE: TED HAIGH, A.K.A. DR. COCKTAIL, VINTAGE SPIRITS AND FORGOTTEN COCKTAILS

This version is one of my favorites and I make it from time to time, using Punt e Mes for the sweet vermouth and Fee’s instead of Angostura. But maybe one dash of bitters is ample. My orange on this round was a little insipid as Valencias go but the drink didn’t suffer too badly. I prefer to strain the orange juice for visual reasons.

Gibson with Scrappy’s Celery Bitters

A fun product appeared in one of my favorite package stores: Scrappy’s Bitters. I was intrigued by the celery one, as I had been playing with the idea of making a batch of my own. The retail price at my downtown place was decidedly steep at $17.99—you can get a decent 750-ml bottle of spirits for that kind of money. But they must’ve figured cocktail nerds like me would buy it, and of course I did. Shucks—I’m just a fool for celery.

The odd thing about celery bitters is that it had been a defunct product used in cocktails of a bygone era, and we don’t know much about it or how it was used, but cocktailians today are eager to revive it. It just sounds like such a cool idea for savory and dry cocktails.

For my first Scrappy’s experiment, I went with one of my favorite Martini variations, the Gibson. The way Aunt Mary made one, the Gibson had no bitters, but I don’t think she would’ve objected to a hint of celery. She liked her vegetables.



Gibson with Celery Bitters

• 2 oz gin
• 1/4 oz dry vermouth
• 1 dash celery bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Pickled onion.
SOURCE: COMPOSITE

One dash is enough. It’s nice stuff with good celery seed flavor but two dashes and a very dry cocktail like the Gibson starts to lose focus. The celery is best here as a subtle, dry, green note on the finish. Scrappy’s is more to my taste than the Bitter Truth Celery Bitters, which is very different in character—more like lemon verbena perhaps, and too pervasive for my taste.

Special thanks to my friends Flynn and Richard for their awesome pickled onions. I took them from a jar of pickled green beans they gave me. I hope to use one of the beans in a Bloody Mary post with the celery bitters if I can stop myself from eating them all.

Product Review: Fee Bros Aztec Chocolate Bitters

It drives me crazy when there’s an ingredient I want to play with but it’s not readily available. Yesterday I had an overwhelming sense of this as I scoured the city for chocolate bitters. Unsweetened chocolate is one of the great underutilized flavors in drinks. And according to some teasing online reviews of mail-order products, there’s at least one great chocolate bitters out there. I got the idea, though, that the Aztec Chocolate bitters by Fee Brothers, nice company though they are, might not be so great. But since it was the only product I could find on the shelves, I decided to see what I could make of it.

When I opened the bottle, the aroma seemed more cinnamon than anything else. It smelled odd for bitters, and then I noticed why: no alcohol. (Sigh.) In a glass, it seemed somewhat more chocolate and more vegetal. Still not much depth or complexity. Tasting a bit didn’t add anything to these impressions. Oh well.

I decided to try it in a Wild Turkey Manhattan: strong, spicy, hard to louse up.



Manhattan-Bound M Train

• 2 oz Wild Turkey 101-proof bourbon
• 3/4 oz Punt e Mes
• 5 or so dashes Fee Bros Aztec Chocolate Bitters
• 1 dash Angostura Bitters
• Cocktail cherry

Rowen, Fogged In Lounge

My first sip didn’t seem all that different from what is in fact my basic Manhattan recipe, but soon the housemate and I agreed that there was an elusive chocolate note on the finish. I wasn’t too sure that this was the novelty Manhattan the world was waiting for, but it was fun. There seemed to be something 1940s about it, like an old drugstore.

I tried reducing the Punt e Mes so that the chocolate might come through a little more, but what worked well in the background the first time got too much like Fox’s U-Bet—nicely reminiscent of childhood but weird in a cocktail.

Special thanks to Drew at PlumpJack in Noe Valley.