Tag: bitters

A Little Overkill at my Tales of the Cocktail Seminar on Bitter Flavors
This year as usual I gave a seminar at Tales of the Cocktail (well this year I gave one myself and then was on a panel for another one; this post is about the one I gave solo). This one was called Bitter Flavors: Taste the Rainbow.

The idea was to give everyone information and tasting on individual bitter flavors- particularly the major ones of quinine/cinchona, wormwood, gentian, and rhubarb- because so often they're mixed together in amari and bitters. I chose for my tasting spirits that I thought were most indicative of the bitter flavors:
- Rhubarb: Zucca (they sponsored the seminar)
- Wormwood: Amaro Alta Verde
- Gentian: Saler's Gentiane
- Cinchona: Kina Aero d'Or
Plus Zucca wanted to feature a couple of cocktails, so at just 1 sample of each type of bitters I was worried that I wouldn't be able to ensure everyone could really isolate each type of bitter flavor.

So, as is my way, I panicked and went way overboard on homemade samples. By the end, everyone at their seat had 2 cocktails, 4 bitter beverages, 10 microtubes of bitter tasting samples, and 5 bitter solids.

The preparation took me (along with help from my pal Maria) dozens of hours. I made infusions of various bitter flavors in alcohol, then diluted those down with water so they were essentially non-alcoholic. Then we put them all in microtubes and the solids in little baggies (luckily I live near a bong store), labelled them all, and then made an index and assembled ziplocks of everything.

Oh, and I also created a print-out of most popular vermouth and amaro brands, and what the known and suspected bittering agents are in each. That project took me another 20 hours or so. Sometimes I think I might go too far.

So during the seminar we now had plenty to taste and in the case of those big four bitter flavors, a finished product to confirm that taste in a product they could find on the shelf. The seminar seemed to go really well (we'll see when I get the reviews back) and I certainly felt everyone got their money's worth- a big fear of mine when I'm presenting.

(photo stolen from Maggie Campbell)

I'm not sure that I'll ever do this seminar again in this format, but I may put together an ebook of some sort with the information from the seminar in it.
August 7, 2018
Angostura Rums Distillery Visit

In my last post I talked about the history and production of Angostura Bitters. In this one I'll talk about the history and production of Angostura Rums. I visited the distillery on Trinidad in March 2011.

History of Angostura Rums

The House of Angostura was in the bitters business since 1824, but didn't enter the rum business until after their move to the island of Trinidad in 1875. At first they were dealing with bulk rums rather than distilling their own, but in 1945 they purchased their own distillery. It wasn't until the 1960s that the profits from rum outsold those of bitters. In 1973 they purchased the Fernandes Distillery located next door and incorporated those brands (including Vat19) into their production.

According to the film we watched at the distillery, in 1991 they had a production capacity of 22 million liters of alcohol per year. According to their website, it's now 50 million liters. Wow! The distillery takes up 20 acres of land. They make both their own brands, rum for other people, and sell bulk rum. More on the other brands later.

Production of Angostura Rums

Currently all the products are made on enormous column stills. They say they've been experimenting with some pot still stuff, but they're not making anything yet.

No sugar has been produced on the island since 2003, so all the molasses to make these rums is purchased on the open market. (10Cane, which is also made on Trinidad but I don't believe at this distillery, uses some fresh local sugar cane juice in their rum blend.) We tastes molasses off the grate where it is poured into the system- it reminded me of old-style black licorice.

(Grate through which molasses is poured.)

For different rum products made at the distillery they use different strains of yeast. Their barrels are ex-bourbon barrels. These are reused to age rum three times before they're discarded or recycled. We weren't allowed to enter the aging warehouse as they said it's a bonded property. From outside, it didn't look nearly big enough to age all the rum produced here, but they said it's their only aging warehouse it turns out they have five other aging warehouses also.

For further reading, I suggest Ed Hamilton's write up on MinistryOfRum.com.

The Line of Rums

After the distillery tour we did a tasting of some of the rums with Master Distiller Jean Georges. Oh, by the way, the line of Angostura rums is finally coming to the US soon, and they are tasty.

The 3-year reminded me (keep in mind my tasting notes aren't supposed to make sense to anyone but me) of the insides under-ripe banana peels, with a soft creaminess that wasn't too vanilla-y.

The 5-year, interestingly, is actually filtered to remove some of its color. It has the caramel-vanilla notes you'd expect from a rum of this age, but with a nice fuzzy texture. I was also picking up a lot of notes of liquid limestone. The finish had some mint/oregano spice to it and it was just a touch tannic.

The 7-year rum is actually the 5-year rum which is blended and then put back into casks to marry for 2 years. The nose is all warm caramel apple and cheesecake pie crust on this one, with a spicier mouth with notes of peppermint. It's also oily in texture and slightly ashy.

One thing Jean Georges said about all of their rums is that they have a short finish. "None of our spirits overstay their welcome. They do their thing and move on, leaving you to want another sip."

I am not sure if their "single barrel" is coming to the US or not, but I enjoyed drinking that during my visit. Most of the time I drank that or the 7-year-old. When I wanted a mixer, I'd mix it with their soft drink Lemon Lime & Bitters, locally known as LLB. (Note to Angostura: you should consider bringing this to the US also in select markets.)

Angostura also produces Zaya rum, The Kraken spiced rum (according to MinistryOfRum), Vat 19, and White Oak (which is very popular in Trinidad).

March 16, 2011
The History and Production of Angostura Bitters

In March I visited the Angostura distillery in Port of Spain, Trinidad. They make not only Angostura Bitters here but also the line of Angostura rums and rums for several other brands. In this post, I'll focus on the bitters.

The History of Angostura Bitters

Angostura Bitters were created in 1824 by Dr. Johann Siegert. They were originally called "Dr. Siegert's Aromatic Bitters" and later renamed Angostura Bitters. (The folks from The Bitter Truth Bitters have some interesting information about a lawsuit over the name "Angostura" between these bitters and Abbott's Bitters.)

(One of the other Angostura Bitters bottles from around the world on display at the museum.)

The bitters were created for tropical stomach ailments in Venezuela, as Dr. Siegert was the Surgeon General of Simon Bolivar's army. In fact the town of Angostura is now called Ciudad Bolivar. The bitters were first exported to England in 1830.

(Simon Bolivar)

According to this good history on Angostura's website, Siegert's son exhibited the bitters in England in 1862 where they were mixed with gin. Thus the Pink Gin was born.

(Angostura used to produce Pink Rum – rum laced with Angostura Bitters.)

After Dr. Siegert died in 1870, his sons relocated the business from the politically unstable Venezuela to Trinidad in 1875. The company was renamed Angostura Bitters in 1904. Sometime shortly after this, the son in charge of Angostura lost all of his money in bad business deals and Angostura was taken by his creditors.

Why is the Angostura Bitters Label Too Big for the Bottle?

For a competition of some sort, one brother designed the bottle and another brother designed the label. By the time they figured out they should have consulted each other on the size of each, it was too late to change. On the advice of a judge in the contest, they kept it as their signature. Here, our tour guide does a better job of explaining it in this 1-minute video.

How Are Angostura Bitters Produced?

The secret ingredients for the bitters are shipped from wherever they come from to England. There the ingredients are put into coded bags and shipped to Trinidad. I believe they said they have a long-standing arrangement with customs that the bags are not inspected when they arrive in Trinidad to maintain their secret.

At the distillery, there are five people known as "manufacturers" who prepare the ingredients. They weigh out the relative quantities of each in a room known as the Sanctuary. The ingredients are then dropped into a crusher that crushes them all together as they fall into the room below – the Bitters Room.

At the base of the crusher are carts that hold the ingredients. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the room due to the high-proof alcohol vapors (but later did of the bartenders there), but we did get to peak into the crushed herbs. I remember seeing largish chunks of something that looked like gum arabic, and a lot of rice-sized grey grains about the size of lavender seeds, though I doubt they were because there was a lot of them. (There you go: gum arabic and lavender- make your own Angostura at home 🙂 )

The crushed herbs then go into a "percolator" tank with 97% alcohol to extract their flavor. After this infusion is done, the liquid is then transferred to another tank where brown sugar and caramel color are added. Then the liquid is transferred again and distilled water is added to bring them down to the 44.7% alcohol level for bottling.

This is all done in a relatively small room with a bunch of tanks in it. It's impressive that the world's supply of Angostura Bitters is made here.

Later that day, they did publicity shots with the bartenders in the Bitters Room. They let the professional photographers take photos and let me take them without flash. As you can see the bitters tanks have the bottle labels on them. Except in this case, they actually fit.

March 15, 2011
Back In My Day, It Was Called A New-Fashioned

In my latest post for FineCooking.com, I cover the history of the cocktail- the original one. I'm sure you've heard of it: spirit, sugar, water, bitters.

January 11, 2011
Up in your Internet

Oh hai. I've been writing a lot of stuff lately on this new fangled thing called the internet.

I did a few things for Tasting Table, like this piece on bartenders swapping out whisky in drinks for mezcal and this other one on where to get a good cocktail during the day in San Francisco.

For the national edition of Tasting Table I wrote about where you can buy a whole barrel of booze. There are a whole lot more places to buy a whole barrel listed at this Liquor.com article that came out a few days earlier. I didn't write that one (great minds drink alike), but I did write this other one on bitters for the same site a while back.

For CitySearch I wrote about single-spirit specialty bars, which is supposed to also include this review of Smuggler's Cove but doesn't, because the internet is full of bugs.

January 14, 2010