Bar Necessities
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The Reading Room
Bitters

Bitters, and what a dash actually does.

Bitters are usually measured in dashes, not ounces, and less than 1/5th of the catalog calls for them. But that dash is essential — leave it out of a drink that wants it and something tastes missing.

Drinks that call for bitters 41 of 255 · 16%
  1. Angostura 30 12%
  2. Orange 11 4%
  3. Peychaud’s 2 1%
  4. Mole 1 <1%

Bitters are the quintessential potent potable. Angostura bitters are the most common — about 2/3rds of the dashes in the catalog are from Angostura. Note that the four rows above total more than the 41 drinks that use bitters, because three drinks (including the Vieux Carré) use two bitters.

A dash of bitters is a few drops of high-proof spirit that’s been steeped with bark, roots, citrus peel, and spice. It’d be odd to drink it straight, and in a finished cocktail it’s tough to put a finger on its flavor. But bitters pull the other ingredients together — it’s the seasoning of the bar, the way a chef’s pinch of salt isn’t a taste you notice but the thing that makes everything else taste like more of itself. Most drinks don’t need bitters, but the ones that do can’t do without it.

30 drinks

Angostura

the starting point

If you buy just one bottle of bitters, buy this one. Angostura is in 30 drinks — more than the other three bitters on this list combined — and it’s the aromatic dash behind the classics: the Old Fashioned, the Manhattan, the Rob Roy, the Champagne Cocktail. A couple of dashes, no more — it’s there to round the edges and add a dry, spiced lift, not to take over.

There’s one big exception to this rule, though: the Trinidad Sour, a modern classic. It uses a full ounce of Angostura — more than its whiskey — and turns the seasoning into the drink.

11 drinks

Orange

the second bottle

Orange bitters are the next one you’d buy — brighter and more citrus-forward than Angostura, and they’re most common in the gin-and-vermouth world. They’re the finishing note in a Martinez, a Bijou, a Tuxedo, a Pegu Club — older, more aromatic relatives of the Martini, where a couple of dashes lift the botanicals. Where Angostura adds spice and depth, orange adds top-end sparkle.

2 drinks

Peychaud’s

the soul of New Orleans

Peychaud’s is a one-city bitter. Lighter and more floral than Angostura, bright red, with an anise note, it’s at the heart of two classic New Orleans cocktails: the Sazerac, and the Vieux Carré (where it lives alongside Angostura). Two drinks in the catalog, and both are landmarks.

1 drink

Mole & others

the specialists

Past Angostura, orange, and Peychaud’s, bitters open into a craft aisle — celery, chocolate, cardamom, mole. The lone specialist in our catalog is mole bitters, the smoky-chocolate dash in an Oaxacan Old Fashioned. But there’s lots of room to experiment with other flavors, and the category is constantly expanding.

Bitters are the bottle people skip and the one that separates a flat drink from a finished one. Three of them — Angostura, orange, and Peychaud’s — cover 40 of the 41 drinks in the catalog that use any bitters at all. They’re affordable, keep for years, and a single dash is all any drink ever asks for.

Browse all 255

More in the reading room — short pieces on how cocktails work.

Sources. Bitters as the cocktail’s seasoning — and the aromatic-versus-flavoring distinction — is the throughline of Brad Thomas Parsons’ Bitters (2011), the standard modern reference; see also Difford’s Guide. Angostura was created in 1824 by Dr. Johann Siegert in the town of Angostura, Venezuela; Peychaud’s traces to Antoine Peychaud, a Creole apothecary in New Orleans. The counts are computed live from this catalog’s own ingredient lists across all 255 drinks — 41 of them carry bitters.