Bogart’s Bitters: 2018 Non-spirit Cocktail Ingredient of the Year (if it was up to me)

[martin]

Disclosure: my interests in cocktails tend to be heavily biased toward the 19th Century.

So, last year Stephan Berg and co. trotted out their Bogart’s Bitters product:

They made much of its ostensible authenticity and accuracy as a reproduction of Boker’s Bitters, but I see two intractable problems with that:

1. their work on this product pretty much comes down to a solitary, hundred-year-old sample
2. I have absolutely no way to evaluate or verify their claims, and I never will

Here’s what I can grant:

1. the bitters perform extremely well, although you will use a bit more of them than you would Angostura (indeed, the Bogart’s bottle does not have a dasher top)
2. I love them

When I say Bogart’s performs, I have in mind something specific that I can only write about in a vague, roundabout manner. When I got into cocktails in the 1990s, there was Angostura, and if you worked hard, you could get Peychaud’s. If you traveled to Japan and knew the right people at Suntory, you could score some Hermes orange bitters. That was it. Eventually, Dr. Cocktail got Fee’s into the cocktail bitters business, and Gary Regan got Sazerac Co to collaborate on an orange bitters, and then the flood began and we’ve now got dozens upon dozens of “bitters” on the market. In my opinion, almost none of them are bitters; rather, most are flavor drops and entirely novel. Yes, real bitters are bitter, and yes, they contribute flavor and character, but they also function as a sort of flavor binder for the other ingredients in the drink. I do not understand how this works, and clearly most people out there making “bitters” don’t understand, either. (I’m not even convinced Stephan Berg and co. understand.) My suspicion is that only certain botanicals can deliver the binding effect, much in the way that “vermouth” made without wormwood seems to cease performing as vermouth.

Well, Angostura is the absolute benchmark for this “flavor binding” performance. Peychaud’s is not as good at it, but clearly possesses an essential role or three. In my opinion, Bogart’s is at least decent at flavor binding, and it provides a viable drop-in alternative to Angostura. Whether or not Bogart’s is an accurate reproduction of Boker’s, it works fantastically well in the 19th Century cocktails that call for Boker’s. Beyond that, sometimes it’s really nice to be able to get away from the Caribbean flavors of Angostura. (I’d say Bogart’s has more in common with the Fernet Branca flavor profile.)

Put some of this Bogart’s in a Gin Cocktail with Old Duff Pure Malt Wine Genever, and I’m in heaven.

Caveat: In addition to their lower concentration, Bogart’s contains an enormous quantity of coloring. I’m not sure why. This stuff will darken your drink, for better or worse.

[dougfitz]

The effort and detail put into the packaging alone—that bottle~!—is promising. How would you compare them to Dr. Adam’s take?

[martin]

I have a bottle of Adam’s Bokers and, alas, I find it pretty useless. I’ve tried it over and over in all the drinks it’s supposed to work in, and it’s bitter, but that’s about it. That’s my experience.

Some folks seem to like them.

One thing I can guarantee you is that the two products have virtually nothing in common (other than perhaps some ill will).

[dougfitz]

After months of fruitless hunting in the wilds of West LA, I finally broke down and ordered a bottle online.

Jiminy crickets is it good. It’s given my Old Fashioned new polish, but it positively glows in a Manhattan.

Can’t wait to see how performs in other classics.

[EvanD]

Your “binding” effect would seem to be related to the “fixative” or “radiant” property that @Bostonapothecary and people connected to the perfume world mention. As far as I can tell, there is a class of chemicals, the rose ketones, which bind to and amplify the effects of other aroma compounds. I’m told that angelica and orris root are “known radiants,” which should be present in large quantities in any good bitters. Apparently Radiance > Hogo – Boston Apothecary is the place to start.

[Bostonapothecary]

Kevin Peterson of the Castalia bar in Detroit just covered ideas about radiance from botanicals in his new cocktail book: Cocktail Theory: A Sensory Approach to Transcendent Drinks

It turns out that some gin botanicals like orris or angelica may have a minor radiant effect somewhat similar to heavy hitters like damascenone which the perfume industry goes ga-ga for. Some gin distillers hype their importance in a formulation but have a hard time articulating the contribution; you will simply prefer when they are there.

When I analyzed angostura bitters with the birectifier, one of the things I posited is that it gave what ever it was mixed with a bump in HVC’s (high value congeners) and that is correlated with pleasure. A dash or two in a hollow spirit fills a void and you get an increase in luxury and opulence.

Its nice to see this conversation pop up. I worked on a lot of this stuff 7 + years ago and even though interest in spirits rages on, I’ve always gotten little interest in this stuff from producers. I don’t think we have scratched the surface of what is possible.

[EvanD]

Yeah, I’ve been trying to encourage Kevin to get on here

Edit: hahaha @Nosestradamus

[evan]

As long as we’re revisiting this topic, I want to agree as hard as possible with the original post. I’ve got maybe 25 bottles of bitters but never reached for anything but Angostura, Feegan’s, or Peychaud’s.

Bogart’s is the first “new” bitters that earned a place on my bar, instead of forgotten in a drawer. It’s just delicious. I don’t find Adam’s Bokers palatable, although of course that may just be my taste.

[fredyarm]

How accurate is the recipe from Imbibe, Jamie Boudreau’s blog, and Art of Drink with quassia, calamus root, catechu/betel nut, cardamom, dried orange peel? And do the modern remakes taste like that?

My 2008 batch notes: cocktail virgin slut: boker's bitters

[martin]

To my knowledge, Boudreau’s is no more accurate than a guess. I’ve never had it.

[Splificator]

The recipe from Imbibe is a period one that was floating around, but having since tasted actual Boker’s bitters I am now less confident in its accuracy.

[Nosestradamus]

I think the best analogy for radiants is salt with regards to cooking. If you analyzed a pot of chili, you’d find a pound of meat, pound of beans, pound of tomatoes, etc, and maybe a few grams of salt, way less than 1% of the total mass. Yet that salt, in the right amount, is what will make or break that chili. Too little and it tastes flat and dull, too much and it’s inedible. Also, salt on it’s own is not very appealing to eat. In common with salt, radiants with regards to scent:

• are ideal at very small percentages compared to everything else in the blend.
• don’t smell very good on their own. I think of them as a catalyst for other aromas.
• become overwhelming and sickening at too high a concentration.

There are some literal radiant molecules, that @Bostonapothecary and others have described, and there are some ingredients I find to have ‘radiant’ effects, although I don’t know the exact molecule(s) that might be responsible. Orris, angelica, bay leaf, ambrette seed, black cumin, most animal-derived scent ingredients (musk, civet, ambergris) check all the boxes for radiant qualities.

I’ve been making a house bitters I actually call “Radiant Bitters” for my bar in Detroit, Castalia, for a few years. I’m working on sending a bottle to @Bostonapothecary for birectifier analysis, and I’ll paste the recipe here. Everything is equal parts by mass, macerated in 151-proof rum (Cane Run) for 2 months, then diluted to 75 proof and chill filtered.

Bittering Maceration
Burdock root, gentian root, cinchona bark, wormwood

Flavor Maceration
Coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, fresh orange peel

Radiant Maceration
Orris root, angelica root, schisandra berry, bay leaf

[martin]

Birectifier Analysis of Radiant Bitters

[Nosestradamus]

Stephen, thank you for analyzing the Radiant Bitters!

I appreciate the significance of all the organoleptic tests, and I think an interesting document would be a breakdown of the various tests you have described (evaporative, exhaustive, etc) along with results for a number of benchmark products.

As a thought on future research directions, to my knowledge you’ve never put full cocktails through this battery of tests. It’d be cool to see how an old fashioned compares to a negroni in an exhaustive test, or even the birectifier. The cocktail is how most end users are going to experience bitters, gin, rum, whiskey, etc, and there may be a significant amount of the various ingredients making up for the flaws of other ingredients, such that a whiskey we all agree to be non-ideal could actually be perfect in an old fashioned. I’m kinda writing this as if you’ll take it on, but if I learned anything in the corporate world, it’s that the person suggesting it will probably be the one that ends up getting assigned to it.

For the birectifier analysis, again, most of what you have analyzed is products on the market. It’d be cool to do something like a parametric sweep of bitters recipes and see which botanicals add the zesty grapefruit note in the first fraction of Angostura. I think you did this for coriander and maybe juniper a while back?

Regarding radiants other than damascenone, orris root is full of various irone molecules, which are very close to ionone molecules, a radiant you have described. For angelica root, my reference source for molecular constituents (Essential Oil Safety, by Tisserand and Young) doesn’t mention any molecules I know as radiants, but anecdotally, gin and aquavit makers have told me about the effects of angelica root in their spirits and it is spot on with radiant effects, along with my own experience using it.

Also, a couple quotes from the Wikipedia page on Angelica root that sound very radiant-esque:
“Angelica is unique among the Umbelliferae for its pervading aromatic odor”
“It has been compared to musk”
“Of particular interest to perfumers and aroma chemists is cyclopentadecanolide, which although present in small quantities (< 1% in roots, <.5% in seeds), gives angelica root a distinctive musky aroma.”

I’m interested in a particular phrase you used several times, which is the “sharpness” of the radiant bitters. This tactile reference to sharpness implies much of the sensation is concentrated in a small space, in the same way touching a sharp object results in force localized across a small area. This is actually the most intriguing element of the comparison for me, and the spatial perception of flavors is something that I have rarely come across in the literature on flavor perception. I certainly agree with you that sharpness is present, but even at this moment as I drink an old fashioned made with Radiant Bitters, I’m at a loss to describe how the sharpness arises.

I agree with your assessment that Radiant Bitters are not the best choice for a Manhattan. I tend to use Radiants for old fashioneds, and have a different blend that (even prior to reading your analysis) I described as more “round.”