Spirits

Though we love pickles here at Bittermens Central, we never really understood the allure of the pickleback. We like our pickles and we like our hooch. Hell, some of us have been known to have a pickled egg or two while drinking – and pickles and beer are a great combination. Just keep the pickles on the plate and the booze in the glass.

Yet, for as much as we may not understand the pickleback, during colonial times, shrubs were extremely common – vinegar-based refreshers, many times combined with alcohol or allowed to ferment so they had a bit of a kick. Maybe we’re just trying to find a way back to our cocktail roots?

Talking about roots, for those of you whose families emigrated from Eastern Europe to New York in the late 1800s or early 1900s, your ancestors probably spent some time in the immigrant tenements in the Lower East Side. Though most of the old world has been replaced by people selling cheap accessories, there is (until recently, unfortunately) Guss’ Pickles, a pickle purveyor since 1910 and Russ and Daughters – one of the last appetizing shops, who recently started to make a really tasty beet shrub.

Thinking about the Lower East Side, one of the classic flavors during the tenement era was Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda, a celery soda so popular during the ’30s, it was nicknamed the Jewish Champagne. Though the only flavor that is declared is celery seed, we always got a sense that there was a bit of ginger and apple in there somewhere.

Wrapping all of this history together, we decided to take all of these ideas and run with them. We took an idea of a brine, a shrub and a classic soda and decided to dedicate it to Orchard Street, home of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Funny that something that we made to honor the Eastern European immigrant experience works so damned well with Scandinavian Aquavit!

We love gingerbread. Well, to be specific, we love the the sort of ginger cookies that we used to get at the Christmas markets in cities throughout Germany and Northern Europe. In Norway, these ginger cookies were called pepperkaker… or pepper cakes.

Of course, nothing can beat having access to fresh ginger juice when you’re making a cocktail – but it isn’t something that most people have laying around their kitchen, and if you do make ginger juice, it starts to lose its flavor almost immediately. By using a combination of dried gingers and alcohol, we’ve been able to create a shelf-stable ginger bitter that can bring that bite to warming winter cocktails – especially those made with rum and bourbon – yet also work beautifully in classic bucks and mules. In fact, 10 drops in a Moscow Mule turns it into something special.

Back in 2011, we added these bitters into our experimental series as the Peppercake Bitters, but stopped making them a couple of years later. We’ve tweaked the bitters to make them a little gingersnappier, and are bringing them back as our Buckspice Gingersnap Bitters.

The essence of grapefruit combined with the most noble of hops. We recommend adding a dash to stirred cocktails made with tequila and long drinks made with gin.When is a grapefruit not just a grapefruit?

Avid beer drinkers know that certain varieties of hops, when used in high concentration, deliver a strong grapefruit flavor. We’ve decided to use the grapefruity quality of Pacific Northwest hops along with grapefruit peel to help create a concoction with layer upon layer of vegetal bitterness. Designed to enhance young (silver) rums, tequilas and mezcal, the Hopped Grapefruit bitters play well with most cocktails where you need a little citrus punch. Try it in a daiquiri, giMLet, or even a gin and tonic (with a splash of maraschino).

Primary Flavors: Grapefruit, Hops