Dmitriy Shteynbuk — Angostura Bitters: What's Actually in the Bottle
The most famous bottle behind the bar, and what its 44.7% ABV of gentian and spices is doing to your drink.
Angostura Aromatic Bitters was formulated in 1824 by Dr. Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert, a German surgeon serving in Simón Bolívar's army in the Venezuelan town of Angostura, now Ciudad Bolívar. The original purpose was medicinal — an appetite stimulant for soldiers suffering from tropical stomach complaints. It was never a cocktail ingredient by design.
The bottle behind the bar today is essentially the same product. Angostura is 44.7% alcohol by volume — a full 89.4 proof — and its bitterness comes primarily from gentian root, a plant related to no other flavor most drinkers ever encounter. Around the gentian sit clove, cinnamon, cardamom, and what the company will only describe as 'other herbs and spices,' the recipe held by two people at a time.
In a two-ounce cocktail, two dashes of Angostura contribute roughly 0.05 ounces of liquid — less than one part in forty. What it contributes in flavor is disproportionately larger. The gentian pulls the sweetness back into focus, the spices add lift and warmth, and the ethanol carries the aromatics up out of the glass. Without the bitters, an Old Fashioned is whiskey and sugar water. With them, it is a cocktail.
The oversized paper label is a quirk of history: the label was designed larger than the bottle by mistake, and the company decided the accident had become recognizable enough to keep. It has been the same yellow-and-white sleeve since 1875.
If you have one bottle of bitters at home, this is the one to have. If you have room for two, add Peychaud's — the New Orleans anise-forward bitters that define the Sazerac. Beyond those two, most home bars are experimenting.