Herbs
The ingredients that go into every bottle of bitters. What each one tastes like, how it's used, and the safety notes worth knowing.
Bitters are really just herbs steeped in alcohol. So the herbs are where the whole thing starts. This section is a guide to the ones that go into bitters: what each tastes like, what it does in a blend, and how to use it.
If you’ve read how to make bitters for an Old Fashioned, some of this will already be familiar. Here it goes deeper, herb by herb.
Every herb plays one of two roles
In any bitters blend, an herb is either a bittering herb or an aromatic.
Bittering herbs
They’re the part that makes bitters, well, bitter — the foundation of any blend. Gentian is the classic one. Others include wormwood, cinchona bark, artichoke leaf, and angelica root.
Aromatic herbs
These bring the flavor and character: the warm, bright, or floral notes layered on top. Orange peel, cardamom, cinnamon, chamomile, fennel, and lavender all fall here.
A good bitters is one bittering herb plus a handful of aromatics. The bittering herb usually makes up somewhere between 10% and 50% of the blend. The aromatics fill out the rest and give it its personality.
These are also the building blocks in the formulator, where you can combine herbs and get a sense of the blend before you make it.
How to read these pages
Every herb gets its own page, and they all follow the same shape:
- What it tastes like: the flavor, plain and honest, from actually tasting it.
- How to use it in bitters: bittering or aromatic, how much, what it pairs with.
- A note on safety: who should avoid it, and when to check with a pharmacist.
- Traditional uses: the history, cited, and honest about what’s tradition versus what’s proven.
A quick word on safety
Herbs aren’t automatically safe just because they’re natural. A few of the ones here carry real cautions, cinchona and wormwood especially, and some interact with medications or aren’t right during pregnancy. Each herb’s page has the specifics. None of it is medical advice. If you take medication or have a health condition, check with your pharmacist or a drug-interaction checker before using an herb as anything more than an occasional cocktail bitter.
The herbs
Start here:
- Gentian root: the classic bittering herb, and where most bitters start.
More on the way, including wormwood, cinchona, orange peel, and cardamom. Those are the rest of the herbs I’m working through in my own first batch.