Krangostura Bitters

A loose play on the quintessential Angostura brand, these are brimming with clove and cardamom and supported by a backbone of gentian root and cinchona bark.

Composite of dried whole cloves, mace, and bottle of Krangostura bitters

Serious Eats / Robyn Lee and Zachary Feldman

Why It Works

  • Bitters are a great introduction to the DIY bartender's arsenal and require little more than waiting for the flavors to steep.
  • Versatile aromatic bitters mixes well with everything from brown spirits to tequila to gin.
  • Krangostura is loosely based on the quintessential Angostura brand, full of clove and cardamom and supported by a backbone of gentian root and cinchona bark.

Now that cocktails and the often-mustachioed men (and facial-hairless ladies) who make them have been etched into our consciousness by the craft cocktail movement, you can't move a millimeter in even the dingiest of contemporary drink dens without hearing that "B" word: bitters, bitters, bitters. Restaurants and bars are crafting their own concoctions, while enthusiasts and entrepreneurs (myself included) toil away in their kitchens and laboratories for months-long macerations. The spirits world seems to have gone bonkers for bitters. But what are bitters really made of? And how can you go about making your own?

Bags of whole spices and bottle of Everclear for DIY bitters

Serious Eats / Zachary Feldman

Arguments abound as to the ingredients and processes that constitute true bitters, but we'll make it easy for you: They all require some sort of bittering agent utilized with adequate potency. Classic choices include wormwood, gentian root or quassia and cinchona barks, but as long as your mixture is concentrated enough, you could even make bitters with produce like arugula and dandelion greens.

While the flavor spectrum for bitters runs the gamut—from papaya to xocolatl mole to barbeque—we'll be focusing on a recipe for homemade aromatic bitters that plays well with most spirits. I call them Krangostura.

Two bottles of Krangostura bitters against an animated background featuring "Lord Krang"

Serious Eats / Zachary Feldman

Aromatic bitters are the most traditional of the species, with the crown jewel being Trinidad's House of Angostura. And while I'd never be so ballsy as to label my Krangostura bitters a true substitute for Angostura—whose recipe allegedly calls for 47 different ingredients—these historically-inspired bitters should perform a similar function. The batch name's unfortunate pun comes from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of my childhood and its disembodied supervillain Lord Krang—the baddest, toughest anthropomorphic brain to ever wear a "human-shaped exo-suit" (Wikipedia, not me).

Equipment You'll Need

  • 750-milliliter mason jar or other airtight sealable non-reactive container made of glass or stainless steel. (Available online.)
  • Mortar and pestle
  • Vegetable peeler
  • Fine-mesh strainer
  • Soup pot, at least 2-quart capacity
  • Cheesecloth
  • Saucepan, 1 1/2-quart capacity or bigger

Choosing Ingredients for Krangostura Bitters

Aromatic bitters are big on holiday spices like clove, cinnamon, and nutmeg, but for these I really wanted the clove to dominate. You'll also be using mace, which has a bitter nutmeg flavor with clove undertones, and Indonesian cinnamon, whose low levels of essential oils make it the meekest-flavored cinnamon on the market.

Angostura bitters, as bitter as they are, have a profound sweetness to them as well, so this recipe includes raisins, molasses, and muscovado syrup for depth and the peels of fresh Meyer lemons and Cara Cara oranges for their low acidity to ensure that bright fruitiness without overpowering the spices. If you can't find Meyer Lemons and Cara Cara oranges, regular lemons and navel oranges can be substituted.

Finally, to make this heady brew actual bitters, there's a healthy dose of gentian (available as chips and twigs from Mountain Rose Herbs) and cinchona bark (available at Kalustyans and Herbs of Mexico.) You can get powdered versions, but they'll be trickier for filtering than the chips and twigs.

You'll start your bitters with the highest-proof neutral spirit you can find. A neutral spirit is important because you want a blank canvas to start with, and strength-wise, the higher the proof the faster and more intense the infusion will be. Choose Everclear 190, Devil's Spring (160 proof), or Polmos Warszawa Spirytus Rektyfikowany (190 proof).

Maceration Method

To make your bitters, you'll add all the spices and molasses to your airtight container and cover with the alcohol, then store in a dark place. Tuck it away in the darkest part of the closet. If you have a Narnia, by all means store it with your friend Mr. Tumnus. Every day, take it out and give it a shake.

Some people create separate tinctures of each ingredient and then blend them to create the final product. This isn't ideal, since the flavors never really get a chance to meld together and develop during maceration, resulting in a product that deals in surface flavors only, devoid of background notes. For this recipe, everything except the citrus (which gets added after two weeks) is combined with the grain spirit at the beginning.

As with everything culinary, it's important to constantly sample your efforts. If any tweaking is necessary, you can add a little more of one thing or another to reach your desired flavor balance. Wait a day or two before tasting again.

Finishing Up

After a month of storing and shaking daily has gone by, maceration is complete, and it's time for the fun stuff—dilution and filtering. Without performing these steps, all you really have is a jar full of wonderful-smelling muck. The first thing to do is strain the jar contents through cheesecloth. Set aside the macerated alcohol. But don't discard the solids!

Put the solids in a 2-quart (or bigger) soup pot. Cover them with four cups of water and bring to a boil to infuse the flavor of the ingredients into the water and burn off any remaining alcohol. Let cool, then strain the infused water into a separate container.

The macerated alcohol that you strained needs to be brought down in proof or else it will taste and smell like Christmasy rocket fuel and all of your hard work will have been for naught. To bring down the proof, you'll mix the two solutions (the macerate and the infused water) together to produce a rough estimate of between 40%-45% alcohol by volume, or ABV. If you're using Everclear, which is 190 proof (or 95% ABV), you'll mix your infused alcohol with your infused water at a roughly 1:1 ratio to bring the 95% ABV macerate down to 44% ABV. You'll also add some muscovado simple syrup to the mix at this point to sweeten it up.

After mixing, pour some of the bitters into a clear glass container and hold it up to the light. At this point you have two choices. If you're happy with the clarity, congratulations, you've just made bitters! Slap on some vintage duds and get to slinging tipples.

If you start to sweat from all of the little particles floating around in your prized creation, then you can filter the diluted mixture a final time, either by passing it through a coffee filter or layers of cheesecloth, or the easier but sloppier option of letting it sit for a day or two until physics takes care of the remaining solid matter, after which you can either decant or use a turkey baster to skim the clear stuff from the top. And voila, you're ready to start making cocktails!

April 2011

Recipe Details

Krangostura Bitters

Active 15 mins
Total 720 hrs
Makes 750 ml

Ingredients

For the Bitters:

  • 1/2 cup whole cloves

  • 1/4 cup whole black cardamom

  • 3/4 cup blades of mace

  • 2 tablespoons whole allspice berries

  • 1/4 cup cinchona bark (available at Kalustyans and Herbs of Mexico.)

  • 1 heaping teaspoon gentian root (available as chips and twigs from Mountain Rose Herbs)

  • 2 ounces Indonesian cinnamon (about sixteen 2-inch long sticks, or 8 full-size)

  • 2/3 cup black raisins

  • 3 tablespoons blackstrap molasses

  • About 400ml Everclear 190 or highest available proof neutral grain spirit

  • 2 Meyer Lemons and 1 Cara Cara orange, for peels added after 2 weeks

For Dilution Liquid:

  • 4 cups water

For Muscovado Simple Syrup:

  • 1 cup muscovado sugar

  • 1 cup water

Directions

  1. Loosely mash cloves, cardamom, mace, and allspice in a mortar and pestle to release oils—just a few good bashes, not enough to pulverize. Add to a 750-milliliter airtight nonreactive container.

  2. Add cinchona bark, gentian root, cinnamon, raisins, and molasses and cover with enough alcohol that solids are submerged, with an additional half-inch of alcohol in the container. Store in a dark place and shake daily.

    Spices and raisins in airtight glass jar for Krangostura bitters

    Serious Eats / Zachary Feldman

  3. After 2 weeks of daily shaking, peel Meyer lemons and Cara Cara orange, tearing up peels by hand to release essential oils. Open container and add peels. Reseal container and store in a dark place, continuing to shake daily.

  4. At the end of the fourth week, strain the solid ingredients through cheesecloth and set the strained alcohol aside.

  5. To make dilution liquid, place solid ingredients in a soup pot and cover with 4 cups water. Bring this mixture to a boil for about 15 minutes to infuse the flavor of the ingredients into the water. Let cool and strain through cheesecloth. Measure the strained alcohol and mix with an equal amount of strained dilution liquid.

    Overhead shot of a pot of Kragostura dilution liquid made with strained spices and raisins

    Serious Eats / Zachary Feldman

  6. To make muscovado simple syrup, heat 1 cup water with 1 cup of muscovado sugar and stir until sugar dissolves. Let cool. Add 3/4 cup simple syrup to the diluted bitters mixture.

  7. At this point, you should check for clarity by pouring some bitters into a clear glass container and holding it up to the light. If you are satisfied with the clarity, consider yourself done. If you'd like to remove any present sediment, either pass bitters through a coffee filter or multiple layers (5+) of cheesecloth and repeat until you've reached desired clarity.

Special Equipment

750-milliliter mason jar or other sealable non-reactive container, mortar and pestle, vegetable peeler, mesh strainer, soup pot (at least 2-quart), cheesecloth, saucepan (at least 1.5-quart)

Notes

This recipe yields more than most home bartenders will really need. Luckily, bitters make great gifts.

Read More

Nutrition Facts (per serving)
3 Calories
0g Fat
0g Carbs
0g Protein
×
Nutrition Facts
Servings: 1,000
Amount per serving
Calories 3
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 0g 0%
Saturated Fat 0g 0%
Cholesterol 0mg 0%
Sodium 0mg 0%
Total Carbohydrate 0g 0%
Dietary Fiber 0g 0%
Total Sugars 0g
Protein 0g
Vitamin C 0mg 0%
Calcium 2mg 0%
Iron 0mg 0%
Potassium 4mg 0%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)