Jackie Patterson, bartender at Heaven’s Dog and Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco, mixes two champagne cocktails using The Bitter Truth bitters on KGO-TV’s “The View From the Bay”:

Watch the video here: Make Champagne Cocktails at Home

Lilikoi (Hawaiian name for passionfruit)

Ingredients:

• .75 oz. Small Hand Foods Passionfruit Syrup
• 2 dashes The Bitter Truth Orange Bitters
• 4 oz. Sparkling WIne
• Garnish with an edible dendrobium orchid

Champagne Cocktail

Ingredients:

• 1 sugar cube
• 4 dashes Grapefruit Bitters
• 5 oz. Sparkling Wine
• Grapefruit Zest
• Garnish with Grapefruit Zest

The View From the Bay: Make Champagne Cocktails at Home

Laren Spirer of Serious Eats NY finds The Bitter Truth at Kalustyans:

If you’re looking for an Angostura replacement, Bitter Truth recommends The Bitter Truth’s Old Time Aromatic Bitters as an alternative in their Champagne Cocktail recipe—but feel free to experiment.

Champagne Cocktail

Ingredients
Sugar cube
The Bitter Truth Old Time Aromatic Bitters
Champagne
Lemon peel

Procedure
In the bottom of a champagne flute, soak sugar cube with The Bitter Truth Old Time Aromatic Bitters. Top with chilled Champagne. Garnish with lemon peel.

via Mix It Up: A Bitter Opportunity | Serious Eats : New York.

From the UK’s Optima Magazine:

The Bitter Truth boys are part of a cocktail ‘renaissance’, looking back to when drinks were made with skill and balanced for you as an individual… back to the days before soda guns and mass production, when bartenders all made their own unique signature drinks and where the classics as we know them now originated.

Sweet liqueurs were in abundance in the 1920s and in the Tiki lounges of the 1950s, but mass production after the Second World War saw many liqueur makers abandon traditional methods. Emulsifiers and flavourings took the place of tried and tested natural ingredients.

German company The Bitter Truth started making their cocktail liqueurs to offer an alternative to the discerning drinker – to bring back, in their own words, ‘beautifully crafted liqueurs from wild fruits and berries’. They produce an Apricot Liqueur on a fruit… Read more

In his article “The Angostura Bitters Shortage Calls for Creativity,” Jason Wilson of the Washington Post states:

Also, I’m told that, at long last, the Bitter Truth brand bitters from Germany will be available in Washington. The Bitter Truth’s Jerry Thomas bitters would be a good substitute for Angostura in most drinks.

Read the entire article at: Spirits: The Angostura Bitters Shortage calls for creativity – washingtonpost.com.

From Tasting Table:

The recent shortage of Angostura bitters has serious cocktail buffs in a bind. This secret blend of herbs and spices, which has long outgrown its original purpose–disguising the taste of quinine in tonic–is now a key ingredient in countless cocktails.

But there’s a sweet side to this bitter pill: Germany’s widely regarded but hitherto rare Bitter Truth cocktail bitters are now available at U.S. retailers nationwide.

Unable to find authentic-tasting bitters in their native Munich, barmen Stephan Berg and Alexander Hauck took to handcrafting their own. They relied on old cocktail recipes, their large collection of historic bitters and their wealth of bartending experience to achieve high-quality flavors that other brands seemed to lack.

Angostura, who?

Original article at: http://tastingtable.com/entry_detail/national/1046/No_Angostura_No_worries_.htm

From Florence Fabricant at the New York Times:

The new-guard bartenders who have driven a cocktail frenzy in the last decade depend on bitters. These potent alcohol-based elixirs, usually made with herbs, citrus peels and other aromatics, are used by the droplet in well-made drinks.

Right now, there is a scarcity because Angostura, the leading brand, made in Trinidad and Tobago, hit a production snag: a shortage of bottles. So the arrival of Bitter Truth, a relatively new (2006) German brand of bitters, couldn’t be better timed.

There are several flavors. The more unusual ones are lemon, grapefruit and a knockout celery that is a must in a bloody mary and even in some tequila drinks.  The lemon will also work in… Read more