Life is sweeter with some bitters | All the Bitter

Alcohol-free bitters to spice up your NA drinks

I love bitters. I used to load up cocktails with two or three dashes of bitters to add complexity and spice. Now I love adding bitters to sparkling water, seltzers, and even some nonalcoholic beers.

I wrote previously about bitter herbs and roots having a long history of being used as both appetite enhancers and suppressants. Just as I don’t count drinking a nonalcoholic brew at 0.5% ABV as drinking alcohol, I haven’t been bothered by adding bitters that contain alcohol to my bevvies, figuring that after dilution we’re talking only a trace amount that won’t get you drunk.

Julia Bainbridge of Good Drinks, a newsletter on Substack sharing nonalcoholic drink recipes, did the math:

Let’s use Angostura bitters as an example: The bottle I’m looking at right now measures 44.7% ABV. If one standard dash equals 1⁄8 teaspoon, and 1 ounce equals 6 teaspoons, then a 5-ounce glass of, say, iced tea topped with three dashes of Angostura bitters is about 0.56% alcohol. Yes, that is technically what the law considers to be alcoholic [0.5%], but (1) only by a hair and (2) as we discussed earlier, this number has little if nothing to do with intoxication.

Nevertheless, if you can do without the alcohol and have a similar, and possibly better, experience drinking bitters, why wouldn’t you? Some sober friends of mine also don’t like the idea of adding drops of alcohol to their otherwise non-alcoholic bevvies. It just doesn’t feel right and I don’t blame them.

Nonalcoholic bitters provide many of the same benefits as traditional bitters, such as aiding digestion and adding depth of flavor to cocktails, without the added alcohol. This makes them a great option for people who are in recovery or who are trying to avoid alcohol for other reasons.

Enter All the Bitter, a brand started by a sommelier couple who gave up alcohol once they had children, and who now produce a trio of classically inspired bitters without any alcohol: Aromatic, New Orleans, and Orange.

These are really good. Tasting them pure—just a drop on the tongue—you can clearly taste the herbs, spices, and fruits listed on each bottle. They do appear a bit sweeter to me than their alcoholic cousins, likely because they lack that alcoholic bite. Just clean herbs, roots, spices, and fruits with some glycerin to preserve them.

Bitters & Soda: Just add a couple of dashes of bitters to your favorite carbonated water, stir, and enjoy. Throw in a slice of lemon, lime, orange, or cucumber, if you like. When I want something fizzy but not necessarily sweet, bitters and soda do the trick. All three of All the Bitter flavors work great for this purpose depending on which bitter flavor appeals most to you at the moment.

Bitters and Spritzer: For more flavor and perhaps as a vehicle for some added vitamin C, press half an orange, lemon, or lime, mix the juice with carbonated water, and throw in some dashes of Aromatic or New Orleans bitters. For a festive holiday spritzer, mix some cranberry or apple juice with cinnamon and or nutmeg, add carbonated water and a couple of dashes of Orange or New Orleans bitters. You can also mix your juice-and-bitters base with a nonalcoholic beer for a tasty shandy (see my review of Clausthaler’s holiday brew, for an example).

Bitters and flavored sparkling water: You get the idea. :)

Bitters and Beer: Most of the time, I will be enjoying my nonalcoholic beers without anything added. Occasionally, and especially when drinking a lower-cost nonalcoholic beer, I may add some bitters to bring out extra flavors, like adding Orange bitters to a pilsner or lager such as Budweiser 0 or Aromatic bitters to a malty Clausthaler Dry Hopped (see my review here).

Alexander Hauck and Stephan Berg, founders of The Bitter Truth, a brand selling alcoholic bitters and sprits, suggest in Chilled Magazine:

The rule is: Dark bitters go well with dark beers; light bitters go well with light beers. Aromatic bitters… are great with stouts, porters, or other malty beers. Grapefruit, orange, lemon… bitters are really tasty in lagers, pilsners, and pale ales.

You love cocktails and mocktails? Check out All the Bitter recipes for everything from NA Espresso Martinis to Kentucky Bucks.

What about storage? I was curious whether I would need to store nonalcoholic bitters in the fridge to keep them from spoiling, so I reached out to the experts. Here is what Ian, co-founder of All the Bitter shared with me:

Our bitters have a "best by" date of 18 months and do not need to be refrigerated. They'll likely last much longer than that, but 18 months is our recommended window for best enjoyment. Alcohol works as an amazing preservative, but glycerin (which is what we use) also works well. …We don't use any preservatives, glycerin does all the work.

One other note, make sure to shake them first — there's a little bit of sediment in them, especially the Aromatic bitters, because we use raw ingredients rather than extracts.

All The Bitter’s trio of bitters make for a great Christmas gift for the sober and sober-curious in your life. Or give yourself the gift of complex flavors and healthy herbs.

Life is sweeter with some bitters.