{"id":621,"date":"2008-12-14T21:03:09","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T04:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/?p=621"},"modified":"2008-12-15T15:52:05","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T22:52:05","slug":"mxmo-xxxiv-spice-hess-house-bitters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/?p=621","title":{"rendered":"MxMo XXXIV: Spice – Hess House Bitters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MxMo<\/a>The topic of this month’s Mixology Monday<\/a> is Spice and Craig over at Tiki Drinks and Indigo Firmaments<\/a> is kind enough to host this shindig.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s not beat around the bush, cocktails are amazingly tasty, but like food some times they need a bit of spice to make them truly incredible.\u00c2\u00a0 Cocktail bitters<\/a> provide that bit of spice.\u00c2\u00a0 We all know and likely have on our shelves many of the commercially available varieties like Angostura, Peychaud’s, Fee Brothers, etc.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 However, like lots of commercially available products, those that you can make at home can be even better than what can be purchased.\u00c2\u00a0 Robert Hess, AKA Drinkboy<\/a>, in his search for a replacement for the long gone Abbott’s Bitters created Hess House Bitters.\u00c2\u00a0 Robert says that his bitters “missed that mark, but was still pretty good.”\u00c2\u00a0 I’d have to say that I agree completely they are very good.\u00c2\u00a0 So on to the making.\u00c2\u00a0 The recipe I used is a combination of Robert’s original post<\/a> on The Webtender Forums and his later post<\/a> on the Drinkboy MSN group.<\/p>\n

House Bitters<\/strong><\/p>\n

8 cups rye (Old Overholt)
\n3 tsp dried gentian
\n1 cup ginger (julienne)
\n1\/4 cup whole cloves
\n6 Tbs cardamom pods (cracked)
\n8 whole star anise
\n16 sticks cinnamon
\n4.5 cups Water
\n1.5 cups Sugar<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Place all ingredients, except for the sugar and water, into a large mason
\njar and seal. Store for 2 weeks, shaking the jar once a day.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Strain the liquids\/solids mixture through cheesecloth. Squeeze hard to
\nextract as much juice into the reserved liquid as possible.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Place the dry ingredients into a saucepan and add the water. Bring to a
\nboil, and then turn the heat down and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Allow to cool completely, then pour the water and solid mixture into another
\nmason jar. Store for 1 week, shaking the jar once a day.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Strain the water mixture through cheesecloth. Discard the solid ingredients,
\nand add the water to the previously reserved alcohol.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Put the sugar into a small non-stick skillet and stirring constantly over a
\nmedium-high heat, allow the sugar to melt and then turn to a rich brown color.
\nQuickly remove from heat and allow the melted sugar to cool for a couple of
\nminutes.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 With the sugar still slightly warm, pour it into the water and alcohol
\nmixture. It will probably crystallize at this point, but with continued
\nstirring it will eventually dissolve.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Allow this mixture to rest for a couple of days, then skim off anything that
\nrises to the surface, and gently pour (or siphon) the clear liquid from the
\ntop into another container, trying to avoid as much of the sediment on the
\nbottom as possible.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Measure the amount of liquid you now have, and add half that same amount of
\nwater.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Homemade<\/a><\/p>\n

The only ingredient that was a bit hard to locate was gentian (the bittering agent).\u00c2\u00a0 After a bit of asking around I found a local spice\/herbology shop that had it on hand.\u00c2\u00a0 Ingredients in hand I was on my way.<\/p>\n

\"Homemade<\/a><\/p>\n

The initial steeping time went quickly and the smell that emanated from the jar was incredible.\u00c2\u00a0 You could really smell the cardamom and ginger going to work on the rye.<\/p>\n

\"Hess<\/a><\/p>\n

After nearly burning the sugar and filtering the finished bitters they were ready for bottling.\u00c2\u00a0 A word on the sugar, take it very slowly and remember that your pan will retain some heat so take them off the heat slightly before you think they’re done.\u00c2\u00a0 As soon as you pour the sugar into the cold liquid they solidify but some heavy shaking will dissolve them in no time.\u00c2\u00a0 As you can see from the image above I ended up with about 2.5 liters of finished bitters.\u00c2\u00a0 If anyone would like to try some please drop me an email I’d be happy to send you some.<\/p>\n

\"Whiskey<\/a><\/p>\n

The finished bitters have a wonderful spicy flavor full of cinnamon, cardamom and ginger.\u00c2\u00a0 The anise and cloves are certainly present but not as forward as the other flavors.\u00c2\u00a0 The nearly burnt sugar provides a nice sweetness and carmel flavor.\u00c2\u00a0 Finally the bitterness is just where you want it to be.\u00c2\u00a0 My favorite use thus far has been in a whiskey sour<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I had a great time making these bitters and have grand plans for making more, which as you can see above started with a batch of Hell Fire bitters, but I’ll save those for another post.<\/p>\n

[Edit: 2008-12-15 – Added MxMo Logo]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The topic of this month’s Mixology Monday is Spice and Craig over at Tiki Drinks and Indigo Firmaments is kind enough to host this shindig.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s not beat around the bush, cocktails are amazingly tasty, but like food some times they need a bit of spice to make them truly incredible.\u00c2\u00a0 Cocktail bitters provide that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,47,6],"tags":[19,63,61,208],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ingredients","category-mxmo","category-recipes","tag-bitters","tag-hess-house-bitters","tag-homemade","tag-mxmo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailhacker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}