Let's Keep the Bitters Flowing
The Angostura Sour (and the Trinidad Sour).
One of my favorite drinks is the Horsefeather. Not just because it’s the most famous drink to come out of my hometown of Kansas City1 — because it’s deceptively simple but super transformative. It’s really just a whiskey-ginger with Angostura bitters, and maybe a touch of lemon, but the Angostura takes the drink to new heights. Some recipes suggest mixing the bitters in, but I make mine the way Ryan Maybee does, dashing the bitters right on top of the drink. Most recipes suggest 4-5 dashes, but being realistic, I probably go for eight or so. Yes, the drink technically works better with a straw, but I drink mine straight from the glass, and nothing’s better than that first warm, spicy sip of almost entirely bitters.
Since I’ve started making cocktails, Angostura has become one of my favorite flavors — in Old Fashioneds, on Horsefeathers, in non-alcoholic drinks like LLBs, even over ice cream. It tastes intensely of baking spices like allspice, cloves, and cinnamon, with other herbal undertones and a hint of citrus. (I actually think “astringent” may be a better word than bitter for the flavor; I find Angostura to have a bit of a tannic mouth-drying quality similar to black tea or Cabernet Sauvignon.) It’s made in Trinidad and Tobago, and the actual formula is secret, except for the fact that it doesn’t contain angostura bark. Like the Peychaud’s from last week, it’s usually dosed out in dashes, but show me a cocktail that calls for Angostura by the ounce and I’m sold. (It’s significantly stronger than Peychaud’s too, at 44.7% ABV.)
Trust Kirk Estopinal and Maks Pazuniak to do just that. The Angostura Sour was the first drink in the first Rogue Cocktails book (thanks to nothing more than alphabetization), and it remains the first of Beta Cocktails, too. “Two years later it still amazes us that the first recipe in rogue cocktails was a potable abstract of our entire philosophy,” they write in a note alongside this recipe.
The drink has one of the longest histories of any in Beta Cocktails. It’s adapted from the second volume of The Gentleman’s Companion, published in 1939 by Charles H. Baker, a world-traveling food and drink writer. Estopinal studied the book when he worked at the Violet Hour, and stumbled upon an odd recipe for an Angostura Fizz, based around the bitters. He pared that down to a basic sour cocktail — spirit, citrus, sugar, and egg white — and thus, the Angostura Sour was born.
When I first heard about this recipe, it reminded me of another sour-style cocktail based around Angostura, the Trinidad Sour. The drink was created by Giuseppe González in 2008, and reads as a more complex Angostura Sour. Instead of simple syrup, it’s sweetened with orgeat, a floral almond syrup used in tiki drinks and a seeming nod to the bitters’ Caribbean roots. There’s also a backbone of rye whiskey in the mix to round out the Ango flavor, similar to Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s Amaretto Sour reconstruction. While I’ve never had an Angostura Sour, I have made a Trinidad Sour before, and it was kind of mind-blowing. So why not do a little comparison?
Angostura Sour2
1 1/2 ounces Angostura bitters
3/4 ounce lime juice
1 ounce simple syrup
1 egg white
Dry shake the egg white and lime juice.
Add the remaining ingredients, ice and shake hard. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
By Kirk Estopinal, adapted from Charles H. Baker.
1 1/2 ounces Angostura bitters
1 ounce orgeat
3/4 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce rye whiskey
Combine all ingredients in a mixing tin and shake with ice.
Strain into a chilled coupe.
By Giuseppe González
The Angostura Sour both manages to lead with bitterness and feel perfectly balanced at the same time. There’s lots of clove and allspice flavor there, along with hints of what tastes like herbal tea. Over time, it starts to taste like coffee. The egg white does lighten the drink up nicely, and makes it feel kind of desserty with all those flavors — not too far from ice cream. (My tasting partner said it reminded him of Thai iced tea.) The Trinidad Sour, on the other hand, tastes like an amplified Ango Sour. It has more of a bitter punch, thanks to the rye and lack of egg white, there’s an extra nutty note from the orgeat, and somehow, it also manages to taste more sour. That last part really surprised me, but I guess the egg white tempered that in the Ango Sour, where I couldn’t really pick out any lime on its own.
The Trinidad Sour really feels like a capital-C Cocktail — the flavors work together to become something new. But I was shocked to find myself going back to the Angostura Sour for more of that unadulterated Angostura flavor, which gets a bigger spotlight there. (Oh, and for the yummy, fluffy egg white, which really takes the drink to another level.) Compared to the calculated, refined Trinidad Sour, the Ango Sour feels like a dare that went over too well. And I love that.
See you next week, when I’ll crack open another one of my favorite bottles.
Well, it’s actually from Lawrence, Kansas (and I’m actually from Shawnee), but close enough.
From Beta Cocktails by Maksym Pazuniak and Kirk Estopinal, 2011.