Ginger Bitters

A rather experimental recipe for me. I have always been a fan of aromatic bitters. What the heck are aromatic bitters? Perhaps the most popular is a brand known as Angustura, available at almost every grocery store. Tradionaly used in cocktails, but used as an additive to cooking. Oddly enough one of the biggest producers of bitters is a local Rochester company known as Fee Brothers. They are one of the few producers of orange bitters. If you ever have the chance, it makes an interesting tour.

I am fan of sparkling mineral water, I like the fiz, but sometimes I want extra taste. I use bitters of all sorts (a little goes a long way), but always wanted to try to make my own. There are several ways to "extract" the essence out of roots/leaves and such. In my next experiment I am going to try some sort of steam distillation, but this time I tried another method made popular around the turn of the century. Basically you use grain alcohol to extract the taste from the flavoring substance. In my case I used vodka. Equal parts of vodka and ground ginger, left in a mason jar for a couple weeks, leaves the vodka with an overwhelming ginger taste. I then add 1 or 2 tablespoons to my sparkling water, and you have something reminiscent of ginger ale, but not sweet. 2 to 3 times that, and you have something hot like ginger beer. Heck I like it, and of course ginger has a long and questionable history of positive medicinal properties.

With steam distillation of some sort, I should be able to extract more flavor and not have the alcohol present. Like any experiment, there is no such thing as a wrong result, and am happy with my first test.

Certainly if you don't like ginger, then go read some other blog for now, and if you don't like bitter tastes, then pass on everything you just read.