“Bitters are to a cocktail as salt is to soup.”

A bitters is an alcoholic beverage flavored with herbal essences that has a bitter or bittersweet flavor. A couple of drops of bitters will make a huge difference in your cocktail. They are, well, bitter, on their own, but will make every other flavor interesting and multi-dimensional.

For the average beginner cocktail enthusiast, I recommend the Angostura Aromatic Bitters on Amazon.

Its unique blend of natural herbs and spices can add flavor to a wide variety of food and drinks.  People have used it on ice cream, fruits, jellies, and sodas. It also brings out the best in your mojitos and will make a wonderful stocking stuffer.

For the more experienced cocktail enthusiast, I recommend going big and getting the Fee Brothers Bar Cocktail Bitters Complete Set. It’s a 12- bottle bitters set that has every flavor imaginable to man.

The following review from oldtaku pretty much says it all,

Your flavor options are:
– Fruit: Peach, Lemon, Grapefruit, Cherry, Rhubarb, Cranberry, Orange….
– Other: Mint, Plum, Old Fashioned, Celery, Aztec Chocolate.

The fruit flavors speak for themselves, but the others are more interesting. The mint bitters can add a lot to a simple mojito. Celery works fantastic with tomato juice or bloody mary mix. The plum is very cinnamon-y, and the Old Fashioned is like the plum but with extra heavy spices.

The Aztec Chocolate Bitters aren’t quite as tasty on their own, but work well when paired with a good spiced rum like The Kraken.

Get some bitters – it’ll make your mixoligist’s dreams come true!