How to Make Homemade Bitters | Hacker News Reader

How to Make Homemade Bitters

thekitchn.com

78 pointsTomte11 comments

I have no idea why this is on the HN front page, but I love making homemade bitters. Its so easy and the output product is really really good.

Unlike things like home distilling/brewing/winemaking its fairly easy to get to a point where the output is both cheaper and as good a quality as commercial offerings.

[edit] My favorite recipe from last year: https://www.chowhound.com/recipes/sunshine-bitters-11279

Homebrewing beer is pretty easy to be cheaper than good craft beer, and better than cheap commercial beer. If you keep good sanitation, and are relatively careful, it's a lot of fun. The online homebrew community /r/homebrew for starters, are fantastic. A lot of great people and loads of info to get started.

I actually stopped homebrewing because it was fairly hard to beat local micros. That market is approaching blood thirsty. The bitters market has a lot more room.

Wholeheartedly agreed. I'm in Southern California and we're just spoiled for choice here. I've personally brewed and helped friends brew. Although I vastly prefer some of our brews, the amount of time/effort required is not for me (and my smallish apartment).

Things like homemade bitters are in the more feasible range for most people.

I'm going to make that recipe this week! Thank you for sharing.

How important is using neutral alcohol?

I can buy 50% vodka fairly easily, but here the 96% neutral alcohol seems only to be available through specialist liquor stores, with inconvenient prices and delivery.

I've experimented a bit and landed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everclear_(alcohol) for most of my neutral spirit bitters. But I've also had success with lower proof vodkas. The more "earthy" bitters especially its hard to tell the difference. Some of the more herbal or lighter bitters you can sort of tell.

There are also bitters recipes that use whiskeys that are quite good as well.

Be careful with cinchona bark, it can be toxic (quinine and other alkaloids).

Use brown or green glas-bottles if storing out in the open. UV-light can compromise the taste over time.

What's the shelf life of homemade bitters? Do they need to be refrigerated?

They're pretty stable, with the high alcohol content they don't really need to be refrigerated, but doing so will extend their life.

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