Gentiana lutea

Bitters

Tinctures, botanicals, and the bittering agents that make a drink legible.

Yellow gentian. Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen, 1887. Public domain.

Not a recipe card. A walk through what each step of making bitters is for, so you can build your own and understand why it tastes the way it does.

Bitters are not an ingredient so much as a corrective lens. Here is what those dashes are actually doing to your tongue.