Bygone Bitters

A flurry of non-alcoholic bitters are emphasizing the extracts’ medicinal roots.

WORDS Jillian Dara

Bitters are to mixologists as salt is to chefs—just a dash of their concentrated botanical tincture can enhance and bind together flavors in a cocktail.

Traditionally, bitters are produced from infusing natural ingredients like herbs, flowers, spices and roots into a neutral alcohol, which aids in extracting the most potent flavors. The resulting liquid is bottled at an average 45-percent alcohol-by-volume (abv), yet bitters are still not popularly recognized as an alcoholic ingredient. In fact, bitters can be a key ingredient in many mocktails.

“When you’re only using two to three dashes of bitters, the drink you’re making might still technically be non-­alcoholic (NA), but it’s surprisingly easy to go above the 0.5-percent abv threshold if you’re not careful,” says Ian Blessing, cofounder and owner of All The Bitter, a line of NA bitters that’s produced by extracting flavors using a combination of vegetable glycerin, water­ and a touch of apple cider vinegar.

A response to the surge of NA spirits on the market and growing demand for zero-proof cocktails in bars and restaurants, All The Bitter is one of the newer alcohol-free bitters on the market. Others include Dram Apothecary, which launched in 2011; El Guapo, which started in 2017; and the new kid on the block, Seasn, which hit shelves in 2023.

Despite bitters’ respectively modern 200-year history of use in cocktails, they date back around 5,000 years to medicinal origins, says Ben Branson, founder of Seasn.

After recognizing that the alcohol in traditional bitters added nothing to a cocktail, Branson set out to create a “modern, inclusive, intense” bitter for enjoyment in all drinks. Already an innovator in the NA beverage space (Branson is the founder of Seedlip, the world’s first distilled non-alcoholic spirits brand), he experimented with more than 80 plants and tested various extraction techniques to land on a liquid that offers both flavor and function in two products: Seasn light is suited to brighten martini, margarita and spritz-style cocktails while Seasn dark pairs with “darker, richer, more moody” dark-spirit-based highballs.

Ben Branson, founder of Seasn / Rob Lawson

Branson challenged the status quo of cocktail bitters represented by large ranges of individual flavors. Such a reimagining of flavor was also considered by Dram Apothecary.

“It’s a common misconception that bitters must be bitter,” says Shae Whitney, founder of Dram Apothecary. The brand uses glycerin to extract its flavors, a method that can often result in a sweeter, more viscous liquid, but instead of trying to correct this natural result, Whitney leaned into it, infusing more tame herbs that are complementary, like lavender, lemon, chamomile and cardamom.

All The Bitter overcomes the glycerin sweetness by doubling or tripling down on their raw bittering agents, including­ gentian root, cinchona, dandelion, burdock, yellow dock, blue vervain, holy basil and schisandra berry.

Perhaps the best part of NA bitters is the return to their roots, offering gut health benefits whether combined with soda water, as a health tonic with lemon juice and warm water, or as flavoring in cooking.

“We have chefs who regularly use them as a condiment for raw oysters, in tomato soup and pimento cheese recipes,” says Christa Cotton, El Guapo’s CEO. The brand’s Crawfish Boil Bitters have also been used as a condiment on hot dogs.

Regardless of how NA bitters are used for added benefit, the priority result is giving consumers a choice when it comes to a true NA beverage. Ultimately, “whether or not your drink includes alcohol should be up to you,” says Cotton. And these bitters provide that option.