I had an amazing beverage last weekend. It wasn't a fancy expensive wine or a cool microbrew beer. It was home-made seltzer and bitters!! Our new friends, Emily and Josh saw me eyeing their shelf o' booze during a cut throat game of Pictionary Man. I spied the Rhubarb bitters and Emily jumped up and said "You have to try this - it tastes just like Dr. Pepper". Well, I love Dr. Pepper so I was game. She then went over to their Seltzer Maker... yes you heard me - they have their own soda maker in their house (I ordered mine about 24 hours later) - she carbonated a glass of NYC's finest tap and sprinkled a couple of drops of Fee Brother's Rhubarb bitters and the rest was fruity tart goodness!
I'm not very familiar with the world of bitters so I tried to do a little research. The Fee Brothers are from Rochester NY and they have a whole huge line in addition to the traditional flavors, or rather the bitters that I was familiar with: Agostura and Orange. They also have mint, peach, lemon, grapefruit and Aztec chocolate. The Bitter Truth also has cool flavors like Mole and Celery. The Fee's website is not particularly helpful with info about their products and/or recipes. Here's what they awesomely say about the Rhubarb Bitters:
The delicate flavor of Rhubarb combined with other flavors available in 1800's America.
Don't know anything about bitters? Here's the quick history. They were originally used as medicine, curing digestive issues and nausea, and the old mal-de-mer, It's not too different from amari like Fernet-Branca, Averna, and Strega. People used to just consume the bitters solo,it wasn't until the late 1700's that people started adding them to cockatils ( so says this cool how-to-make bitters blog http://spiritsandcocktails.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/how-to-make-bitters/)
Basically bitters are made by macerating herbs, spices, and/or fruit in alcohol. It doesn't have to be macerated in booze, but it greatly increases the shelflife. You only use a couple of dashes of bitters, so their alcohol content isn't usually noticable, but it can be quite high - around the 40 proof area.
I ordered all 9 bitters from Fee's from Amazon-- and I can't wait to use them to season my seltzer and my cocktails. I read once where bitters should be used like salt and pepper to raise a cocktail to another level and to bring out flavor and complexity. I really like that! Stay tuned for more bitters revelations.. I might even make my own this summer!! I saw a recipe for cardamom vanilla bitters... sounds amazing!
color: pinky red
nose: I don't remember!!!
taste: I only tried it in the seltzer - but it was tart, rhubarb, cherry and cranberry yumminess
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