Five Spice Bitters Follow-Up Report

Here's a photo of a little eye-dropper bottle full of my finished Five Spice Bitters. I'm happy to say it turned out quite well. The anise flavor of the star anise definitely dominates. the first thing I did was to have about an ounce of the bitters on the rocks with some water and it tasted more or less like pastis--which is why I like it so much. If I make it again, however, I'll try to balance out the flavors some more. I'm particular curious about how far you can go with the szechuan pepper. A mildly spicy bitters sounds intriguing although a little iffy (I've never tried it, but I've heard that some bartenders add a dash of tabasco sauce to their martinis—I think it may be a fad that's come and gone in NYC).

I didn't end up adding any coloring. The natural color is a pale blonde, like tequila reposado, and it looks nice. In any case, I looked around for Jamaican burnt sugar, as I had seen in it local supermarkets here in Sunset Park, which has a big Carribean community. As it turns out, I seem to have missed the swan song of this particular minor ethnic food ingredient. I even asked the manager at Key Foods, a South Asian looking man who is probably from Trinidad or French Guyana and he scratched his had and said, "no, I don't think we've carried that for years." I could swear I'd seen it on the shelves--in fact, at least two different brands--in the last year or so. It's too bad because I was curious as to whether burnt sugar would truly add only color as promised or if it wouldn't sweeten the bitters just a bit as well. If I track some down in one of the smaller grocery stores I'll give it a try and report back.

As for recipes, I've tried adding my Five Spice Bitters as a replacement for angostura/orange bitters in martinis and manhattans with great success. I even made a sazerac and used Five Spice Bitters in place of absinthe and it was quite good. So what I've found is that you can use these bitters for an anise-y replacement of the usual bitters, or you can use it in place of absinthe/pastis when it's called for in very small amounts as in two favorites of mine, The Preview and the "New Standard" Manhattan (skip the "gum syrup" though).