By Carey Jones for DETAILS.
"What bartenders geek out about takes years to trickle down to the consumer," says Brad Thomas Parsons, the author of Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All. For the past five years, that's been elaborate homemade concoctions like ginger-peppercorn syrup and habanero bitters -- basically, anything that ups the ante on a craft cocktail. Now, instead of keeping those bottles behind the bar, they're selling them (online, mostly) to enthusiastic customers who are eschewing liquor-store stalwarts. Here, the best bartender-made secret ingredients to buy.
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Bitters
Jack McGarry, co-owner of The Dead Rabbit in New York City, wanted bitters to match the 19th-century-style drinks he serves (cocktails in the 1800s were less sweet, more of the put-hair-on-your-chest variety). "I read a book from 1884 that talked about Orinoco bitters and how they were superior to Angostura," he says. "So I started researching." His Orinoco bitters mix Christmas spices (allspice, clove, vanilla) with cardamom and sharp, biting angostura bark--which, ironically, the eponymous product no longer uses. $25
Also try: Bittercube, which is based in Milwaukee, produces seven varieties, including the rum-friendly Jamaican #1 and #2. $10 to $22
Read more: 5 Cocktails Everyone Should Know How to Make
Syrups
Tiki drinks are notoriously complex to perfect: You need obscure-sounding components like orgeat, velvet falernum, and "Don's Mix"--which no one made to the standards of Blair Reynolds, who owns Hale Pele tiki bar in Portland, Oregon. "Then I realized, why shouldn't I?" he says. His B.G. Reynolds line includes orgeat, an orange-almond syrup that's key to tropical drinks, notably the mai tai. $12 to $21
Also try: Small Hand Foods, veteran bartender Jennifer Colliau's Bay Area line of pre-Prohibition-cocktail building blocks, offers pineapple gum syrup for pisco punch and tonic syrup (just add soda). Starting at $10
Mixers
Bottled mixes get a bad rap, and for good reason. But Bittermilk, from the proprietors of the Gin Joint in Charleston, South Carolina, takes the just-add-booze concept off the supermarket shelf. Formulas include a Oaxacan Old Fashioned and a Smoked Honey Whiskey Sour. "If we gave people a recipe using smoked honey, they'd try to do it at home, and they'd do it at too high a heat," says co-owner MariElena Raya. $15
Also try: The Violet Hour in Chicago is launching a series of "sauces" that nail the proportions of classics. Mix the Original Sauce--scorched demerara sugar, bittering agents--with a brown spirit and you've got a professional-grade old-fashioned.
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