Book of Bitters, by Dr Adam Elmegirab

Ask any regular cocktail drinker, or aspiring home bartender and they’re probably (passingly) familiar with bitters – at least the big names like Angostura and Peychaud’s, or possibly a few specialty blends with trendy ingredients like chocolate and yuzu. It's something we all know, but almost all of us know surprisingly little about. Especially when you consider the taste-altering impact just a few small drops of bitters can have.

That is, unless you’re someone like Dr. Adam Elmegirab – arguably one of the world’s foremost experts on bitters.

For anyone interested to really learn, the Book of Bitters is a primer on the entire spirit category of bitters. Starting with the history of the two most famous bitters brands we all know today: Angostura bitters and Peychaud’s Bitters. He also gives an overview – and tasting notes – of many of the other modern brands on the market, like Bittermens, Scrappy’s, The Bitter Truth, and his own eponymous bitters, Dr. Adam Elmegirab’s Boker’s Bitters – itself a reformulation of an 1862 recipe.

Beyond just bitters, the book also covers the history of cocktails in general, albeit from an unabashedly bitters-centric perspective, because in the Elmegirab cocktail world view, “Simply put, the defining ingredient of a true cocktail is bitters.” 

Framing the story of cocktails themselves, he traces their evolution from medicinal, bitters-based tinctures to something we’d recognise today — the Old Fashioned. According to Elmegirab, the drink takes its name from the folk etymology of the era: patrons in the late 1800s asking for a traditional “old fashioned cocktail”, meaning one made the old way, with nothing more than sugar, spirit, and, of course… bitters.

Unsurprisingly, as a former bartender turned bitters-brand owner with a PhD in chemistry, he goes far beyond simple histories and recipes. The book dives into proper nerd territory – from how bitters are actually manufactured (extraction, maceration, percolation, and more) to the flavour profiles created by different bittering agents like angelica, gentian, quassia, and rhubarb. He even tackles the legality and practicality of making bitters at home – less a DIY manual and more a gentle warning. As Elmegirab quips, “You still think making bitters is easy?”

Elmegirab even explores the philosophical nature of bitterness itself. What is bitterness? What role does it play in our understanding of taste? And, what value does bitterness bring to a drink?

That’s not to say the book is overly abstract or technical, and having already made his case for why making bitters is an art and a science, Elmegirab unpacks useful, everyday topics like how to select and pair bitters with different flavours in your drinks. For instance, how salty flavors generally suppress bitter notes, while sourness can merely dull bitter notes, or in the curious case of umami, how it heightens many other flavor notes except bitter (which it suppresses). It empowers readers to better understand the flavor science at work in their drink, from a layman’s POV.

Much of the book contains dozens of recipes of cocktails that use bitters (so it can technically be considered a cocktail recipe book), categorized by their flavor profiles like sweet, bitter, umami, and the like.

There’s a short bit on the basics of bar equipment and terminology, making it a nice – albeit probably unnecessary – addition for a reader who’s already deep-diving on a topic like bitters. It does, however, make for an attractive coffee table book. 

Honestly, given how central bitters are to so many cocktails, and by comparison, how many books are written on far more obscure spirit categories, it’s nice to see something as the humble bitters being given a little of their due.