Scotch Bitter Cocktail Recipe

The Scotch Bitter is a basic cocktail made with Scotch whisky, lemon juice, sugar, egg white, and generally bitters. It’s merely a spirit-specific model of the Whiskey Bitter, a cocktail that may be made with any kind of whiskey, however trendy iterations at bars in the US are likely to make use of bourbon until specified in any other case.

This transformation could seem minor, however the huge distinction in taste profiles between scotch and different types of whisk(e)y creates a wholly totally different cocktail.

Historical past of the Scotch Bitter

The Bitter class of cocktails is likely one of the oldest round, and sometimes entails a base spirit combined with some type of tart citrus (often lemon or lime juice) and a sweetening agent (like sugar, syrup, or liqueur) to create stability. The time period itself may be preceded by any spirit kind, and drinks just like the Gin Bitter and Brandy Bitter have been loved for over a century, although their reputation has typically been eclipsed by that of the Whiskey Bitter.

Previous to the 1900s, domestically produced whiskeys created with corn, rye, and wheat dominated the U.S. market. Prohibition’s ban on alcohol created a further demand for Scotch whisky. Although it was smuggled into the nation illicitly throughout this era (typically by the Bahamas, which was a British colony on the time), scotch’s foothold in America lasted far past Prohibition’s repeal, and solely grew as exports of the spirit elevated after World Struggle II.

An outsized variety of Whiskey Sours combined within the latter half of the twentieth century might have been made with scotch, however a glut within the spirit’s manufacturing (and a lot of scotch imitations) result in a degradation of the cocktail itself. Readymade “bitter combine” more and more took the place of recent substances. Ultimately, what was as soon as an emissary of one of many oldest types of cocktail typically turned a slug of scotch-flavored spirit mixed with a three-second push of the “bitter” button on a soda gun.

Fortuitously, tides turned within the new millennium. Within the aughts, U.S. whiskey manufacturing exploded, as did the resurgence of classic-style cocktails utilizing their unique substances. The Whiskey Bitter turned respectable once more, and although it was more and more made with bourbon, the Scotch Bitter by no means actually went away. In actual fact, the drink turned the premise of a brand new wave of recent classics, particularly the Penicillin, a culture-changing cocktail from New York Metropolis’s Milk & Honey. That drink makes use of the Scotch Bitter template however contains honey somewhat than easy syrup, and provides a float of closely peated single malt scotch to focus on the spirit’s full array of flavors.

Why the Scotch Bitter Works

The mixture of spirit, citrus, and sugar is so ingrained in cocktails due to how effectively the mixture works throughout a variety of substances. However what you get from the Scotch Bitter is a predominantly malt-forward taste that helps to create an earthiness not typically present in sweeter, bourbon-based variations of the drink.

Blended scotch tends to be the best whisky for a Scotch Bitter, although a single malt can work as effectively. Nevertheless, if the aim is to extend the peat and smoke parts of the drink, a variation just like the Penicillin could also be extra ideally suited, the place a single malt float permits for extra of these parts to return by on the nostril with every sip as a substitute of getting blunted into submission by shaking.

Although a Scotch Bitter can successfully be made utilizing simply the three major elements (whisky, lemon juice, sugar), many Sours embrace egg white to create a creamier texture and rounder mouthfeel. That is elective and may be skipped for a cleaner tasting drink.

We do, nonetheless, embrace two dashes of Angostura bitters right here, which assist intensify a few of the deeper and extra tannic parts of blended scotch that may be misplaced in mixing the drink, bringing them again to the forefront. If utilizing a extra closely peated whisky, the bitters can safely be omitted.