Bitters & bitters bottles

Start with how often you reach for a bitter. If you make a lot of old fashioned, a larger bottle such as the 23 cl retro model pays off, because you refill less often. For bitters you rarely pick up, a 5 or 6 cl bottle is enough and takes up less room on your worktop. Also look at the cap. A dasher gives one measured drop per movement and is made for bitters. A screw cap seals and is better for syrups or infusions you want to keep closed. The 6 cl skull model and the 10 cl square bottle stand steadily on a narrow shelf, while the 15 cl vintage model really belongs on a backbar in full view. The 10 cl spray bottle is a category of its own, meant for misting the inside of a glass.

A dash is not a fixed measure, but in practice it comes to roughly a millilitre, so one short, firm flick of the wrist. Two to three dashes are enough for a stirred cocktail. For a manhattan, put the bitters into the mixing glass first and the spirits only after, so everything distributes evenly while you stir. In a negroni the bitterness is already in the campari and you usually need no extra dashes. The spray bottle works the other way round: you mist a thin layer of absinthe or smoke into an empty glass, swirl it around and pour the cocktail on top.

Bitters are strong enough to keep themselves, but the cap is not. Rinse the dasher out under warm water every few weeks, because sugar and essential oils settle in the little channel and then the dose starts to wander. Keep bottles out of direct sunlight, since colour and flavour fade faster there. Write the contents and the filling date on the label, because you cannot tell a six-month-old bitter by its colour. Glass can go in the dishwasher, the caps had better not.

Bitters are one link in a stirred cocktail. For the rest of the kit, look at the bar spoons, long enough to reach the bottom of a mixing glass, and at the jiggers for measuring the spirits. If you would rather shake than stir, the cocktail shakers offer the matching sizes. The glass it all ends up in is with the cocktail glasses, where coupes and tumblers are sorted by shape.