Summer is on the horizon. And I don’t know about you, but during the few months of actual warmth that Minnesota gets I tend to drink a lot less bourbon. My attention turns away from a neat bourbon in the recliner and toward a refreshing Gin Rickey on the deck. And so I decided that since warmth is getting oh so close, that I should dig out a bottle of bitters that I bought last December in Kentucky. I’ve been sitting on it because it was formulated especially for gin drinks. Those that I usually only have in the summer.
This particular bottle is produced by Copper & Kings in Louisville, Kentucky. I’ve had quite a bit of their brandy, but never their gin. But as I’ve liked everything else I’ve had from them, I decided that this little bottle was interesting enough to take a chance on. Here is what the distillery has to say about it:
To Enhance Gin Libations. Barrel Aged.
A luxurious blend of natural savory herbs & spices, oils, juniper, & citrus peels macerated in copper pot-distilled Old Tom gin base with honey.
Intense savory notes with kitchen garden finish. Rosemary, sage, basil with juniper pine, soft chamomile brightened with citrus zest. Rounded mouthfeel from honey with sharp, bitter bite. Dark rust in color. Adds
complexity & flavor to every gin drink.
Preservative free. Natural color. No artificial ingredients or glycerine. Non-chill filtered.
Now my favorite gins are Beefeater London Dry Gin and a very complex Gin from Castle & Key. I use the Beefeater most often, saving the complex Gin for a Negroni where the added complexity doesn’t get in the way of the simplicity of the drink. So I decided to try this bitters in two cocktails. One is the Gin Rickey which I love for its simplicity and the other is a Negroni. I made two of each cocktail. Each was exactly the same aside from the addition of the bitters. I used Beefeater in each recipe. Let’s see how it affected each.
Copper & Kings Alembic Gin Cocktail Bitters
Gin Rickey
There is a noticable color difference between the drink with bitters and that without. The thing I like about a Gin Rickey is that it is very clean and refreshing. Adding the bitters enhances the lime flavor, reduces the tartness, and adds savory notes of sage, garden herbs, and an orange note. All in all, very tasty. The bitters add complexity, which may or may not be what you want in a Rickey. Not sure I need it here, personally.
Negroni
I usually make my Negronis with a wonderful gin made by Craft distiller Castle & Key. For this experiment I used Beefeater (my favorite for Gin Rickeys, Tom Collins, and Gimlets). The bitters added the sage, garden herbs, and orange notes that I noted in the Rickey experiment. Where in the Rickey the added notes added complexity that wasn't really needed, in the Negroni the complexity really added to my overall enjoyment of the cocktail. And it allowed me to get the same level of complexity out of an inexpensive gin as I get out of the more expensive Craft Distilled gin.
Thoughts
Overall I like this quite a bit and I'd highly recommend this to folks who enjoy a complex gin. I'm really enjoying how the herbal notes play with a Beefeater or a Bombay Saphire. I'm not sure I'd bother if the gin you normally use has a lot of the same notes as the bitters though. For example, the Castle & Key gin I often use in my Negroni would duplicate many of the same flavor notes as the bitters, so I would deem the bitters to be unnecessary in those cases.
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