Turn up Your Iced Coffee With Cocktail Bitters
We’ve already established that cocktail bitters go beyond cocktails. They bring depth to lemonade , flavor to royal icing, and sophistication topotato salad . Unsurprisingly, they are also very good in iced coffee.
Coffee already has a lot of flavor changes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t add it. Heavy-duty alcoholic extracts are often referred to as the “bartender spice shelf” due to their ability to add a little something special that makes the drink complete without needing to be limited to alcoholic beverages.
Not every bitter flavor goes well with every type of coffee, so think about beans before you start brewing your coffee. If you are a fan of light citrus roasts, choose a citrus bitter. If you like a darker drink, try pecans or chocolate. If you don’t have any of these “fancy” flavors, it’s okay – classic herbal angostura goes well with almost any coffee.
To bring up your cold, already delicious coffee (or weak, overwhelming coffee), simply shake the bitter directly into the glass of iced and coffee, then stir a little. I like to use at least four shakes as the coffee tastes pretty strong and I’ve found that my mouth just can’t tell the bitterness if I use three shakes or less. If you want to take the topic even further, you can add an herbal liqueur such as Fernet-Branca (or something from the Fernet family). Unlike bitters, it will significantly increase the strength, but this is not so bad, especially in “our time”.