How to Make a Trinidad Sour, the Strange and Delicious Cocktail Where Angostura Bitters Is the Star
7 Video Views·Nov 9, 2022
Usually, Angostura Bitters are merely an accent to your Old Fashioned or Manhattan, when only a few dashes are deployed. But bartender Giuseppe Gonzalez noticed bitters themselves had a healthy ABV, so he wondered what it would taste like if you made a cocktail where Angostura Bitters was the base spirit. Turns out that cocktail would be delicious. He called it the Trinidad Sour and our resident bartender Jason O'Bryan shows you how to make one in the latest episode of Cocktails for Grown-Ups.
This cocktail is a firecracker.
Do you want a smoother firecracker?
No, you want it explosive,
and that's exactly what the Trinidad Sour is.
I don't want to overstate my qualifications here,
but as I understand it,
there comes a time in every art form
where things get a little avant-garde.
Somebody tries to do something in just a radically new way,
and the Trinidad Sour is one of those times.
It's like dollies melting clocks and elephants on stilts,
but it's so completely different
from every other cocktail in the canon
that it just kind of deserves its own category.
So let's backtrack for just a moment.
What are bitters?
So bitters, as it traditionally is made, were medicine.
That's bitter herbs and roots were medicinal,
and so you would want to take them for an upset stomach
or a parasite or whatever it might have been,
and the best way to do that is to infuse them into alcohol.
So Angostura is legally classified as a non-potable bitter.
Even though it's 44.7% alcohol,
I believe minors can buy them
because they're classified as something
that nobody would ever drink any quantity of.
Not so, said Giuseppe Gonzalez in 2008.
He was working at a bar called Clover Club in Brooklyn.
Still there, it's a great bar.
And he had this just idea,
because Angostura is 44.7%, and he says,
what if we made a drink that's Angostura bitters based?
How would that go?
And how that would go is the Trinidad Sour,
because as it turns out, it's amazing.
Now, had this been just an amusing curiosity
that was on a menu for a season,
it would have been that, and then it would have died.
But this drink is so good and so kind of shocking
to the mixological sensibilities of bartenders
that it has traveled the world.
So let's make one.
So the first thing we start with
is the least expensive ingredient, as always,
which is citrus.
We're gonna do fresh lemon juice,
and we are going to use three quarters of one ounce.
This is gonna provide the acidity that makes it refreshing.
Next is the Orgeat.
It's O-R-G-E-A-T, it's Orgeat,
but it's pronounced Orgeat.
It's made of almonds, some orange flower water, some sugar.
You can make Orgeat yourself.
Recipes are as easy as almond milk and sugar,
and as difficult as blanching, roasting almonds,
and then infusing them with water.
There's a number of brands.
I like Jaffard, I like Small Hand Foods,
I like Liquid Alchemist.
There's a lot of great brands.
And no matter what you use,
you're going to use one ounce of it.
Next, the rye whiskey,
which we're using the least of.
It's only a half ounce.
We're using this as kind of a backbone for the drink.
It gives it kind of a grainy presence,
and it helps dry it out, especially on the finish.
And there's only a half ounce here.
And finally, star of the show,
Angostura bitters, as mentioned,
used normally a couple dashes in a Manhattan
in an old-fashioned.
That's a sane amount of Angostura bitters.
This uses an ounce and a half,
a thoroughly insane amount of Angostura bitters.
Usually comes with a dash or top.
You just pop that guy right off.
Next, we're going to add ice.
We're going to shake it up.
This drink is served stemmed glass, a little coupe.
And then we strain off the ice into a stemmed glass.
Finally, we're going to garnish it with a lemon peel.
Gives some bright, fresh citrus aromatics right on top.
The Trinidad Sour.
Let's give it a shot.
Oh my God.
I haven't had one of these in a while.
Still shocking.
Look at the color.
I mean, it's just totally out of left field.
This cocktail's insane.
It's nowhere near as bitter as you would imagine,
although it is admittedly robustly bitter.
And it's really good.
The orgeat, it makes it tropical.
So the orgeat is this kind of almond presence
with the heavy, heavy, heavy cinnamon note of the angostura.
It combines to make it almost a tropical cocktail.
So I wouldn't classify this as a tropical cocktail.
It just, you wouldn't classify it anywhere.
It's in its own weird category,
but it's just absolutely delicious and fascinating.