Am I the only one who remembers that day in grade school when our teacher handed out tongues? Not real tongues, which would’ve been way cooler. I mean those crude, hand-drawn blobs reaching out to lick you from damp ditto papers labeled THE HUMAN TONGUE or YOUR TONGUE, that mapped out the organ’s specialized taste regions like a butcher’s diagram maps out cuts of beef.

The tip, you learned, was for detecting Sweet flavors, and was flanked by two Salty zones. Behind those, a pair of Sour regions controlled your pucker reflex. And in the back, far from all the honeybuns and ice cream and Dorito parties, there lurked a weird neighbor who kept to himself except for the occasional, vaguely threatening note on your windshield about “the noise last night”. That weird guy who feeds the cats. Bitter.

According to The Ways of Science, these four basic tastes were laid out on your tongue like an artist’s palette, ready to help you paint a description of any food. Or so we thought.

Turns out that’s all bullshit.

We now know the tongue is a way more intricate machine. Instead of a rigidly defined grid, it’s like a giant hippie commune of receptors and sensors and fungiform pappilae (those ones with the dreadlocks) working in harmony to help to you identify thousands of subtle flavors.

But while the tongue map has long been debunked, it’s based on one fact: every food or drink that hits your mouth can be defined by four basic tastes: salty, sweet, sour and bitter.¹

Salted rims and Bloody Marys aside, it’s those middle two (and the balance of them) that are responsible for most of what we love about a good drink. But not everything.

Enter the old hermit, Bitter. Once banished to the back of the tongue, destined to die alone in a trailer with tinfoil on the windows, this outdated evolutionary defense mechanism now finds his calling behind the bar—as a GOD.

Used properly, bitterness is 1% of your glass population, with 99% of the power.

A few dashes can bring a syrupy Mai Tai or punchy whiskey sour to its knees, balancing things out, but also calming them down, allowing you to pick out flavors you didn’t notice beneath all that sugar and citrus. In the same way Sweet and Sour can work together to reach a higher level of craft, Bitter can work with both to create something closer to art.

Overstatement? Bombast? Hyperbolic blogwankery?

Tell you what. Grab that bottle of Angostura that’s been in your cupboard for three years and jack a couple spurts into your stadium-sized bourbon & 7. Don’t overdo it, 2-3 dashes is fine. You’ll notice it’s dramatically less sweet than before, but without a hint of added tartness.

This was a revelation the first time I tried it. After years of Manhattans and Old Fashioneds, this exercise made me understand what cocktail bitters can do, at least from a balance standpoint.

With dozens of varieties and hundreds of herbal, woody and floral ingredients, cocktail bitters (and their cousins, tinctures) can also provide endless flavor epiphanies that go beyond simple drink balancing, adding accents that enhance the character of your favorite drinks. But we’ll save all that business for future posts. For now, let’s keep the tongue breakthroughs simple.

Here’s a slightly dialed-up version of the experiment above that shows how a tasty but ultimately two-dimensional drink can be crafted into a genuinely intriguing cocktail, simply by adding a bitter.

Ginger

• 2oz Jameson Irish whiskey
• 2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
• Ginger ale (I love Boylan’s, but let’s not get picky)
• Lemon wedge (optional)
  Pour the whiskey over ice in a 12-16oz glass, and add 2 dashes Peychaud’s (up it to 3 if using Angostura). Top with ginger ale and stir lightly. Add the lemon wedge if you’re interested in bringing some sourness to the party. I usually am.

Improvise at will, replacing the Jameson with bourbon or even gin, and the ginger ale with 7up or tonic. Any of these basic combos is a great way to play around with the added power of bitters.

Posted at 11:29am and tagged with: recipe, basics, JT,.