Skip to main content

A Bitter Experiment: Why You Should Try Adding Bitters to an IPA

the bitter truth grapefruit beer
The Bitter Truth

IPAs already have a strong reputation for being bitter, so why kick it up a notch and add cocktail bitters?

Alex Hauck and Stephan Berg, co-founders of The Bitter Truth, are proponents of the somewhat odd-sounding practice. As Germans, they’d never come across an IPA before a visit to Father’s Office in Los Angeles, where they smelled what they thought was someone preparing a joint. While there is a growing craft beer scene in Germany today, when they made that visit to L.A., there was little variety in their homeland beyond traditional German styles, especially in the countryside where they reside.

Recommended Videos

“Germans are very conservative with their beer,” Hauck said, adding that one exception to that is the common habit of adding lemonade and Coca-Cola to beer. “In Los Angeles, Stephan ordered an IPA and found out that’s what smelled like weed. We started to research them.”

best beer bars in las vegas
Image used with permission by copyright holder

They also began experimenting by adding different bitters to hoppy beer. Hauck described the practice as similar to the French mixing beer with Picon Biere, a bitter orange liqueur.

“I knew that drink and like it very much, and thought maybe it could work with our bitters in IPAs,” Hauck says. They learned that there is a limit, though, to how much bitters one can add to a drink —you can easily overpower the more nuanced flavors of an IPA, but Hauck said a strong one can withstand two or three dashes to enhance the beer’s spiciness and fruitiness.

Hauck recommends playing around and trying to match the flavors of the hops with particular bitters. While he prefers grapefruit or lemon, celery or aromatic bitters work as well.

Don’t limit yourself to IPA — Hauck says a chocolate bitter can be added to a darker beer. “On one side, there’s the roast of cocoa beans and on the other, cinnamon and warm spices,” Hauck explains. “Those flavors are really nice in a stout or porter.”

the bitter truth lineup
The Bitter Truth

Of course, part of Hauck and Berg’s reason for encouraging courageous drinkers to try bitters in beer is meant to promote their products. The duo started The Bitter Truth 12 years ago following a period of bartending in Germany, a nation that lacked most of the innovative cocktail ingredients other metropolitan areas were using at the time.

“We’d take a trip to England every year and get the ingredients we couldn’t get,” Hauck says. “During the trip in 2006, we decided, ‘Why not make it a small hobby?’ We made an orange bitter, one of the key flavors of the 19th century.”

“I was happy as a bartender,” Hauck adds. “At some point, you have to make the decision to be a bartender all your life or take the opportunity to build your own company.”

The hobby grew and, eventually, the Hauck and  Bergtarted selling the bitters, first in Germany and later across the globe. Prior to the brand’s official launch in the U.S. in 2009, cocktail expert Robert Hess brought The Bitter Truth back to the States and made it available at in Seattle. The company now offers a  line of 11 bitters — with occasional specialty flavors — and an additional collection of liqueurs like violet, elderflower, and pimento dram.

Pat Evans
Pat Evans is a writer based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, focusing on food and beer, spirits, business, and sports. His full…
How to strain a cocktail (and why you should)
Learn this important technique for both shaken and stirred drinks
Bartender pouring drink through strainer

When you start out making cocktails, you'll find that many cocktail recipes are quite minimal. They tell you what ingredients you need, in what quantity, and give you basic instructions -- and that's it. They tend to assume you know all the key skills of cocktail making, and unlike many food recipes, they don't explain the necessary techniques. That can be frustrating if you're new to the hobby! But don't worry. The skills are generally pretty easy to learn as long as you have some guidance.

One instruction you'll often see in cocktail recipes is to strain the drink once you have shaken or stirred it. If you're not sure what that means or how to do it then this guide should help.
How to strain a cocktail
One of the key pieces of equipment you need to make cocktails is a hawthorne strainer. This is a round, flat piece of metal with a handle and a large spring curved around its edge. It should be just the right size to fit on top of your shaker tin.

Read more
This Oktoberfest season, you should be drinking wheat beer
Germany's beloved style, known as liquid bread, deserves your attention
Weissbier Glass wheat beer nuts

With all the focus in the craft beer world on IPAs, it can be easy to overlook the many other styles of beer that are worth trying as well. As well roll into Oktoberfest season, let me introduce you to one of Germany's finest beer styles: the wheat beer.

Also known as weissbier, hefeweizen, or sometimes just weizen, this rich, cloudy beer is most distinctive for its texture. It's thick, almost chewy, and while its hazy characteristics will be familiar to those who enjoy a hazy IPA, the flavors are quite different. It doesn't have a strong bitterness to it -- rather it's a balanced, grainy flavor with plenty of yeast to add a slight tang and a banana-like note. It's less sweet than Belgian-style witbiers, but it has a similar creaminess. It's jokingly referred to as liquid bread, and that's just the taste you should expect from it.

Read more
This IPA cocktail breaks all the rules
Combing IPA with Aperol and grapefruit juice for a rich, sharp drink
Hazy IPA

No style of beer has taken the world by storm quite as much as the IPA. From the juicy, lush West Coast IPAs to the more hazily defined East Coast IPAs, you'll find a whole world of styles and flavors within this booming beer category.

The one thing that all IPAs have in common in a strong, hoppy flavor -- though not all IPAs have to be bitter hop bombs. And while the style has traditionally be associated with higher abvs to carry more flavor, there are also a range of low-abv options which have become available in recent years, so you can enjoy an IPA that you can sip on all day.

Read more