written by Lauren Kramer
Miles Thomas was mixing cocktails in Seattle bars in 2008 when he grew frustrated with the selection of bitters flavors on the market. There were just two available at that time, Angostura and Peychaud’s, and Thomas could sense the potential for more. He rented a commissary kitchen in the basement of an Italian restaurant, began experimenting with other flavors and, in no time at all, was flooded with order requests from other bartenders in the neighborhood. Eventually he ditched his bartending job to found Scrappy’s Bitters, a craft bitters company that now has a dozen flavors that it exports worldwide.
If you’re a cocktail lover, you’ll know that bitters infuse flavor into a spirit base. They’ve been around since 1806, and while you don’t need more than a dash or two for each cocktail, the quality of the flavor they infuse has kept bitters as a staple ingredient on bartenders’ and cocktail aficionados’ shelves.
The flavor selection from Scrappy’s includes fire tincture (a blend of five chiles), lavender (using Provence-grown lavender), Seville orange, chocolate, aromatic, lime, celery, grapefruit, cardamom, Northwest alpine and Orleans. All the bitters are handmade in small batches using organic ingredients, with no artificial flavors, chemicals or dyes.
“We were the only craft bitters brand in North America when we launched Scrappy’s,” said Ben Sheffield, Thomas’ best friend and global brand ambassador. Today there are more than 100 manufacturers of bitters, but Scrappy’s, still based in Seattle, is the largest in Washington—a small brand with a powerful flavor.
