Cocktails with Lavender bitters
Lavender bitters are cocktail bitters built around lavender, added a dash at a time as a concentrated floral-aromatic accent.
ABV44%High in the bottle but negligible in the finished drink, since it’s added only in dashes.
Substitutes for Lavender bitters
Lavender is the note and it goes soapy easily, which is why it comes in dash strength. A general aromatic bitters brings the bitterness and none of the flower, and a floral syrup brings the flower with sugar.
Often confused with
Lavender syrup
The flower with sugar attached and no bitter backbone. A barspoon replaces two dashes of aroma and sweetens the drink, so cut the syrup already in the build — and it goes soapy faster than the bitters do.
Aromatic bitters with a drop of floral liqueur
The bitters carry the bitterness and the liqueur carries the flower. A drop or two of crème de violette or elderflower gets close; more than that and the drink turns sweet and perfumed rather than lifted.
Storage
Floral aromatics are the most fugitive thing that goes into a bitters bottle, and lavender is at the fugitive end even of those. A bottle opened a year ago will still be bitter and will no longer be obviously lavender.
